Shepard taught media ethics at Georgetown University to its masters program from 2007 until 2010. She also taught journalism at American University. She was a Times Mirror Visiting Professor at University of Texas at Austin for the 2005-2006 academic year, where she taught a class she designed on Watergate and the press. She spent the last four years interviewing more than 175 people connected to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein and sifting through the new archival materials that UT bought from Woodward and Bernstein for $5 million in 2003. She is the author of the 2006 book "Woodward and Bernstein: Life in the Shadow of Watergate."