My life has been in media — music, newspapers, online, books, investing and education.
My primary gig is teaching digital media entrepreneurship and digital media literacy at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
My most recent book (a project that is much more than a book) is Mediactive. My goal with this project is to help turn passive media consumers into active users — as participants at every step of the process starting with what we read.
I’m working on a new book and web project, tentatively entitled Permission Taken, about the increasing control that companies and governments are exerting over the way we use technology and communicate, and how we can take back some of that control.
I also write articles and commentary, including a regular online column for the Guardian newspaper, and somewhat more frequently at the Mediactive blog and on this site.
My last book, We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People (2004 and 2006; O’Reilly Media), is still on the market and still selling. The book has been translated into many foreign languages, most recently Korean and Arabic.
My Twitter username is @dangillmor. Here’s my Twitter page. If you are on Google+ you can find me here.
I’m also involved in several outside projects; have a number of media investments; and am on several media-related boards and advisory boards. These include:
- Investor, Wikia, a privately held consumer wiki company.
- Investor, Seesmic, a privately held company that does Twitter applications and online video
- Shareholder in Berkshire Hathaway (owner of the Buffalo News and major shareholder in the Washington Post Co.), and Amazon.com
- Co-founder, Dopplr, a travel site and “social atlas”. Nokia bought Dopplr in 2009 (announcement)
- Board member, First Amendment Coalition, a nonprofit that promotes free speech and open government
- Board member, Pen Plus Bytes, the International Institute of ICT Journalism, a nonprofit based in Accra, Ghana
- Advisor, FON, a collaborative Wi-Fi company
- Advisor, Global Voices Online, a nonprofit global blog network
- Advisor, Spot.us, a startup working on new journalism business models (now owned by Minnesota Public Radio’s Public Insight Network)
- Advisor, Publish2.com, a site aggregating journalists’ links and ideas
- Advisor, MediaBugs.org, an error tracking project created by Scott Rosenberg
- Advisor and co-founder, Citizen Media Law Project, a Berkman-based (and Knight-funded) project
- Board member, the Banyan Project, which is developing a co-op model for community news
I frequently speak at events, public and corporate, and have been paid on a number of occasions. In the past several years I’ve received compensation from organizations including (among others): the National Federation of Advanced Information Services, Schibsted (Norway), ABC (Spain), TVN (Chile), Clarin (Argentina), Consumer Electronics Association (US), International Prepress Association, TIDE (Germany), Newspaper Association of America, Knight Center for Digital Media, National Association of Science Writers, New York Press Association, BlogBoat (Belgium), IGN (a unit of News Corp.) the University of Colorado, Washington & Lee University, Northeastern University, the University of Hong Kong, Louisiana State University, Columbia University and others. I’ve also gone to several countries including Russia, Colombia, Egypt and Croatia on behalf of the U.S. State Department, giving talks and workshops for journalists and new-media people and promoting the ideas behind citizen media.
I count the business failure of Bayosphere, a new-media startup that aimed to fuel local journalism in 2005, 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 was one of 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. Over the years I’ve freelanced for the New York Times, Boston Globe, Economist, Financial Times and many other publications.
During the 1986-87 academic year I was a Knight-Wallace 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.
Dan,
When you started writing in 1994 for the Mercury News, I read all of your columns and took them very seriously. I was 22 years old and I knew that Silicon Valley was the center of a huge and global societal shift. You really stood out to me, the quality of thought and choice of topics… You were formidable in the development of my intuition around tech trends. Thanks!
I played Jazz bass for about 7 years before becoming an options trader in 1999, these days I help performing arts organizations advertise their seasons on the internet. Looking forward to your continuing work, always.
-John Sanchez
Bay Area Reader
Dan,
Not sure if this will find you. I have been going thru my old records digitizing many of them and saving many as well (can’t part 100% with analog). Well, one of them was Road Apple and Beyond which I probably purchased at Baileys music on Church St Burlington sometime around 1977. I lived in Burlington and surrounding area from 1972 thru 1979 and basically lived at Nectars. As Zoot Wilson used to say from the bandstand, “Live music 7 days a week, never a cover, french fries, and plenty of free parking”. I heard so many great bands and musicians with Road Apple being one of my favorites. Over the years I wondered what became of the band. Doug was one amazing talent, how did he pass?
Good health – thanks for the great music.
Dan
Hi Dan, Just letting you know how much your post on journalism education was appreciated on the other side of the big pond. I coordinate the journalism degree program at Melbourne’s La Trobe University, and like everyone else in this game, we’re engaged in reviewing our curriculum. To this end, your articles here and at MediaShift have proved invaluable. Enjoying the new book too! Best, Lawrie
Dan, thanks for the note.
Doug was in a car crash in Boston – a huge loss. Sadly, Frank Williams also died in a car accident.
what music instrument did you play?
Not sure if this will find you. I have been going thru my old records digitizing many of them and saving many as well (can’t part 100% with analog). Well, one of them was Road Apple and Beyond which I probably purchased at Baileys music on Church St Burlington sometime around 1977. I lived in Burlington and surrounding area from 1972 thru 1979 and basically lived at Nectars. As Zoot Wilson used to say from the bandstand, “Live music 7 days a week, never a cover, french fries, and plenty of free parking”. I heard so many great bands and musicians with Road Apple being one of my favorites. Over the years I wondered what became of the band. Doug was one amazing talent, how did he pass?
+1
A friend, a Brit, just sent me your column in Salon on the failure
of the “technically good” press because he wanted to give me a
cheap thrill figuring I’d recognize some of the words I’ve said on
the same subject. I’m an old reporter who quit his own pm daily
to freelance (the SJ Mercury among the victims, and the NYTimes
as well) before finding the footing slippery back in the 90s).
I do so sadly agree; that the Post and Times can admit they haven’t
covered torture (and wiretapping, and the death of conflict of
interest, and, and…) without much of an apology signals they’ve folded
shop. Have they considered resuming journalism so that their
dailies might survive? I see no evidence of that. (And it’s
continuing. My conservative cousin is disheartened. He told me
last night a trauma stressed ex-Navy Seal confessed to him that
he once executed an Iraqi family for the hell of it. I wouldn’t
know how to start running that down, myself)
It seemed so awful to me back in the 90s I left freelancing and
took a job teaching at UC San Diego in a writing program, but
began to feel sneaky bad when it increasingly appeared the quality
curve was still falling, and I was teaching kids what they’d never
be able to use (at least not in the mainstream). I took my first
chance to get out of there eight years ago.
Anyway, anyway… you’re doing good work and I hope you and
other reformed mainstreamers like you continue to work.
By the way, I was managing editor at State Press back in… 1965,
I think it was.
Sincerely in appreciation… Bob Dorn
Hey, Dan, long time no chat. I like your column on free lemonade, but it was way too loaded with liberal talking points. Surely you know that government didn’t learn theft from corrupt capitalism — and government corruption is often crony capitalism, where both are at fault. Corruption, theft and greed are part of the human condition, not exclusive to business, wall street, government, etc.
I do appreciate the “SOME” part of “some in the tea party.” I participate in some tea party events, and I don’t believe in medicare, social security, or even health insurance. Before you freak, what do I mean by the part about health insurance? Well, it’s too late to do anything about it now, but IMO, health insurance should never have gone beyond catastrophic care. Insurance as a benefit is partly responsible for the outrageous costs today. We were much better off when we paid for it out of pocket. Catastrophic health insurance wouldn’t create that problem, since healthy people would be paying into the system and the system wouldn’t have to pay for all their routine care. Well, there’s no point in going on about it… too hard to reverse it now.
Finally, you were pretty nit-picky about the column. I didn’t like the column either, but I did recognize that he was just trying to make a point. It was picking nits to mention that the parents GAVE the kids the stuff for the stand. He was just trying to say (correctly) that, if your goal is to be a 100% academically correct about teaching your kids the strict rules of business, you’d have to point out to the kids that the ingredients cost money. Naturally, that isn’t what a lemonade stand is about, but you get the point, I hope.
I hope you’ll shoot me an email at the address I posted with this. I don’t have your current email address.
-Nick
Hola Dan,
En estos momentos estoy para finalizar mi Master en periodismo en Madrid y de trabajo final estoy realizando un estudio de participacion ciudadana en los medios de comunicaciòn, como es esta participaciòn y que intereses busca esta participaciòn en diferentes medios de comunicaciòn. A fin de ampliar este tema, me han recomendado tu nombre como referencia bibliografica ya que segun me indican eres un experto en el tema.
Me encantaria recibir alguna ayuda de tu parte a fin de afianzar mi investigaciòn en este proceso.
Muchas gracias y quedo a la espera de tus comentarios
The serendipity of the Web…and the connected world: I received an email today from someone asking about the album I once offered for sale by the N-Zones, a Burlington, VT, band whose music I danced to regularly in the late 70s and early 80s when I was a reporter at the Burlington Free Press. I did a little research on the band and its leader, Zoot Wilson. And I got here. FYI, Zoot died in 1998, apparently a suicide, according to several older web articles. Some of his music is available online at MySpace and other locations.
Anyway, my journalism career and life took me from (among other places) Burlington to Jerusalem, Israel, where I have been for 12 years, working in Internet media and certainly aware, as a result, of the name, Dan Gillmor. I am now a “recovering” journalist who manages the websites of a think tank here in Jerusalem, Shalom Hartman Institute, contributes a daily column of Jewish obituaries to JTA.org, and tries to do a little teaching and lecturing here and there. I think I know a fair amount about the media these days, and even more about the Jewish/Israeli media, online and off.
So, did I know you, Dan, in Burlington?
Yes, you did…hello again.
Dan,
I just heard your lecture on iTunes U and I found it extremely inspirational. I am very far along launching my digital magazine for college students. I am 22, and a business student at the University of Missouri (Mizzou) and if you could help me in any way I would love to hear from you! I am extremely passionate and I’m also working as an intern for Brant Bukowsky who is an extremely successful entrepreneur and we are starting events and giving back to the community. So much to talk about.
Thank you!
Alex
Hello Dan – Long time my friend. Got the kindle version of your book today. You have done the evolving society a great service. Frank Common would be over the top with the type of thinking you are doing. I’ve recently had to give up woodwinds due to an auto accident here in Vegas and my creative muse has taken me to orchestral composing and DVD scoring. It feels as though I have evolved through time. What I am creating was impossible in the other world – the chances of an individual being able to compose and have his work performed and recorded was beyond the reach of most creative types 30 years ago. God knows what was lost between the cracks. Charles Ives had to pay musicians to play his compositions. I have the orchestra and any combination of old and new at my fingertips – in this digital world a relatively small investment levels the playing field. Or allows us to put it out there or keep it close to our hearts. My time in the Navy Band brought me to a whole new world of technical proficiency. But it was 22 years of regurgative music. I much prefer to be a creative person. Thanks for the work Dan. I look forward to finishing Mediactive and I’ll toot my horn the next time I go by ASU.
Namaste tommy
Tommy, great to hear from you… check your email.