Sue Gardner

Last updated
Sue Gardner
Sue Gardner 2008 (4x5 cropped).jpg
Gardner in 2008
Born (1967-05-11) May 11, 1967 (age 57)
Barbados [1]
NationalityCanadian
Alma mater Ryerson Polytechnical Institute
Known forFormer executive director, Wikimedia Foundation (2007–2014)
Website Official website OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

Sue Gardner (born May 11, 1967) [2] is a Canadian journalist, not-for-profit executive and business executive. She was the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation from December 2007 until May 2014, [3] and before that was the director of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's website and online news outlets.

Contents

In 2012, Gardner was ranked as the 70th-most powerful woman in the world by Forbes magazine. [4] In 2013, she joined the board of Global Voices. [5] In May 2015, the Tor Project announced that Gardner would be assisting with the development of their long-term organizational strategy. [6] In 2018, she was announced as executive director of The Markup . [7] Gardner left this position in May 2019.

In November 2023, Gardner was appointed chair of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network. [8]

Early life

Gardner was born in Barbados. [1] She grew up in Port Hope, Ontario, Canada, the daughter of an Anglican priest and a school principal. [9] She received a degree in journalism from Ryerson Polytechnical Institute. [9]

Career

Journalism

Gardner began her career on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) radio in 1990 on the program As It Happens , and worked for more than a decade as a producer, reporter and documentary maker for CBC Radio current affairs and for Newsworld International, focusing on pop culture and social issues. [10]

In March 2006, she succeeded Claude Galipeau as senior director of the CBC website and Internet platform, CBC.ca, building its staff from 35 to 160. [11] [12] [13]

Wikimedia

In May 2007, Gardner resigned from CBC, and soon began consulting for the Wikimedia Foundation as a special advisor on operations and governance. [14] In December 2007, she was hired as the foundation's executive director. [15] Over the next two years, she oversaw growth of the staff, adding a fundraising team, and a move of the headquarters from St. Petersburg, Florida, to San Francisco, California. In October 2009, Gardner was named by The Huffington Post as one of ten "media game changers of the year" for the impact on new media of her work for Wikimedia. [16]

One of the issues that Gardner addressed while she was a Wikimedia Foundation executive director was gender bias on Wikipedia. She listed nine reasons why women don't edit Wikipedia, culled from comments by female Wikipedia editors: [17]

  1. A lack of user-friendliness in the editing interface
  2. Not having enough free time
  3. A lack of self-confidence
  4. Aversion to conflict and an unwillingness to participate in lengthy edit wars
  5. Belief that their contributions are too likely to be reverted or deleted
  6. Some find its overall atmosphere misogynistic
  7. Wikipedia culture is sexual in ways they find off-putting
  8. Being addressed as male is off-putting to women whose primary language has grammatical gender
  9. Fewer opportunities than other sites for social relationships and a welcoming tone

On March 27, 2013, Gardner announced she would be leaving the Wikimedia Foundation. She stated that the Wikimedia Foundation was doing well but the Internet was not, and she planned to help in that area going forward. [18] Gardner identified the "turning point" for her decision to move on as her involvement in the 2012 Wikipedia blackout protesting the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act, protests that "started me thinking about the shape the Internet was taking and what role I could play in that." [19]

Gardner in 2013 at Wikimania Sue Gardner during her presentation at Wikimania 2013.jpg
Gardner in 2013 at Wikimania

In 2013, Gardner received an honorary doctorate from Ryerson University, her alma mater. [20] [21]

It was announced on May 1, 2014, that Lila Tretikov would be replacing Gardner, and would take over as executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation on June 1, 2014. [3] [22] [23] [24] [ excessive citations ]

Tor and First Look

Gardner joined The Tor Project, Inc to develop a strategic plan, with support from First Look Media. [25] [26] The Tor Project is a Massachusetts-based research-education nonprofit organization founded by computer scientists Roger Dingledine, Nick Mathewson and five others. The Tor Project is primarily responsible for maintaining software for the Tor anonymity network. [27] First Look Media is an American news organization founded by Pierre Omidyar that was launched in October 2013 as a venue for "original, independent journalism." The organization is incorporated as a tax-exempt charitable entity. [28] [29]

The Markup

In September 2018, Gardner co-founded The Markup with Julia Angwin and Jeff Larson as a continuation of their work at ProPublica . With $20 million of initial funding from Craig Newmark, the site would work to cover news about "Big Tech" and its impact on the public. [7] [30] [31] Initially, Gardner was set to serve as executive director, Angwin as editor-in-chief, and Larson as managing editor, with a launch date of early 2019.

In April 2019, Gardner fired Angwin over creative and managerial differences. [32] Larson was named editor-in-chief. Five of seven journalists on the staff resigned. In a letter to Newmark, Angwin said Gardner wanted to turn The Markup into a "cause" rather than a "publication." Angwin also said Gardner ranked reporters in job interviews according to how negatively they viewed tech companies and suggested using headlines like "Facebook is a dumpster fire." Gardner responded that The Markup's mission had not changed. [33] Gardner and Larson left The Markup the following month, and Angwin was reinstated as the website's editor-in-chief in August 2019. [34]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wikinews</span> Free-content news wiki; project of the Wikimedia Foundation

Wikinews is a free-content news wiki and a project of the Wikimedia Foundation that works through collaborative journalism through user-created content. Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has distinguished Wikinews from Wikipedia by saying, "On Wikinews, each story is to be written as a news story as opposed to an encyclopedia article." Wikinews's neutral point of view policy aims to distinguish it from other citizen journalism efforts such as Indymedia and OhmyNews. In contrast to most Wikimedia Foundation projects, Wikinews allows original work in the form of original reporting and interviews. In contrast to newspapers, Wikinews does not permit op-ed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mike Godwin</span> American attorney and author (born 1956)

Michael Wayne Godwin is an American attorney and author. He was the first staff counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and he created the Internet adage Godwin's law and the notion of an Internet meme. From July 2007 to October 2010, he was general counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation. In March 2011, he was elected to the Open Source Initiative board. Godwin has served as a contributing editor of Reason magazine since 1994. In April 2019, he was elected to the Internet Society board. From 2015 to 2020, he was general counsel and director of innovation policy at the R Street Institute. In August 2020, he and the Blackstone Law Group filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on behalf of the employees of TikTok, and worked there between June 2021 and June 2022. Since October 2022, he has worked as the policy and privacy lead at Anonym, a "privacy-safe advertising" startup.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Erik Möller</span> German journalist and software developer (born 1979)

Erik Möller is a German freelance journalist, software developer, author, and former deputy director of the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), based in San Francisco. Möller additionally works as a web designer and previously managed his own web hosting service, myoo.de. As of 2022, he was VP of Engineering at the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wikimedia Foundation</span> American charitable organization

The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., abbreviated WMF, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, and registered there as a charitable foundation. It is the host of Wikipedia, the seventh most visited website in the world. It also hosts fourteen related open collaboration projects, and supports the development of MediaWiki, the wiki software which underpins them all. The foundation was established in 2003 in St. Petersburg, Florida by Jimmy Wales, as a non-profit way to fund Wikipedia and other wiki projects which had previously been hosted by Bomis, Wales' for-profit company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wikimania</span> Annual conference of the Wikimedia movement

Wikimania is the Wikimedia movement's annual conference, organized by volunteers and hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. Topics of presentations and discussions include Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia, other wikis, open-source software, free knowledge and free content, and social and technical aspects related to these topics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wikipedia community</span> Volunteers who create and maintain Wikipedia

The Wikipedia community, collectively and individually known as Wikipedians, is an online community of volunteers who create and maintain Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. Since August 2012, the word "Wikipedian" has been an Oxford Dictionary entry. Wikipedians may or may not consider themselves part of the Wikimedia movement, a global network of volunteer contributors to Wikipedia and other related projects hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

The Wikimedia Foundation has been involved in several lawsuits, generally regarding the content of Wikipedia. They have won some and lost others. In the United States, the Wikimedia Foundation typically wins defamation lawsuits brought against it due to protections that web platforms receive from laws like Section 230. However in cases among Europe and other countries, courts may rule otherwise. However, the Wikimedia foundation often ignores these orders and countries can not reach among borders to enforce any ruling.

Conflict-of-interest (COI) occurs when editors use Wikipedia to advance the interests of their external roles or relationships. The type of COI editing that compromises Wikipedia the most is paid editing for public relations (PR) purposes. Several policies and guidelines exist to combat conflict of interest editing, including Wikipedia's conflict of interest guideline and the Wikimedia Foundation's paid-contribution disclosure policy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">VisualEditor</span> Rich-text editor for MediaWiki wikis

VisualEditor (VE) is an online rich-text editor for MediaWiki-powered wikis that provides a way to edit pages based on the "what you see is what you get" principle. It was developed by the Wikimedia Foundation in partnership with Fandom. In July 2013, it was enabled by default on several of the largest Wikipedia projects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wiki-PR Wikipedia editing scandal</span> Consulting firm that commercially edited Wikipedia

Wiki-PR was a consulting firm that marketed the ability to edit Wikipedia by "directly edit[ing] your page using our network of established Wikipedia editors and admins".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adrianne Wadewitz</span> American academic and Wikipedian (1977–2014)

Adrianne Wadewitz was an American feminist scholar of 18th-century British literature, Wikipedian, and commenter upon Wikipedia, particularly focusing on gender issues. In April 2014, Wadewitz died from head injuries from a fall while rock climbing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lila Tretikov</span> Russian-American engineer and Wikimedian

Lila Tretikov is a Russian-American engineer and manager.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Knowledge Engine (search engine)</span> Wikimedia search engine project (2015–2016)

Knowledge Engine (KE) was a search engine project initiated in 2015 by the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) to locate and display verifiable and trustworthy information from public-information sources in a way that was less reliant on traditional search engines. It aimed to allow readers to stay on Wikipedia.org and other Wikipedia-related projects when looking for additional information rather than turning to proprietary search engines. Its goal was to protect user privacy, to be open and transparent about how its information originates, and to allow access to related metadata.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Katherine Maher</span> American media executive (born 1983)

Katherine Roberts Maher is an American businesswoman. She is the chief executive officer (CEO) and president of National Public Radio (NPR) since March 2024. Prior to NPR, she was the CEO of Web Summit and chair of the board of directors at the Signal Foundation. She transitioned to the role of non-executive chairperson at Web Summit in March 2024. She is a former chief executive officer and executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Commercial use of Wikimedia projects refers to any business or product selling content from Wikipedia or Wikimedia projects which it freely took. Wikimedia projects use free and open copyright licenses which means that anyone may share the information for any purpose.

The Markup is an American nonprofit news publication focused on the impact of technology on society. Founded in 2018 with the goal of advancing data-driven journalism, the publication launched in February 2020. Nabiha Syed is the current chief executive officer and Sisi Wei is the editor-in-chief.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Julia Angwin</span> American investigative journalist

Julia Angwin is an American investigative journalist, author, and entrepreneur. She co-founded and was editor-in-chief of The Markup, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the impact of technology on society. She was a staff reporter at the New York bureau of The Wall Street Journal from 2000 to 2013, during which time she was on a team that won the Pulitzer Prize in journalism. She worked as a senior reporter at ProPublica from 2014 to April 2018, during which time she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lisa Seitz-Gruwell</span> American charity fundraising executive

Lisa Seitz-Gruwell is an American charity fundraising executive. She is President of the Wikimedia Endowment, and Chief Advancement Officer and Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the Wikimedia Foundation. Previously she was Chief Operating Officer for Skyline Public Works, Director of Communications and Public Affairs with the San Francisco Recreation & Parks Department and a San Francisco civil service commissioner. Earlier she was a political media consultant.

References

  1. 1 2 "US Power Women Born Abroad". Forbes . Archived from the original on February 10, 2015. Retrieved 10 February 2015.
  2. ↑ "Sue Gardner's Blog". 17 July 2010. Archived from the original on 11 July 2012. Retrieved February 25, 2012.
  3. 1 2 Vreede, Jan-Bart de (May 2014). "Announcing our new Executive Director: Lila Tretikov". Wikimedia blog. Archived from the original on 1 May 2014. Retrieved 5 May 2014.
  4. ↑ The World's 100 Most Powerful Women, Sue Gardner Archived 2012-12-12 at the Wayback Machine . Forbes. Accessed August 23, 2012.
  5. ↑ Ivan, Sigal (16 January 2013). "Wikimedia's Sue Gardner Joins Global Voices Board". Global Voices Online. Archived from the original on 30 January 2016. Retrieved 17 October 2014.
  6. ↑ arma. "Sue Gardner and the Tor strategy project". Tor Project Blogs. Archived from the original on 9 May 2015. Retrieved 11 May 2015.
  7. 1 2 Bowles, Nellie (September 23, 2018). "News Site to Investigate Big Tech, Helped by Craigslist Founder". The New York Times. Archived from the original on September 24, 2018. Retrieved September 23, 2018– via San Francisco Chronicle.
  8. ↑ "THE CANADIAN ANTI-HATE NETWORK HAS A NEW CHAIR". Canadian Anti-Hate Network. December 24, 2023. Archived from the original on November 11, 2023. Retrieved November 3, 2023.
  9. 1 2 Stren, Olivia (July 26, 2010). "Wikipedians do it for love. Really". Globe and Mail. Archived from the original on July 30, 2010.
  10. ↑ From the Lavin Agency's profile Archived 2014-02-03 at the Wayback Machine .
  11. ↑ Perkins, Tara (July 19, 2006). "CBC clicks online by Tara Perkins". Friends of Canadian Broadcasting. Toronto Star. Archived from the original on October 4, 2006. Retrieved February 7, 2016.
  12. ↑ Ouimet. "Does CBC.ca run itself?". The Tea Makers. Archived from the original on May 31, 2015. Retrieved February 7, 2016.
  13. ↑ Martin, Cynthia (March 19, 2017). "Sue Gardner: 'Hubris is the engine of Silicon Valley'". Globe and Mail. Archived from the original on May 22, 2017. Retrieved March 19, 2017.
  14. ↑ Wikimedia Foundation press release, June 27, 2007.
  15. ↑ "Sue Gardner Hired as Executive Director" Archived 2010-12-27 at the Wayback Machine , Wikimedia Foundation press release. December 3, 2007
  16. ↑ From the series of slides for the 10 Game Changers: Who Is The Ultimate Game Changer In Media? – Sue Gardner Archived 2016-08-11 at the Wayback Machine . HuffPost. March 18, 2010
  17. ↑ Gardner, Sue (19 February 2011). "Nine Reasons Why Women Don't Edit Wikipedia, In Their Own Words". suegardner.org (blog). Archived from the original on 18 July 2015. Retrieved 20 August 2017.
  18. ↑ "Please read: an announcement from Wikimedia Foundation ED Sue Gardner « Wikimedia blog". 27 March 2013. Archived from the original on 2013-03-30. Retrieved 2013-03-27.
  19. ↑ Chozick, Amy (March 28, 2013). "Leader of Foundation Behind Wikipedia to Step Down". The New York Times. Archived from the original on September 21, 2013. Retrieved May 30, 2013.
  20. ↑ "Ken Dryden, Deepa Mehta among honorary doctorate recipients at convocation". Ryerson Today. Ryerson University. Archived from the original on November 27, 2013. Retrieved May 1, 2013.
  21. ↑ "Honorary Doctorates - Convocation - Ryerson University". Archived from the original on February 2, 2008. Retrieved December 3, 2014.
  22. ↑ Please welcome Lila Tretikov, the Wikimedia Foundation's new ED Archived 2014-08-08 at the Wayback Machine Jan-Bart de Vreede, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, 1 May 2014.
  23. ↑ Elder, Jeff (May 2014). "Wikipedia's New Chief: From Soviet Union to World's Sixth-Largest Site". The Wall Street Journal . Archived from the original on 15 July 2018. Retrieved 5 May 2014.
  24. ↑ Cohen, Noam (2 May 2014). "Open-Source Software Specialist Selected as Executive Director of Wikipedia". The New York Times . Archived from the original on 15 July 2018. Retrieved 5 May 2014.
  25. ↑ Sue Gardner and the Tor strategy project - The Tor Project, 6 May 2015
  26. ↑ Why I'm working with Tor and First Look Archived 2015-05-28 at the Wayback Machine - Sue Gardner's Blog, 20 May 2015
  27. ↑ "Tor Project: Core People". Tor Project. Archived from the original on 18 January 2011. Retrieved 17 July 2008.
  28. ↑ "About - First Look Media". FirstLook.org. First Look Media. 2014. Archived from the original on 25 March 2014. Retrieved 25 March 2014.
  29. ↑ Jay Rosen (19 December 2013). "A First Look at NewCo's structure". Pressthink.org. Archived from the original on 8 February 2014. Retrieved 20 August 2017.
  30. ↑ Schmidt, Christine (September 24, 2018). "Watch out, algorithms: Julia Angwin and Jeff Larson unveil The Markup, their plan for investigating tech's societal impacts". Nieman Journalism Lab (NiemanLab) Nieman Foundation for Journalism Harvard University . Cambridge, Mass. Archived from the original on September 24, 2018. Retrieved September 24, 2018. Journalists in every field need to have more skills to investigate those types of decision-making that are embedded in technology.
  31. ↑ Bowles, Nellie (September 23, 2018). "News Site to Investigate Big Tech, Helped by Craigslist Founder". The New York Times . Archived from the original on September 23, 2018. Retrieved September 23, 2018.
  32. ↑ "The Markup ousts editor in chief Julia Angwin, prompting resignations". Columbia Journalism Review. Archived from the original on 2019-04-24. Retrieved 2019-04-25.
  33. ↑ "Julia Angwin Is Out as Editor of New Tech Watchdog Site The Markup". The Markup. Retrieved 2019-02-01.
  34. ↑ Tracy, Marc (6 August 2019). "The Markup, a Tech News Site, Reinstalls Its Fired Editor as Part of a Fresh Start". The New York Times. Retrieved 29 August 2019.
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.