As a journalist, she wrote in both English and Italian for publications such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Internazionale [it]; from 2000 until her death, she was the Rome correspondent to The Nation.

[2][3] Randall was the Rome correspondent for The Nation, where she was described as "an acute chronicler of the postwar death spiral of Italian democracy".

[5][6] In addition to her work at The Nation, Randall was a freelance writer for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Internazionale.

[7] Randall shifted her focus from journalism to translation in 2002, after she was catastrophically injured jumping from a third-story balcony; the disabilities she suffered as a result of the fall impaired her ability to work in the journalistic field.

[9][10] She acquired a reputation for successful translations of works previously labelled "untranslatable", such as Deliver Us (Libera nos a Malo [it]) by Luigi Meneghello.