Joshua Benton is a journalist, historian, and writer based at Harvard University.
He is the senior writer at the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, an effort to help journalism adapt to the Internet age. He founded Nieman Lab in 2008 and was its director for 12 years until stepping back to write in 2020.
Before that, Josh came from newspapers. He was by turns an investigative reporter, columnist, foreign correspondent, and rock critic for two newspapers, The Dallas Morning News and The Toledo Blade.
Josh also came from the web, building his first websites in 1994, starting an early blog in 1999, and spending his career advocating for a news ecosystem that combines the best of old and new worlds.
He grew up in the small Cajun town of Rayne in south Louisiana. He was the first person in his family to attend college, graduating from Yale University, where he studied history, particularly the history of the American south.
Best way to contact him is email: joshua_benton@harvard.edu for work stuff, jbenton@toast.net for non-work stuff.
He speaks regularly about journalism issues, at conferences, at universities, and on the occasional street corner. Get in touch if that interests you.
Interests include: Cajun culture, the indie rock of his youth, certain Graham Greene entertainments, South American charismatic megafauna, the vagaries of the .epub format, cities that were once the most populous in the world, coding, typography, Twitter APIs, the New Orleans Saints, American racism, disruptive innovation, 1980s Jason Bateman sitcoms, Ty Lawson, the Darien Gap, tropicalismo, 1970s militant leftist movements, Canadian politics, and boiled crawfish.
All his Nieman Lab pieces — 1,405 at current count — are here. You can find all his old newspaper stories over here. He used to maintain a blog; its remains are here.
He tweets. Over here.
He sometimes tweets in French, poorly, for practice. Ici.
Need to send him a package or a letter? His work address is 1 Francis Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138.
Have a good one.