Local Angle | About

I’ve spent more than 20 years working on challenging problems at the intersection of news, data, and technology.

I’ve led strategy and organizational change at my hometown Minnesota Star Tribune. I oversaw a world-class team of journalists and developers at The New York Times. As an engineer, I’ve created tools, launched startups, built award-winning interactives, and was an early leader in applying machine learning and natural language processing to news. As a reporter, I broke some fun stories and won a few awards.

Throughout my career, I’ve done my best work taking on projects that some might consider … ill-advised — launching big initiatives under comically short deadlines; hacking (sometimes literally) around the limitations of legacy systems; building and leading high-profile projects with untested technologies that can't fail, or else.

That might not be the smartest thing to admit, but much of the innovation I've admired in the news industry has come from individuals and teams with an extreme bias toward action, biting off more than reasonable people think they can chew.

Call it calculated risk. Sometimes you might even call it a little reckless. Either way, it's something our industry needs more of right now. With generative AI and other emerging technologies reshaping how information is created, discovered and consumed, our imperative to serve our mission and sustain ourselves could use a little boldness.

That means actually trying things. Building things. Launching things. All of which can be hard, given the significant constraints on our resources, our still-evolving knowledge of product and technology, our innate skepticism, and our instincts toward perfectionism.

Whether as an individual contributor, manager or executive, my response to those barriers over the years has basically been the same: Just build the thing anyway. I’m sure that’s created a few headaches, but I’ve also seen again and again how moving an idea from abstract to concrete can completely change the conversation. “Demos, not memos,” as my friend Matt Waite likes to say.

That's why I created Local Angle.

To help news organizations navigate uncertainty by making it easier to try new things. If that resonates with you, don't hesitate to reach out. I'm excited to work with you.