Charles Apple

Here’s wishing the happiest of VizEds birthdays to famed news technology guru Howard Finberg.

Howard is Director of Interactive Learning at the Poynter Institute, where he runs NewsUniversity.

Richard Curtis, managing editor of USA Today visuals, writes:

Howard and I are always kidding each other about being the “greybeards” of SND. When we sit together at SND functions, we refer to the table as the greybeards table. He’s been prematurely grey-headed, like, forever.

He’s a great guy, good sense of humor, very astute journalist.

Howard began his career as an editor at the San Francisco Examiner. His career eventually took him to The San Francisco Chronicle, The San Jose Mercury News, The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune.

Howard established the Tribune’s graphics desk, one of the first in the country. He also founded the nation’s first syndicated newspaper graphics service. “By SNAIL MAIL!,” Richard points out.

He was the founding president of the Society for News Design Foundation. That was in 1982, I believe.

In 1987, Howard became AME for Sunday, Features, Visuals and Technology at The Arizona Republic. He revamped the paper’s technological infrastructure and directed the Republic’s first online efforts in 1995.

Since then, Howard created a consulting firm, wrote a weekly column for Editor & Publisher magazine and served as a senior fellow for the American Press Institute. He moved to Poynter in 2002 as a presidential scholar and joined full-time in 2003. He’s regarded as one of the world’s foremost experts on the impact of new technology on journalism.

Howard shares a birthday with actors Anna Paquin, Michael Richards and Lynda Carter, musician Jennifer Lopez and San Francisco Giant Barry Bonds.

He also shares a birthday with Poynter’s ethics guru, Bob Steele. Talk about a small world.

Best wishes, Howard! And thanks for all you’ve done for visual journalism.

Find NewsUniversity here:
http://www.newsu.org/

Find Howard’s Digital Futurist site here:
http://www.digitalfuturist.com/

Find Howard’s writings for Poynter here:
http://www.poynter.org/search/results_article.asp?cdl_userID=1354&btn_submit=true

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 24th, 2007 at 5:23 am and is filed under Happy birthday, News design, VizEds Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.