Dan Gillmor

Dan Gillmor (born 1951) is an American technology writer and columnist. He was director of News Co/Lab, an initiative to elevate news literacy and awareness, at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Gillmor is also in the board of directors of The Signals Network, a non-profit organization supporting whistleblowers.

Early life and education Gillmor was born and raised in upstate New York. In 1969, he enrolled at Middlebury College for three semesters. He later enrolled at the University of Vermont, graduating with a degree in political science in 1981. Gillmor worked at the Kansas City Times and several newspapers in Vermont, followed by six years at the Detroit Free Press. Gillmor's eJournal archives were believed to be lost but have been found in the Internet Archive and are now restored at Bayosphere.com.

Gillmor left The Mercury News in January 2005 to work on a start-up venture in citizen journalism called Bayosphere, which aimed to "make it easier for the public to report and publish on the Internet." Launched in May 2005, Bayosphere closed in January 2006.

After closing Bayosphere, Gillmor moved on to a new project, the Center for Citizen Media, a non-profit organization affiliated with the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University Law School.

In November 2007, Gillmor was named founding director of Arizona State University's new Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Awards and honors Gillmor won the EFF Pioneer Award in 2002.

Works Books Gillmor is the author of We the Media (2004), The book offers a guide to new internet tools for journalists, including weblogs, RSS, SMS, peer-to-peer, and predicts how these tools will change journalism.

In 2009, Gillmor published Mediactive, a book on digital media literacy. One review noted that the book's "thesis in itself is neither new nor original", but that the book represents "the first time someone has put it all down in one place".