Renita Coleman has 15 years of experience as a newspaper journalist and a Ph.D. from the University of Missouri. "Her latest book is "Designing Experiments for the Social Sciences: How to Plan, Create and Execute Research Using Experiments," published by SAGE. She is an associated editor of Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly."

Her research focuses on agenda-setting, race, visual communication and ethics. She has studied the effects of photographs on ethical reasoning, the framing and attribution of responsibility in health news, and the moral development of journalists and public relations practitioners, among other topics. She has published more than 30 peer-reviewed articles in academic journals including Journal of Communication, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, Journal of Mass Media Ethics, Visual Communication Quarterly, Newspaper Research Journal, Journalism, and Journalism Studies. In addition to the new book, she has another book, “The Moral Media: How Journalists Reason About Ethics,” published in 2005 with co-author with Lee Wilkins of the University of Missouri.

Before beginning her academic career, Coleman was a journalist at newspapers and magazines for 15 years. She was a reporter, editor, and designer at the Raleigh, N.C. News & Observer, the Sarasota FL Herald-Tribune, and the Orlando, FL Sentinel among other news organizations.

Coleman teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in experimental design, lifestyle journalism, and ethics.