Acknowledgements
We owe a great debt to many people who contributed to this report. While we can’t name them all here, we wish to thank some of those most deeply involved. Nicholas Lemann, dean of Columbia’s Journalism School, hatched the idea for the report and has consistently guided our efforts with wisdom and skill. Jeffrey Frank and Marcia Kramer carefully edited our copy and saved us from verbosity—or worse. Janice Olson took germs of our ideas and turned them into wonderful graphics. Emily Bell, director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, and Elizabeth Fishman, who oversees communications for the Journalism School, provided expert advice throughout.
Our families, friends and colleagues tolerated our absences with patience and provided wonderful insight that helped shape our findings.
Most importantly, we would like to thank the dozens of publishers, journalists, and salespeople who opened their doors and books to us and dealt with our many questions. For all the difficulties that journalism faces these days, we were deeply impressed and encouraged by their commitment to this business, and to ensuring that citizens will continue to get the information they need to lead their lives.
The Authors
Bill Grueskin is dean of academic affairs and professor of professional practice
at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. He began his career at the Daily American in Italy, and then founded a weekly paper on the Standing
Rock Sioux Indian Reservation in North Dakota. He later served as a reporter and editor at newspapers in Baltimore, Tampa, and Miami. As The Miami Herald’s city editor, he led local coverage of Hurricane Andrew; the Herald’s overall coverage of the storm won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for public service. Grueskin then worked for thirteen years at The Wall Street Journal, including roles as deputy page-one editor, managing editor of WSJ.com, and deputy managing editor/news. He joined Columbia’s faculty in 2008. Grueskin has a bachelor’s degree in
classics from Stanford University and a master’s degree in international economics and U.S. foreign policy from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.
Ava Seave is a principal of Quantum Media, a New York City-based consulting firm focused on marketing and strategic planning for media, information, and entertainment companies. Before co-founding Quantum Media in 1998, Seave was a general manager at three media companies: Scholastic Inc., the Village Voice, and TVSM. She started her career as a photo editor for two horticulture magazines. Seave has adjunct appointments at the business and journalism schools at Columbia University. She is the co-author (with Jonathan Knee and Bruce Greenwald) of The Curse of the Mogul: What’s Wrong with the World’s Leading Media Companies. Seave graduated from Brown University with a bachelor’s degree in semiotics. She also holds a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard Business School.
Lucas Graves is a PhD candidate in communications at Columbia University. His dissertation focuses on the fact-checking movement in American journalism as a window onto changes in the networked news ecosystem. Graves has worked as a technology and media analyst with various research firms and is a longtime magazine journalist, now on the masthead of Wired magazine. He co-authored the first report from the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, on the confusion over online media metrics. Graves holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Chicago and master’s degrees in communications and journalism from Columbia.
Bill Grueskin, Ava Seave, and Lucas Graves are the co-authors of “The Story so Far: What We Know About the Business of Digital Journalism.” Grueskin is dean of academic affairs at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Seave is a principal of Quantum Media, a NYC-based consulting firm. Graves is a PhD candidate in communications at Columbia University. For further biographical details, click here.