In August 2011, Daniel Axelrod began an appointment as a Graduate School Fellow in the Mass Communications Ph.D. program at the University of Florida’s College of Journalism and Communications. Previously, he spent five years as a full-time newspaper reporter, most recently with The Times-Tribune in Scranton, PA, before serving as a public relations specialist for Blue Cross of Northeastern Pennsylvania from 2009-11.
From 2004 to 2009, Daniel won 14 newspaper journalism awards from state press associations in New York, New England and Pennsylvania. Some of his top stories examined the rising number of opiate addicts in Northeast Pennsylvania, investigated development in the Poconos and spotlighted the effects from years of under-funding schools in Plymouth, MA.
Since 2009, Daniel has led the family business, the nonprofit Writers Unlimited Agency, Inc., which has promoted the arts, education and creative writing since 1972. Besides staging readings and educational workshops on poetry, publishing and journalism, Writers Unlimited operates a small press and offers freelancing and public relations services. Based in NY, Writers Unlimited has offices in NY and FL.
From 2009 to 2011, Daniel also served as president of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Keystone Pro Chapter and taught journalism and expository writing classes at colleges in Northeastern Pennsylvania. The Keystone chapter, which covers most of Pennsylvania, runs a popular statewide journalism contest and organizes lectures and seminars. Daniel’s other recent accomplishments include recognition from SPJ’s national offices in September 2010, which awarded the Keystone Pro chapter an “Outstanding Professional Chapter Award” for being one of the top three small SPJ chapters in the U.S. Plus, in May 2010, Daniel was a fellow in The Knight Digital Media Center’s Multimedia Reporting and Convergence Workshop at UC Berkeley. And in 2009-10, he was vice-chairman of SPJ’s national Digital Media Committee.