Pate McMichael is the director of the North Carolina Open Government Coalition at Elon University.
He is the author of Klandestine: How a Klan Lawyer and a Checkbook Journalist Helped James Earl Ray Cover Up His Crime (Chicago Review Press, 2015) and Operation Chrysler: The Greatest Murder Mystery of World War II (2019). His work has been anthologized in Words Matter (University of Missouri Press, 2016) and The Bitter Southerner Reader, Vol. 3 (2019). McMichael’s adapted screenplay, Conspiracy King, was recognized as a quarterfinalist in the 2022 San Francisco International Screenwriting Competition.
For 15 years, he has worked as a freelance journalist, publishing long-form narratives in Atlanta Magazine, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, The Bitter Southerner, Zocalo Public Square, Lake Oconee Living, Georgia Backroads, Athens Magazine, and St. Louis Magazine. He interned with The Brownsville Herald on the U.S.-Mexico border and also worked as a student reporter for the Columbia Missourian and Vox magazine.
From 2007-2019, Pate taught journalism at Georgia College, a public liberal arts university where he advised the student newspaper, The Colonnade, at the rank of senior lecturer. His students received national, regional, and statewide recognition during his tenure. From 2020-2022, he served as the adviser for The Orion, Chico State’s independent student newspaper and an Associated College Press Hall of Fame inductee. In the pandemic year of 2020, his students won a Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence Award in the breaking news category for their coverage of wildfires in Northern California. Most recently, he served as the associate director of The University of Arizona School of Journalism in Tucson.