ABOUT

Like many of my colleagues in the consumer electronics media, I was fortunate to turn my interest in audio and home theater into a career working for magazines with passionate hobbyist readers who waited anxiously each month for our issues to arrive. I am among the many CE journalists who got their start with an introduction to Harry Pearson Jr., founder and editor/publisher of the High End audio journal The Absolute Sound. Fortunately for my development, Pearson was the real deal: prior to launching TAS he was an award-winning environmental reporter who’d been recruited to the Long Island daily Newsday by then-editor Bill Moyers, who found him at the Pine Bluff, AR Commercial after Harry authored a series that helped save the wild Buffalo River from being dammed by the Army Corp of Engineers. He eventually turned his love of music—and disaffection with the mainstream audiophile press—into a small magazine that became his full-time work. I was coming off a couple of years studying electronics at community college in the early 1980s when we met through a mutual friend, and I joined the staff as an editorial assistant. Working alongside HP garnered two benefits that served me well through the years: well-trained ears from listening to a steady diet of state-of-the-art hifi, and a love of journalism and language borne from reading manuscripts and debating just the right word for a given situation. Pearson became a lifelong friend and mentor until his death in 2014, and much of the investigative work I remain most proud of was done for TAS or its sister publication The Perfect Vision.

After some diversions into electronics work in the mid ‘80s, I walked away from a union technician job at CBS News to become a full-time journalist, first using the company’s education benefit to take journalism classes at Columbia University and prove my writing skills. Despite no reporting experience or journalism degree (which I eventually earned from Rutgers 10 years later), I leveraged the TAS credential to find an entry-level reporting post at a firm that produced electronics trade show dailies. That led to recruitment by Bob Ankosko, another mentor and friend to whom I owe immense gratitude, to other CE trade books and eventually the consumer-facing enthusiast press at Hachette Filipacchi Magazines. Ankosko went on to become the first editor-in-chief of Sound & Vision, the magazine that was formed in 1999 from the melding of the old Stereo Review (founded 1958) and Video magazines. Concurrent with that launch, and despite my editorial background, I was asked by the publisher of Hachette’s Consumer Electronics Group to be the Group’s first marketing director, which led to a few years learning and enjoying the publishing side of the business. I eventually made my way back to S&V editorial as the executive editor running the magazine’s product test program, and, after a stint running my own A/V installation business during the economic crisis of 2008-2009, I transitioned into EIC roles at Home Theater and then Sound & Vision when those titles merged in 2013. Now retired from full-time work, I’m back to doing freelance journalism where I am using my background, expository writing skills, and investigative chops to explore and explain today’s ever-changing high-tech landscape. My writing samples, along with a background summary on each piece, can be viewed here.

Some career highlights:

40+ Year Consumer Electronics Industry Veteran

• • 30+ years consumer electronics editorial
    • Editor-in-Chief, Sound & Vision, Home Theater, Home Theater Buyer’s Guide, Digital Home Entertainment, Audio/Video Shopper, ProjectorCentral.com
    • Executive Editor, Sound & Vision
    • Senior Editor, Stereo Review, Home Theater, TWICE
    • Freelance: The New York Times, Popular Mechanics, The Absolute Sound, The Perfect Vision, Sound & Vision, CEDIACrosspoint.com

• • 8 years marketing
    • Group Marketing Director, Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S. (Sound & Vision, Audio, Premiere, Mobile Entertainment, S&V Buyer’s Guide)
    • Marketing Director, Electronics Design Group, Piscataway, NJ

• • CEDIA-Certified Advanced Level Install Technician
    • Electronics Design Group, Piscataway, NJ
    • Independent Custom Installer (Hangtime Home Theater & Automation)

• • Video production
    • Screenwriter & Co-Producer, Sound & Vision Home Theater Tune-Up set-up DVD (earned $300K in revenues)
    • Web Videos

• • Education
    • BA, Journalism & Mass Communication, Rutgers University, 1995
    • AAS, Electrical Technology, Queensborough Community College, 1983

• • Afilliations
    • Member, Custom Electronics Design & Installation Association (CEDIA)
    • Volunteer, CEDIA Recommended Practices Committee, Video Best Practices (RP23)