I’m a writer, editor and digital consultant based (inevitably) in Brooklyn, N.Y.
I’m the author of The Jupiter Pirates, a young-adult space-fantasy series, and have written more than 40 books and short stories set in the Star Wars galaxy. Besides fiction for adults and young readers, I write essays and articles about technology, sports, online media, music, travel, history, and anything else that interests me. I also keep my eye on the world of digital publishing, with a particular interest in sports and sportswriting.
I spent nearly 13 years at The Wall Street Journal Online, where I was a columnist, editor and projects guy. In Web years, 13 years is basically forever — or at least long enough to accumulate more than 1,000 bylines and learn a heck of a lot about how journalism works online. My duties included writing daily and weekly columns (“The Daily Fix” and “Real Time,” respectively), editing writers and coaching them to write effectively for the web, serving as WSJ.com’s first blogs guru, and representing the editorial department on numerous projects in partnership with Dow Jones business strategists and software developers. After leaving the Online Journal, I consulted with news organizations for EidosMedia, a maker of cross-media editing-and-publishing software, before hanging out my shingle as a full-time writer and editor.
I’ve been a baseball blogger at Faith and Fear in Flushing since 2005 and am a former adjunct faculty member at the Poynter Institute, where I spent a year as an ombudsman for ESPN. That role grew out of a weekly digital-sportswriting column I wrote for Indiana University’s National Sports Journalism Center. I collected 19 of my best NSJC columns (along with new material) as an ebook, Sportswriting in the Digital Age. It’s got lots of practical advice about writing for the web and creating a journalism career in today’s swiftly changing media world. Check it out in Kindle format from Amazon here, from Barnes & Noble here, or from Smashwords (PDF and other formats) here. Or you can get it through Apple’s online bookstore.
Thoughts on the challenges and opportunities for digital-age journalism are archived at my blog Reinventing the Newsroom.
I have a day job now, so my time is more limited than it once was. But if I can help you with writing, editing, storytelling or the challenges of digital publishing, drop me a line. If you came to check out some of my writing, have a look around and follow a link or two. Either way, thanks for visiting!