Bill Kovarik is a Professor of Communication at Radford University in the Blue Ridge mountains of southwestern Virginia.
He teaches media history, media law and science & environment writing. He has written extensively about media technology and environmental history for publications ranging from the New York Times to Earth Island Journal.
Kovarik is also an environmental historian and has served as a consultant with the Nebraska State Historical Society, Lloyds of London, Bill Moyers Now, and other organizations.
He is a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University (1974), the University of South Carolina (M.A., 1983) and the University of Maryland (Ph.D., 1993). He has also studied comparative international media law at Oxford University.
His Ph.D. dissertation, The Ethyl Controversy, explored the role of the news media in protecting the public interest in a scientific controversy over leaded gasoline andsafer alternatives. Publications are detailed at this site.
Kovarik has served on the faculty at the University of Western Ontario as the CanWest Media Fellow for 2009. He has also served as a visiting professor on the faculty of Virginia Tech, the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia, and Unity College in Maine.
His professional experience as a journalist includes reporting and editing for columnist Jack Anderson, the Associated Press, The Charleston (S.C.) Courier, The Baltimore Sun, Time-Life Books, Business Publishers, Appalachian Voice and the National Center for Appropriate Technology.
Books include: “The Forbidden Fuel” (1982, University of Nebraska 2010) with Hal Bernton and Scott Sklar), “Mass Media and Environmental Conflict” (1996, with Mark Neuzil, Sage), “Web Design for the Mass Media” (2001, Pearson) and “Revolutions in Communication” (2011, 2016, Bloomsbury; third edition under contract).
Kovarik has also served on the board of directors for the Society of Environmental Journalists and Appalachian Voices. He also writes for Appalachian Voice, the New River Voice, Environmental Health News The Conversation and other publications.