About Dan

I'm director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. (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 remain director of the the Center for Citizen Media, a joint project with ASU and Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. (The center was formerly affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley.) I also write articles and have published a book called We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People (2004; O'Reilly Media) -- the paperback version of We the Media was released in January 2006 -- and am working on a new book about media in the digital age. 
 
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. 

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