After high school, David McRaney tried his hand at owning pet stores, working construction, installing electrical control systems, selling leather coats and waiting tables.

Now, David McRaney is a journalist working out of Mississippi where he earned his bachelor's degree in mass communication and journalism in May, 2007.

In 2006, McRaney was named one of the top 10 college journalists in the nation and earned a $10,000 scholarship from the Scripps Howard Foundation. He is a two-time winner of the William Randolph Hearst Award, once for feature writing and once for opinions writing. He is also the recipient of the 2007 Elliot Chaze Journalism Scholarship and the 2006 Mississippi Press Association’s awards for best photo and story combination and best general news story. In 2007, McRaney earned the South Eastern Journalism Conference award for opinions writing as well as winning the on-site competition in the same category. He earned the 2007 MPA awards for both the best general interest column and best news story. He earned the 2006 MPA Collegiate award for best feature story, and the SEJC award for special event reporting for his work covering Hurricane Katrina.

McRaney served one year as the executive editor for the campus newspaper of The University of Southern Mississippi, The Student Printz, in addition to serving one semester as the news editor and one semester as the managing editor. The newspaper won both general excellence and best editorials at the 2007 Mississippi Press Association awards along with 19 other individual awards for his staff.

He was the president of the Society of Professional Journalists on campus as well as a member of the Kappa Tau Alpha honor society.

McRaney has also written extensively for The Lamar Times, The Advertiser News and The Petal News covering local hard news and generating weekly columns.

In 2005, McRaney contributed 12 personality profiles of local eccentrics and business owners for Profile: Lamar County.

McRaney continues to contribute to an assortment of magazines and newspapers such as The Sun Herald, Discover: Jones County and The Daily Journal of Commerce as well as several blogs and Internet publications including the After Katrina Newswire, boingboing.net, infowars.com, asylumnation.com, bodyburden.org, sexualscandals.com, righttothink.com,ewg.org and icanhascheezeburger.com

He is married to Amanda McRaney and lives in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.