Campbell joined the AU faculty in 1997, after more than 20 years as a newspaper and wire service reporter—a career that took him on assignments across North America and to West Africa, Asia and Europe.

He is the immediate past chair of the History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

Campbell earned his Ph.D. in mass communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1997. He has since written four books, the most recent of which was The Year That Defined American Journalism: 1897 and the Clash of Paradigms (Routledge, 2006).

His first book, The Emergent Independent Press in Benin and Côte d'Ivoire : From Voice of State to Advocate of Democracy (Praeger, 1998), examined the wellsprings of independent-minded journalism in French-speaking West Africa (see photo of Campbell with a Beninese journalist, below).

His second book,Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies (Praeger, 2001), challenged prominent myths of the yellow press period in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century.

He also is author of The Spanish-American War: American Wars and the Media in Primary Documents (Greenwood,2005).

In addition, Campbell has written for Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, American Journalism, Journalism History, Editor & Publisher, Presstime, and American Journalism Review.

And he has given lectures at the National Press Club, the Library of Congress, and the Freedom Forum. His research about the yellow press has won awards from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication and the American Journalism Historians Association.

Campbell has taught seventeen different courses in ten years at American University, including: Media Myth and Power (an honors colloquium), Foreign Policy and the Press, Seminar in Public Affairs, Advanced Reporting, In-Depth Reporting, Global Journalism, Contemporary Media in a Global Society, Censorship and Media, Understanding Mass Media, and Sports Journalism.

In 2004, Campbell established his faculty office in McDowell Hall, an undergraduate student residence hall on the north side of the American University campus. In 2005, he received the University's faculty award for service to the AU community. In 2006, he was chosen the AU student government’s "faculty member of the year." In 2007, he won the University’s Morton Bender Prize for promising associate professors.

Before entering journalism education, Campbell reported for the Cleveland (Ohio ) Plain Dealer, the Hartford (Connecticut) Courant, and for the Associated Press in West Africa and Europe.

His international assignments included coverage of nuclear arms negotiations in Geneva, youth unrest in Swiss urban centers, the challenge to communist rule in Poland, political upheaval across West Africa, and the consequences of the world's deadliest industrial disaster at Bhopal, India.