I'm director of a new Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. (Here's the official announcement.) We're working to help create a culture of innovation and risk-taking in journalism education, and in the wider media world. I'm also the school's Kauffman Professor of digital media entrepreneurship.
I'm also involved in several outside projects; have a number of media investments; and am on several boards and advisory boards. These include:
- Co-founder, Dopplr, an online travel service.
- Angel investor, Wikia, a consumer and business Wiki company (Jimmy Wales, founder, is a member of the Center for Citizen Media Board of Advisors).
- Angel investor, Seesmic, an online video site.
- Shareholder in McClatchy Co.; New York Times Co.; Gannett Co.
Member, advisory board, Knight Digital Media Center.
- Member, U.S. advisory board, FON, a collaborative Wi-Fi company.
- Member, advisory board, Global Voices Online, a nonprofit that aggregates blogs from around the world.
- Member, advisory board, NewsTrust, a nonprofit using technology to better assess the quality of news reports.
- Board member, California First Amendment Coalition.
My Citizen Media Center blog is here.
In 2005 I worked on citizen media through Grassroots Media Inc.; I count the failure of Bayosphere, a new-media startup, as one of my best learning experiences.
From 1994-2005 I was a columnist at the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper, and wrote a weblog for SiliconValley.com. The blog is believed to have been the first by a journalist for a traditional media company. I joined the Mercury News after six years with the Detroit Free Press. Before that, I was with the Kansas City Times and several newspapers in Vermont.
During the 1986-87 academic year I was a journalism fellow at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where I studied history, political theory and economics.
Before becoming a journalist I played music for seven years.
