I serve as an Editorial Product Manager at NPR, where I work with member stations to develop niche websites. Before coming to NPR, I worked with the Knight Foundation and the Reynolds Journalism Institute. As deputy editor of StarTribune.com, I launched the award-winning, social, arts-and-entertainment site Vita.mn. I also managed the creation of the Star Tribune's politics website Politically Connected, the development of an internal taxonomy, and other editorial projects related to community interaction and technology. Outside the Star Tribune, I'm probably best-known for being the voice and co-creator of EPIC 2014, an alternative history of the media, set in the future. Previously, I was the Fresno Bee's first online reporter/producer, and the Naughton Fellow for Reporting and Writing at the Poynter Institute. I currently sit on Poynter's National Advisory Board. You can find me and Robin (EPIC's other co-creator) blogging at Snarkmarket.My best Snarkmarket posts on journalism:The Attention Deficit: The Need for Timeless Journalism (8/07)The Press' New Paradigm (6/06)When Vox Populi Attacks (1/06)Three Rants on Rick, parts I & II, part III (11/05)The Era of Slow News (7/05)Websites you should really check out:We Feel FineJournerdismPopURLs
Nine years ago, when I was working full-time for Poynter, my colleagues and I took the Myers-Briggs test during a team retreat.* I hadn’t heard of the test at the time, and aside from light Psych 101-ish readings during… Read more
As 2012 gets moving, I thought I’d be the very last person to list some of the ideas that have gotten stuck in my mind from over the last year.
Last year, I wrote a list of lessons I’d… Read more
Allow me a moment of nostalgia for the classic liveblog. “Liveblogging” was this thing we used to do before the rise of Twitter and Storify, much like good old-fashioned blogging itself. You’d have a host and a bunch of guests… Read more
In a busy corner of the metajournalism world, a crowd of journalists is assembling what amounts to a public, open-source curriculum on how to do hacker journalism. In blogs, tweets, Git repositories, meetups and slide decks, they’re sharing code… Read more
I don’t need to tell you that the Scientific Revolution kickstarted the modern age. Kevin Kelly lists the discovery of the scientific method alongside the invention of libraries and the printing press as “meta-changes” — the evolution of evolution,… Read more
If you need any proof about the power of headlines, consider this: what do you imagine drew the majority of people to this post? Chances are that you and others made the decision to click here after coming across the… Read more
One byproduct of the digital media revolution is that most journalists today are techies, to a point. It’s increasingly rare to encounter reporters who don’t covet the latest hyper-powered smartphone.
I’ve met with longtime journalists who, having never written a… Read more
Last week, my news organization announced we were evolving our online commenting practices a bit to improve the quality of discourse on NPR.org.
Our comment threads drew some attention recently when a comment thread about the brutal assault… Read more
As 2010 drew to a finish and the end-of-year lists started streaming in, I began to feel that there was something missing from the din of bold predictions and celebrated thinkers in the tech and media world: female voices.
The… Read more
An interview by Matt Thompson, deputy editor of Startribune.com, with Meg Smith and Ju-Don Roberts of The Washington Post. (This interview was published in the 2008-2009 edition of Best Newspaper Writing.)
When the Virginia Tech story… Read more