Richard Gingras

Last updated

Richard Gingras
Richard Gingras 11-20-2011.jpg
Richard Gingras, 2011
Born
Richard Louis Gingras

(1952-01-17) January 17, 1952 (age 72)
Providence, Rhode Island, United States
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater Boston College
Employer Google
Board member of First Amendment Coalition
International Center for Journalists
World Computer Exchange
SpouseMitzi Trumbo
Children2

Richard Gingras is an American Internet executive and entrepreneur who has focused on emerging digital media since 1979, [1] including efforts at Google, Apple Computer, Salon Media Group and the Public Broadcasting Service. He has been an outspoken proponent for journalistic innovation on the Internet. [2] [3] [4]

Contents

Career

Gingras is currently vice president of news at Google. [5] In May 2018 he warned against building the future of news based on a misunderstanding of the past. [6] In his various roles at Google he has worked on how news is presented on Google search and Google News and also engaged around the world on matters of public policy effecting the open Internet.

Gingras is a founding board member of the Center for News, Technology, and Innovation [7] , a global policy research organization looking to develop a deeper understanding of how enabling policy and enabling technology can impact the evolution of journalism in a digital society. The center's board includes former Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron and Nobel Prize winning journalist Maria Ressa.

He was a key instigator in creating the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) project which is an open-source effort to improve the speed of the World Wide Web and improve advertising user experience. [8] [9] In late 2014, he co-founded the Trust Project [10] [11] with Sally Lehrman of the Markulla Center for Ethics at Santa Clara University. The Trust Project is a global effort of the journalism community to explore how the architecture of journalism can be enhanced to improve the perceived credibility of high-quality journalism.

Until July 2011, Gingras was CEO of Salon Media Group which operates the news site Salon.com and the pioneering virtual community The WELL. He has had a long association with Salon having assembled its initial seed financing in 1995. During 2007 and 2008, he served as a strategic advisor to the executive team at Google focusing on strategies relating to the evolution of news and television.

In 2002, he co-founded Goodmail Systems and served as its CEO and chairman. Goodmail Systems developed certified email services offered through large email providers including Yahoo and America Online. He also served as interim president of MyPublisher from 2000-2001 and guided the design of a custom hardcover photo book service introduced by Apple Computer as part of iPhoto.

From early 1996 to mid 2000, he led online service efforts at Excite@Home as Senior Vice President and General Manager of the company's consumer-focused product division, Excite Studios which included the Excite search engine.

In January 1996, he joined the early consumer broadband network @Home Network, as vice president of programming and editor-in-chief where he was responsible for the launch of @Home's broadband-enabled online portal. [12] @Home was founded by the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins in partnership with major US cable companies to offer high-speed Internet access. In mid 2000 @Home merged with Excite and Gingras became head of both the Excite and @Home portals.

At Apple Computer in the early 1990s he led the development of the online service eWorld. A pre-Web online service, eWorld was considered innovative for its time, but it was expensive and failed to attract a high number of subscribers. The service was only available on the Macintosh, though a PC version had been planned.

Gingras's work in interactive digital media began In 1979, when he produced one of the first interactive online news magazines which was delivered to several hundred test households using interactive television technology known as broadcast teletext. He led the effort for the PBS service (KCET in Los Angeles) which also included service components for use in schools. [13]

From 1987 to 1992, he was the founder and president of MediaWorks, an Apple-funded startup that developed early news-agenting and executive support software for Fortune 500 corporations. [14]

From 1983 to 1986, he assembled and managed a network of television stations in the top fifty US markets to provide sideband data distribution for a news and advertising service, Silent Radio, which was presented on electronic displays in retail locations.

Boards and honors

Gingras serves on the boards of the First Amendment Coalition, the International Center for Journalists and the World Computer Exchange

In the fall of 2012, he was recognized by Louisiana State University with the Manship Prize [15] for contributions to the evolution of digital media. In May 2013, he gave the commencement speech at West Virginia University for the Reed School of Journalism. [16]

In 2013, he was a subject of the digital media oral history project [1] produced by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. In the fall of 2015, he gave the commencement address at the Manship School of Communications at Louisiana State University. [17]

Personal life

In February 2003, he launched a satirical website called the Total Information Awareness Gift Shop in response to the disclosure of a secret surveillance project managed by John Poindexter within the US Defense Department. According to Gingras all revenue from sales have been contributed to the American Civil Liberties Union ACLU. [18] [19]

Upon giving a commencement speech [16] at West Virginia University he was introduced as “Google's own 'burning man'”. This is an apparent reference to the complex fires Gingras is known to build on the northern California coast. [20] Gingras gave a talk about the fires at a Newsfoo Unconference in November 2013. [21]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">AOL</span> American internet portal

AOL is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City, and a brand marketed by Yahoo! Inc.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digital media</span> Any media that are encoded in machine-readable formats

In mass communication, digital media is any communication media that operates in conjunction with various encoded machine-readable data formats. Digital content can be created, viewed, distributed, modified, listened to, and preserved on a digital electronic device, including digital data storage media and digital broadcasting. Digital is defined as any data represented by a series of digits, and media refers to methods of broadcasting or communicating this information. Together, digital media refers to mediums of digitized information broadcast through a screen and/or a speaker. This also includes text, audio, video, and graphics that are transmitted over the internet for viewing or listening to on the internet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eric Schmidt</span> American businessman and software engineer (born 1955)

Eric Emerson Schmidt is an American businessman and former Computer Engineer who served as the CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011 and as the company's executive chairman from 2011 to 2015. He also served as the executive chairman of parent company Alphabet Inc. from 2015 to 2017, and Technical Advisor at Alphabet from 2017 to 2020. In October 2024, he was 52nd richest according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index with an estimated net worth of US$33.8 billion.

<i>Salon.com</i> American progressive news and opinion website

Salon is an American politically progressive and liberal news and opinion website created in 1995. It publishes articles on U.S. politics, culture, and current events.

eWorld Former Apple service

eWorld was an online service operated by Apple Inc. between June 1994 and March 1996. The services included email, news, software installs and a bulletin board system. Users of eWorld were often referred to as "ePeople."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Grambling State University</span> Public university in Grambling, Louisiana, U.S.

Grambling State University is a public historically black university in Grambling, Louisiana. Grambling State is home of the Eddie G. Robinson Museum and is listed on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail. Grambling State is a member-school of the University of Louisiana System and Thurgood Marshall College Fund.

<i>Ars Technica</i> Technology news website owned by Condé Nast

Ars Technica is a website covering news and opinions in technology, science, politics, and society, created by Ken Fisher and Jon Stokes in 1998. It publishes news, reviews, and guides on issues such as computer hardware and software, science, technology policy, and video games.

Media ethics is the subdivision dealing with the specific ethical principles and standards of media, including broadcast media, film, theatre, the arts, print media and the internet. The field covers many varied and highly controversial topics, ranging from war journalism to Benetton ad campaigns.

Krishna Bharat is an Indian research scientist at Google Inc. He was formerly a founding adviser for Grokstyle Inc. a visual search company and Laserlike Inc., an interest search engine startup based on Machine Learning.

EPIC 2014 is a Flash movie released in November 2004 by Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson with original music by Aaron McLeran. It was based on a presentation they gave at the Poynter Institute in the spring of that year. The movie is 8 minutes long and is licensed under a Creative Commons non-commercial license.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Unconference</span> Participant-driven meeting

An unconference is a participant-driven meeting. The term "unconference" has been applied, or self-applied, to a wide range of gatherings that try to avoid hierarchical aspects of a conventional conference, such as sponsored presentations and top-down organization.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Newton Lee</span> American computer scientist

Newton Lee is a computer scientist who is an author and administrator in the field of education and technology commercialization. He is known for his total information awareness book series.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Online newspaper</span> Newspaper in digital format

An online newspaper is the online version of a newspaper, either as a stand-alone publication or as the online version of a printed periodical.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digital journalism</span> Editorial content published via the Internet

Digital journalism, also known as netizen journalism or online journalism, is a contemporary form of journalism where editorial content is distributed via the Internet, as opposed to publishing via print or broadcast. What constitutes digital journalism is debated by scholars; however, the primary product of journalism, which is news and features on current affairs, is presented solely or in combination as text, audio, video, or some interactive forms like storytelling stories or newsgames, and disseminated through digital media technology.

The Online News Association (ONA), founded in 1999, is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization located in Washington D.C., United States. It is the world's largest association of digital journalists, with more than 3,200 members. The founding members first convened in December 1999 in Chicago. The group included journalists from WSJ, Time, MSNBC, and the FT, among other outlets.

<i>Cyber Rights</i> 1998 book about cyberlaw by Mike Godwin

Cyber Rights: Defending Free Speech in the Digital Age is a non-fiction book about cyberlaw, written by free speech lawyer Mike Godwin. It was first published in 1998 by Times Books. It was republished in 2003 as a revised edition by The MIT Press. Godwin graduated from the University of Texas School of Law in 1990 and was the first staff counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Written with a first-person perspective, Cyber Rights offers a background in the legal issues and history pertaining to free speech on the Internet. It documents the author's experiences in defending free speech online, and puts forth the thesis that "the remedy for the abuse of free speech is more speech". Godwin emphasizes that decisions made about the expression of ideas on the Internet affect freedom of speech in other media as well, as granted by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LSU Cox Communications Academic Center for Student-Athletes</span>

The LSU Cox Communications Academic Center for Student-Athletes, on the campus of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is located in the Gym/Armory building. The building opened in 1930 and was completely renovated and reopened in 2002 to house the Academic Center for Student-Athletes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aung Zaw (editor)</span> Burmese journalist, editor

Aung Zaw,, is a Burmese journalist, editor, and founder of major publishing media The Irrawaddy. He was jailed and tortured at the age of 20, then covertly escaped his home country after he began protesting the governments socialist military regime during the 8888 Uprising. His news magazine reported on event later during the Saffron Revolution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Accelerated Mobile Pages</span> Open source fast loading HTML framework

AMP is an open source HTML framework developed by the AMP Open Source Project. It was originally created by Google as a competitor to Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News. AMP is optimized for mobile web browsing and intended to help webpages load faster. AMP pages may be cached by a CDN, such as Cloudflare's AMP caches, which allows pages to be served more quickly.

Jerome Merle Ceppos was an American journalist, news executive, and educator.

References

  1. 1 2 Huey, John; Nisenholtz, Martin (April 1, 2014). "Riptide: An oral history of the epic collision between journalism and digital technology, 1980 to the present". Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. Retrieved April 21, 2014.
  2. ↑ "Google's Gingras: 'The future of journalism can and will be better than its past.'". Poynter Institute . August 15, 2012. Retrieved May 3, 2014.
  3. ↑ Guimareas, Celia (May 6, 2014). "Richard Gingras and the evolution of the ecosystem of the news: 'We need to rethink everything'". Rai News24 . Retrieved May 8, 2014.
  4. ↑ Ingram, Matthew (May 12, 2012). "Google's head of news: Newspapers are the new Yahoo". GigaOm . Retrieved May 2, 2014.
  5. ↑ Skok, David (May 10, 2018). "Google's news chief Richard Gingras: "We need to rethink journalism at every dimension"". Nieman Lab. Retrieved July 25, 2018.
  6. ↑ Gingras, Richard (May 28, 2018). "News Then, News Now: Journalism in a Digital Age". Medium. Retrieved July 25, 2018.
  7. ↑ "Center for News, Technology, and Innovation". Center for News, Technology, and Innovation. Retrieved October 24, 2024.
  8. ↑ Jarvis, Jeff (October 15, 2015). "To a Fast and Distributed Web: AMP HTML". Buzz Machine. Retrieved October 7, 2015.
  9. ↑ "Instant Everywhere". AMP Project. October 7, 2015. Retrieved October 7, 2015.
  10. ↑ Lehrman, Sally (October 16, 2014). "Online Chaos Demands Radical Action by Journalism to Earn Trust". Markkula Center for Ethics. Retrieved October 16, 2014.
  11. ↑ "Trust". Newsgeist Unconference 2014. November 14, 2014. Retrieved November 14, 2014.
  12. ↑ "The @Home Network: Promotional Video". @Home Network. 1998. Retrieved July 25, 2018.
  13. ↑ "KCET Broadcast Teletext Test". YouTube . September 19, 1980. Retrieved July 25, 2018.
  14. ↑ "Executive Workstation: Promotional Video produced by Apple Computer". MediaWorks. April 15, 1989. Retrieved July 25, 2018.
  15. ↑ Louisiana State University Media Center (October 23, 2012). "Google's Gingras Honored with 2012 Manship Prize". Louisiana State University, Manship School of Mass Communications. Retrieved April 13, 2014.
  16. 1 2 West Virginia University (May 18, 2013). "Perley Isaac Reed School of Journalism, 144th Commencement, West Virginia University". West Virginia University . Retrieved April 20, 2014.
  17. ↑ "Manship School of Communications Fall Graduation Commencement Address". Manship School of Communications. December 10, 2015. Retrieved December 10, 2015.
  18. ↑ Gallagher, David (February 10, 2003). "Compressed Data; Electronic Surveillance Spies Perfect Gift". New York Times . Retrieved February 10, 2003.
  19. ↑ "The Total Information Awareness Gift Shop". December 2, 2002. Retrieved November 25, 2013.
  20. ↑ Weisberger, Jason (June 4, 2014). "Driftwood Cairn by Richard Gingras". Boing Boing . Retrieved June 4, 2014.
  21. ↑ "Making Fire". Newsfoo Unconference Ignite Talks. November 25, 2013. Retrieved November 25, 2013.
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.