About

I’m a long-time (longer than I choose to confess) journalist and educator.

Lately, I’m writing books: currently, The Gutenberg Parenthesis, Magazine, and The Web We Weave. My newest book, Hot Type: The Magnificent Machine that Gave Birth to Mass Media and Drove Mark Twain Mad, a history of the Linotype, is out now from Bloomsbury Academic. My earlier books: What Would Google Do?, Public Parts, and Geeks Bearing Gifts.

I’m cohost of the podcasts Intelligent Machines with Leo Laporte and Paris Martineau and AI Inside with Jason Howell.

I retired recently from CUNY, where I was the first prof hired, and so I am now the Emeritus (Latin for old) Leonard Tow Professor of Journalism Innovation.

I am now a visiting professor at Stony Brook University’s School of Communication and Journalism, helping to develop new programs there, and a distinguished fellow at the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University.

In past lives, I was president and creative director of Advance.net, the online arm of Advance Publications (including Condé Nast and Advance Local newspapers); creator and founding editor of Entertainment Weekly at Time Inc.; Sunday editor and associate publisher of the New York Daily News; TV critic of TV Guide and People magazines; a columnist for the San Francisco Examiner; and an editor for the Chicago Tribune. And while at Northwestern University, I was an intern on Chicago Today … a paper that had no tomorrow.