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Job Title

Editor

News Organization

The San Diego Union-Tribune/SignOnSanDiego.com

Bio

Ron began his new media career creating multimedia CDROMs out of his San Diego beach bungalow in the late 1980s. At this time he began writing about the fledgling multimedia industry as a columnist for the “Computer Journal.” He also contributed to local and national publications including “Digital Video Magazine”, The San Diego Union-Tribune and San Diego Magazine.

Along with his wife Mary James he authored The Multimedia Casebook published by Van Nostrand Reinhold, which was used as a textbook at several major universities. Included in the book was the first cross-platform hypertext version of the book enhanced with video, animation and audio files.

In 1994 he founded San Diego Magazine’s online site, San Diego Online http://sandiego-online.com . He recruited over two dozen online contributing editors to produce content specifically for the online edition. The site has garnered many awards including the first Webby for best Web community.

In 1995 his passion for multimedia led him to Time Warner where he was the first online editor for its Road Runner service. Road Runner’s Discover San Diego site http://discoversandiego.com/ was a showcase for broadband news and feature content gathered from local and national sources. Ron pioneered new ways of enhancing features and editorial content, including the multimedia calendar, which featured clips of video and audio to enhance the user experience and knowledge.

His team produced one of the first long-form Webcasts using professional talent exclusively for the Web with 22 hours of live programming at Street Scene San Diego. His advanced work in broadband production was featured in a full page in The Wall Street Journal article on new media journalism. In 1998 he produced an animated CD-ROM, which won the silver Envision award for best multimedia project.

In a brief dotcom stint he was Director of Broadband for The Broadband Interactive Group where he pioneered new streaming programming including live two, weeklong extreme sports Webcasts in Virginia Beach and Huntington Beach. He also headed a small Web team for a championship surfing live video Webcast on a platform three miles offshore of Fiji using a gas generator, and satellite dish.

For the last eight years he led the online editorial efforts of The San Diego Union-Tribune’s website, SignOnSanDiego.com which has won many local and national honors for excellence and innovation. SignOn is a premier news and information site and is considered one of the industry leaders in multimedia production and integration. He has been a frequent speaker at national and local conferences. Ron is passionate about helping to shape and evangelize the future of digital newsgathering and dissemination, with focus on the coming wireless broadband revolution.

Web site

http://uniontrib.com