Brian Boyer is…
…a programmer coaxed by a scholarship into studying journalism at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, in sunny Evanston, Illinois. Rich Gordon devised the scholarship and The Knight Foundation funded it. Many, many thanks to both for giving me this opportunity.
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The long version
A bit on BoingBoing caught my eye last May.
Someone was hunting for programmers to mold into journalists.
I was feeling malleable, and school had been on my mind for a while — I love technology, but making software for businesses sucked. Law and public policy were on my short list, but if Northwestern wanted to write the checks, journalism was worth a look.
So, I did what any sensible net-head would: I googled it.
I found out that journalism has a mission: to inform the people so that they may better self govern. Lawyering and politicking are top-down affairs — journalists work from the bottom up. They help people solve their own problems.
They enable democracy.
That was something I could get behind. It was an easy choice: I jumped ship from the lucrative world of software development, and dove head first into a tumultuous new profession characterized by layoffs, buyouts, and bleeding bottom lines.
I reckon if the source of the tumult is technology, then journalism needs more nerds. This blog is where I document my thoughts on the news world and findings from journey into the world of journalism.
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