The Past

Experience

  • The Santa Cruz Sentinel

    Online Editor

    Editing and posting breaking news all day long. Producing a daily video update, audio slideshows, and a range of news and entertainment podcasts. Evangelizing blogging, RSS, video, maps, databases, interactivity.

  • ANG Newspapers

    Reporting intern, regional desk 2006

    Wrote in-depth, front-page stories about organic certification, immigration, women in the blogosphere, and continued an investigation into the under-reporting of worker injuries at the new Oakland Bay Bridge site. My writing appeared in the Oakland Tribune, all the ANG papers, the Contra Costa Times, and the San Jose Mercury News. Just for fun, I also designed a template for insidebayarea.com's WordPress blogs.

  • The Spartan Daily

    Webmaster and staff writer 2005-2006

    Redesigned the online presence of San Jose State University's student newspaper, then oversaw a transition to a new content management system and redesigned it again. Wrote the technology beat, photographed spot news once or twice, and shot video for multimedia packages, plus covered a race discrimination lawsuit and badgered the University president on issues ranging from state of the wireless network to the First Amendment on campus.

  • The Movie Business

    Grip/Electric 1997-2002

    Worked my ass off doing hard labor, carrying heavy things, and coordinating groups of other persons doing the same. Key grip, best boy grip, dolly grip, gaffer, best boy electric -- I've got all those funny titles next to my name on independent films, plus thousands of hours on music videos, commercials, and television shows.

Education

  • San Jose State University

    M.S. Mass Communications 2005-2007

    Researching a thesis on the adoption of blogs at newspapers. Wrote papers on the online Marketplace of Ideas, U.S. technology firms doing business in China, and linking behavior as interpersonal communication, not to mention shorter riffs on the marketing of American products in Venezuela, the history of newspapers in California, and how Madison's bits on factions in the Federalist Papers are playing out in political blogs.

  • New York University

    B.F.A. Film Production 1994-1997

    Concentrated on cinematography and screenwriting. Also learned how to work 18-20 hour days on student films for free, how to sleep on any floor in the tri-state area, and how to drive 14-foot cube trucks through the Holland Tunnel over and over and over again. Still working on that last bit. Oh, and yes, I had Baskin for Sight & Sound Film.

  • North Miami Beach Senior High

    I got a diploma in 1994.

    Graduated 30th in a class of 722. There were community meetings and death threats over who had the top three GPAs. I am not making this up. Focused on writing, philosophy, drama, history, and psychology. Pretty much ignored the rest.

The Present

What I do 40 hours a week

  • GateHouse Media

    Director of Community Site Publishing

    Evangelizing Web-first publishing, video, and interactivity at small town newspapers across the country. Providing publishers, editors, and reporters with the tools to get their jobs done in a New Media landscape.

Side Projects

  • Invisible Inkling

    That would be my blog

    Writing about the future of newspapers, online news and journalism education. Read what other journalists, educators and thinkers write about it.

  • That thesis I'm working on

    Status: Proposal approved as of 9/1/2007.

    Gathering preliminary data on weblog adoption at newspapers. Preparing to select 15-20 papers for case studies.

  • There's more.

    Honest.

    But I can't go spilling all my secrets here, now can I?

The Future

The rest of my life

  • Newspapers

    The next ten years

    Herding news-on-paper organizations into the next generation of information, like so many cats across a parking lot. I'll give it ten years.

  • Even more education

    A Ph.D

    Subjecting myself to another round of structured education. I'm thinking after ten years in newspapers, getting a Ph.D in Communications or something of the sort will sound pleasant enough.

  • Professor Sholin

    That sounds funny already, doesn't it?

    Teaching journalism students how to generate dynamic news content for whatever the most technologically advanced medium is in 2020 or so. I will be hopelessly out of touch with their direct brain-to-eyeball-embedded-SMS style of passing notes in class, and they will call me "That guy who still blogs."