About
The site
I do most of my blogging at Snarkmarket, but I didn’t want to clutter my awesome, focus-less blog with my long and frequent musings on the state of journalism. So I started writing Newsless.org.
I tend to think the online journalism revolution has barely even begun. And when the dust settles, there won’t just be a lot more multimedia, or reporters frantically posting updates every half-second. If we play this Web thing right, we could make journalism more engaging, more accurate, more useful, more inspiring, fairer, and most of all, better for democracy. The breakthrough moments will begin to pour forth once we realize that the “latest news” is only the thinnest layer on the story of what’s happening in our society.
The author
I love the Web. Having been a relatively early member of MetaFilter, and having made a number of great friends through Craigslist, I’m a giant believer in online communities. But my loves stretch much farther – I’m fascinated by Wikipedia, I geek out over advancements in data presentation and interface design, you’d have to pry my RSS reader from my cold, dead hands, &c.
By the way, I’m Matt Thompson, currently undertaking a year-long research fellowship with the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri, previously the deputy Web editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Before that, I was the first online reporter/producer at the Fresno Bee, and a Naughton Fellow for Online Reporting and Writing at the Poynter Institute. I now sit on Poynter’s National Advisory Board. I graduated from Harvard in 2002 with an honors degree in English. I spent my years there singing in (and eventually leading) the Harvard Callbacks, a co-ed a cappella group. I’ve completed one marathon and hope to complete another.
