Before working for Vanity Fair, Prochnau was the Washington-bureau chief for The Seattle Times and he later served as a national affairs reporter for The Washington Post.

Prochnau wrote articles which include the profile of Pat Robertson and a report on the kidnapping of multinational businessmen held for ransom.

[3] His work on the Vietnam War while at the Seattle Times landed him on the infamous master list of Nixon political opponents.

Prochnau won an Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship[5] in 1988 to research and write about the media as it operated in the Vietnam War and its aftermath.

Laura Parker also covers aviation for The Washington Post and served as a national correspondent for USA Today for ten years.