Peter Rinearson

Last updated
Peter Rinearson
BornApril 8, 1954
Seattle, Washington
Occupations
  • Journalist
  • author
  • entrepreneur
  • executive
Notable credit(s)"Making It Fly," "Babynamer.com," The Road Ahead

Peter Mark Rinearson (born April 8, 1954, Seattle [1] ) is an American journalist, author, entrepreneur and executive. He is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a former vice president of Microsoft. Much of his career has focused on enhancing tools for storytelling, from Microsoft Word to web publishing to social media. [2] [3]

Contents

Journalism career

Rinearson attended the University of Washington, from which he graduated with a bachelor's degree in communications. During college Rinearson was managing editor of the University of Washington Daily, editor of the Sammamish Valley News (the now-defunct weekly newspaper in Redmond, Washington), and winner of the National Championship of the William Randolph Hearst Journalism Awards program. [3] [4]

Rinearson spent his 20s writing for the Seattle Times , for which he covered politics, Boeing, and Asia. [3] [5] In 1984, Rinearson won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for a series he wrote on Boeing's development of the 757. Two years after winning the Pulitzer, he left the Times to write books. [6]

The Pulitzer Prize Board announced a new category of "Explanatory Reporting" in November 1984, citing Rinearson's series of explanatory articles that seven months earlier had won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing. The series, "Making It Fly," was a 29,000-word account of the development of the Boeing 757 jetliner. It had been entered in the National Reporting category, but judges moved it to Feature Writing to award it a prize. [6] In the aftermath, the Pulitzer Prize Board said it was creating the new category in part because of the ambiguity about where explanatory accounts such as "Making It Fly" should be recognized.

Rinearson was subsequently a national semifinalist for NASA's Journalist in Space project, cancelled in the wake of the Space Shuttle Challenger tragedy. [1] [3]

From 1995 to 1999, Rinearson assisted Bill Gates in writing a newspaper column carried by the New York Times Syndicate. [7]

Awards and honors

In addition to winning the Pulitzer Prize, Rinearson's "Making It Fly" won the ASNE Distinguished Writing Award for business writing, from the American Society of News Editors. [8] Excerpts have been included in several books on journalism, including America's Best Newspaper Writing. [9]

Rinearson was also the recipient of the Lowell Thomas Prize from the American Society of Travel Writers for his consumer affairs journalism regarding air travel (he won first place in the "non-trip reporting" category), [10] the John Hancock Award for Excellence in Business and Financial Journalism, for his coverage of Japan, and the Special Paul Myher Award in the Penney-Missouri Journalism Awards from the University of Missouri School of Journalism (now known as the Missouri Lifestyle Journalism Awards). [3] [11]

He has served as a member of the national advisory board of the Poynter Institute, which provides continuing education for working journalists. [3]

Rinearson is inventor on eight issued U.S. patents, granted between 2006 and 2017. [2] [12]

Books authored

Rinearson co-wrote The Road Ahead with Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold. It was Gates' first book and spent seven weeks at the top of The New York Times best-seller list. [3]

Previously in the 1980s, Rinearson wrote how-to books on using Microsoft Word in MS-DOS, for Microsoft Press. [13] Of one of these, New York Times reviewer Erik Sandberg-Diment wrote: "Word owners should not be without Rinearson's book, even if they read no more than a tenth of it." [14] According to Rinearson's official bio at his company, he "created the first software disk to accompany a Microsoft Press book, which presented a system of styles and style sheets that Microsoft later commissioned him to revise for Word for Windows. This work laid the foundation for the formatting styles built into Word today." [3]

In recent years, Rinearson has been researching and writing an ambitious "history of the Seattle area, focusing on its entrepreneurialism." [15] [16]

Entrepreneur

In 1988, Rinearson founded Alki Software, which created third-party products for Microsoft Word. [3] Alki licensed to Microsoft the toolbar and several other features of Microsoft Word version 5.1 for the Macintosh, and for more than a decade sold the Foreign Proofing Tool kits that allowed people to work with Word in multiple languages. [17]

In 1995, Rinearson co-founded a nine-person digital design company, Raster Ranch, that focused on 3D modeling for television, games, and the Web. [18]

Two years later, Rinearson spun off from Alki a subsidiary, Intype, which created Babynamer.com, which had 300,000 monthly visitors. [19] But the primary initiative of Intype was to build and market a Web-publishing platform that would enable a web site to offer a blend of professional and community created content. (This was before the word "blog" existed.) Rinearson believed that the economic principle called network effects would catapult to dominance publishers who owned the primary places where people congregated online to create and consume their own content. Intype was an attempt to get the newspaper industry, where Rinearson had started his career, to embrace community content before Web startups gained a strong foothold. [17] [19] The Newspaper Association of America used Intype's technology, [20] but when no newspapers followed suit Rinearson sold Intype to Oxygen Media in 1999.

Executive

With the sale of his company, Rinearson became a senior vice-president at the Oxygen television network, where he led software development and program management teams in New York, San Francisco, and Seattle. [2]

He moved from Oxygen to Microsoft, where as a corporate vice president he was on the five-person senior leadership team of the Information Worker business unit, which published Microsoft Office and other productivity software. His teams developed Office-based software solutions for industry partners, and incubated potential products (including the forerunner of desktop search). Rinearson supervised Microsoft's corporate intranet, libraries, archive, and Center for Information Work. He also had certain marketing responsibilities. [2]

After Microsoft, Rinearson returned to his entrepreneurial roots, where he undertook projects that converged into Intersect.com, a service he founded that launched in December, 2010 and closed in 2013. [21] Intersect was a social network with a strong privacy model that let photos and other stories be posted or discovered at specific times and places. [22] [23] [24] So, for example, photos taken at a school event by various parents (who might be strangers to each other) could be found and shared by looking at the time and place of the event. [25] Postings also could be viewed and discovered on intersecting timelines, called storylines. [26] This was a year before Facebook introduced its timelines, and when Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook's forthcoming feature in 2011, Rinearson downplayed its importance. “As best we can tell, Facebook offers you only one timeline, it doesn’t appear to let you borrow content from other people, it doesn’t have Intersect’s interesting and entertaining ways of exploring time and place, and it doesn’t let you discover lives and stories that intersect with yours,” he said. [27] Intersect was a success technologically but, despite Rinearson's initial confidence, could not gain traction against Facebook. [2]

Rinearson was a co-executive producer of Wakefield, a Robin Swicord movie (based on a short story by E.L. Doctorow) starring Bryan Cranston and Jennifer Garner. It was released on May 19, 2017. [28]

In 2018 and 2019, Rinearson was a member of the advisory board of Athira Pharma, a Seattle company developing a potential therapy for chronic, progressive neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. The drug was in clinical trials in the United States and France. [2]

Rinearson is married to Jill Chan Rinearson, whose father, former King County Superior Court Judge Warren Chan, was the first Chinese American to occupy a judicial post in the United States. [29] The couple has two grown children.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pulitzer Prize</span> Awards for American journalism and arts

The Pulitzer Prizes are 23 annual awards given by Columbia University in New York for achievements in the United States in "journalism, arts and letters." They were established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fortune as a newspaper publisher.

<i>The Road Ahead</i> (Gates book) 1995 book by Bill Gates

The Road Ahead is a book written by Bill Gates, co-founder and former CEO of Microsoft; Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft executive; and former Microsoft vice president Peter Rinearson. Published in November 1995, then substantially revised about a year later, The Road Ahead summarized the implications of the personal computing revolution and described a future profoundly changed by the arrival of a global information superhighway.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting</span> American journalism award

The Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting has been presented since 1998, for a distinguished example of explanatory reporting that illuminates a significant and complex subject, demonstrating mastery of the subject, lucid writing and clear presentation. From 1985 to 1997, it was known as the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing</span> American journalism award

The Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing is one of the fourteen American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Journalism. It has been awarded since 1979 for a distinguished example of feature writing giving prime consideration to high literary quality and originality.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Simonyi</span> Hungarian-American software architect

Charles Simonyi is a Hungarian-American software architect.

<i>Tampa Bay Times</i> American daily newspaper

The Tampa Bay Times, called the St. Petersburg Times until 2011, is an American newspaper published in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States. It is published by the Times Publishing Company, which is owned by The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a nonprofit journalism school directly adjacent to the University of South Florida St. Petersburg campus.

The Poynter Institute for Media Studies is a non-profit journalism school and research organization in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States. The school is the owner of the Tampa Bay Times newspaper and the International Fact-Checking Network. It also operates PolitiFact.

James V. Grimaldi is an American journalist who serves as executive editor of the National Catholic Reporter. He was previously an investigative reporter and senior writer with the Wall Street Journal. He has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize three times, for investigative reporting in 1996 with the staff of the Orange County Register, in 2006 for his work on the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal while working for The Washington Post, and in 2023 with the staff of the Wall Street Journal for its capital assets series.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1984 Pulitzer Prize</span> Pulitzer prize of year 1984

The Pulitzer Prize is awarded to the best in journalism and the arts for pieces of exceptional quality. In 1984, the recipients were:

The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting is an American news media organization established in 2006 that sponsors independent reporting on global issues that other media outlets are less willing or able to undertake on their own. The center's goal is to raise the standard of coverage of international systemic crises and to do so in a way that engages both the broad public and government policy-makers. The organization is based in Washington, D.C.

Anne Hull is an American journalist and author. She was a national reporter at The Washington Post for nearly two decades. In 2008, the Post was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, citing the work of Hull, reporter Dana Priest and photographer Michel du Cille for "exposing mistreatment of wounded veterans at Walter Reed Hospital, evoking a national outcry and producing reforms by federal officials".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alex Tizon</span> American journalist

Tomas Alexander Asuncion Tizon was a Filipino-American author and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. His book Big Little Man, a memoir and cultural history, explores themes related to race, masculinity, and personal identity. Tizon taught at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication. His final story, titled "My Family's Slave", was published as the cover story of the June 2017 issue of The Atlantic after his death, sparking significant debate.

Walter Robert Mears was an American journalist, author, and educator. Mears worked for the Associated Press (AP) from 1956 until his retirement in 2001. In 1977, he won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for his coverage of the 1976 United States presidential election. After retirement, he taught journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at Duke University.

i4i is an independent software company specializing in the delivery of XML / SGML document processing software in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, founded by Michel Vulpe in 1993.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Angie Drobnic Holan</span>

Angie Drobnic Holan is the director of the International Fact-Checking Network and editor for PolitiFact and was part of the Pulitzer Prize winning team of journalists noted for their fact-checking of the 2008 presidential elections in the United States.

The Marshall Project is a nonprofit news organization that seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about inequities within the U.S. criminal justice system. The Marshall Project has been described as an advocacy group by some, and works to impact the system through journalism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wesley Lowery</span> American journalist

Wesley Lowery is an American journalist who has worked at both CBS News and The Washington Post. He was a lead on the Post's "Fatal Force" project that won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2016 as well as the author of They Can't Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America's Racial Justice Movement. In 2017, he became a CNN political contributor and in 2020 was announced as a correspondent for 60 in 6, a short-form spinoff of 60 Minutes for Quibi. Lowery is a former Fellow at Georgetown University's Institute of Politics and Public Service.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Henry Hansen</span> American statistician (born 1964)

Mark Henry Hansen is an American statistician, professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and Director of the David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute for Media Innovation. His special interest is the intersection of data, art and technology. He adopts an interdisciplinary approach to data science, drawing on various branches of applied mathematics, information theory and new media arts. Within the field of journalism, Hansen has promoted computational literacy for journalists.

The Missouri Lifestyle Journalism Awards were first awarded in 1960 as the Penney-Missouri Awards to recognize women's pages that covered topics other than society, club, and fashion news, and that also covered such topics as lifestyle and consumer affairs. The Penney-Missouri Awards were often described as the "Pulitzer Prize of feature writing". They were the only nationwide recognition specifically for women's page journalists, at a time when few women had other opportunities to write or edit for newspapers. The annual awards appear to have been last given in 2008.

Dominic Gates is an Irish-American aerospace journalist for The Seattle Times, former math teacher, and Pulitzer Prize winner. He has been assigned to cover Boeing for The Times since 2003. Gates was a co-recipient of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting alongside Steve Miletich, Mike Baker, and Lewis Kamb for their coverage of the Boeing 737 MAX crashes and investigations.

References

  1. 1 2 Space Facts profile of astronaut candidate Peter Rinearson.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Athira Pharma profile of Advisory Board member Peter Rinearson.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Alki Software profile of founder Peter Rinearson.
  4. ↑ Hearst Journalism Awards Program, 1978 championship winners.
  5. ↑ "Teaching Magazine and Feature Writing by Example: Using Pulitzer Prize-Winning Stories in the Classroom," paper by Edward Jay Friedlander, University of South Florida, 2004.
  6. 1 2 Garlock, David (2003). Pulitzer Prize Feature Stories: America's Best Writing, 1978-2003. Ames, Iowa: Iowa State Press. pp. 105–6. ISBN   0-8138-2545-8.
  7. ↑ "Brilliant, Sure, But Can He Write?" Seattle Times article by Jean Godden on Bill Gates writing a column for the New York Times Syndicate. January 6, 1995.
  8. ↑ ASNE Distinguished Writing Awards Winners.
  9. ↑ ISBN   978-0-312-44367-2 or for book details.
  10. ↑ May 26, 1985 Chicago Tribune article on the first winners of the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Awards.
  11. ↑ "Penney-Missouri Journalism Awards, 1960-1993" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-10-22. Retrieved 2013-01-18.
  12. ↑ https://patents.justia.com/inventor/peter-rinearson Peter Rinearson's granted patents: U.S. patent 9,703,847, “Systems and methods for identifying intersections using content metadata,” granted July 11, 2017; U.S. patent 9,588,970, “Systems and methods for collaborative storytelling in a virtual space,” granted March 7, 2017; U.S. patent 9,152,734, “Systems and methods for identifying intersections using content metadata,” granted October 6, 2015; U.S. patent 8,566,348, “Systems and methods for collaborative storytelling in a virtual space,” granted October 22, 2013; U.S. patent 8,170,979, “Systems and methods for calibrating user ratings,” granted May 1, 2012; U.S. patent 7,953,736,” Relevancy rating of tags,” granted May 31, 2011; U.S. patent 7,577,906,” Method and system for document assembly,” granted August 18, 2009, and U.S. patent 7,143,084, “Periodic personalized media system, and associated method,” granted November 28, 2006.
  13. ↑ Microsoft Taps Two New Information Worker VPs.
  14. ↑ "Personal Computers: Explaining the Explainers," a review of computer books in the New York Times, January 6, 1987.
  15. ↑ Rinearson, Peter (November 17, 2015). "De-composition — Smithsonian sculpture by John Grade made to rot, Seattle Times" (Includes note about the author.). Retrieved July 8, 2015.
  16. ↑ Rinearson, Peter (June 23, 2016). "Vashon tries to keep it real despite an influx of people and money, Seattle Times". July 8, 2016 (Includes brief author bio.).
  17. 1 2 "Journalism That Matters" interview with Peter Rinearson, March 2009.
  18. ↑ History of Alki Software.
  19. 1 2 Editor & Publisher column by Steve Outing, May 4, 1998.
  20. ↑ "Self-publishing tools will open doors for community groups," a report by Marion J. Love of "The Cole Papers," Sept. 1998.
  21. ↑ Biographies of members of the Intersect team, including that of CEO Peter Rinearson.
  22. ↑ https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2010/intersect-provides-new-way-to-share-life-stories-based-on-time-place-2/ "Intersect Provides New Way to Share Life Stories Based on Time & Place," Poynter.org, September 8, 2010.
  23. ↑ https://niemanreports.org/articles/words-and-visuals-intersect-to-create-community/ "Words and Visuals Intersect to Create Community,” Nieman Reports, Summer 2011.
  24. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/gXjSETQK1Bw “What is Intersect?” is a short video the company used to explain its service.
  25. ↑ https://youtube.com/BrmhWPPr_U “Intersect -- Share A Story” is a short instructional video produced by Intersect.
  26. ↑ https://youtube.com/m3rf_0uMvd8 “Intersect in 2 Minutes” is an overview of Intersect animated by David Horsey, a Pulitzer Prize winning political cartoonist.
  27. ↑ https://www.geekwire.com/2011/intersect-ceo-facebook-timeline-falls-short/) Facebook timeline falls short, Geekwire.
  28. ↑ "Peter Rinearson". IMDb .
  29. ↑ "Former King County Superior Court Judge Warren Chan dies," Seattle Times article by Sara Jean Green. June 25, 2015.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.