Tom Watson

Tom Watson has been a journalist for more than 20 years, and a widely-read Internet entrepreneur and commentator for a decade. This Weblog is his personal outlet - an idiosyncratic view of the world. "My dirty life and times" is a nod to the late, great Warren Zevon:

Some days I feel like my shadow's casting me
Some days the sun don't shine
Sometimes I wonder why I'm still running free
All up and down the line
Sometimes I wonder what tomorrow's gonna bring
When I think about my dirty life and times

Currently, Tom is Chief Strategy Officer of a national consulting company he helped to found. Tom is responsible for the company’s marketing, communications, and technology; he is also heavily involved in business development and corporate partnerships for the firm, and works on several wonderful client assignments.

Tom has extensive experience in government and public policy, both as a business leader and journalist. He began his career covering Bronx politics, and in recent years has helped lead he New York Software Industry Association as an executive board member and the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, chaired by Ambassador Andrew Young, as a board member.

Tom was co-founder and co-editor of @NY, the pioneering Internet news and information service that has chronicled New York’s technology sector since 1995. The company was acquired by IntMedia Group (Nasdaq: INTM) in April 1999, two months before a successful initial public offering.

Tom has been a widely-read commentator on and analyst of Internet industry matters since the mid-1990s, writing columns for Inside Magazine, The New York Times and The Industry Standard. His work has also appeared in Wired, the Los Angeles Times, and many other publications. Tom is also a co-author of the recent book, Fundraising on the Internet (Jossey-Bass).

Tom has frequently commented on Internet matters for many news outlets, including CNN, NPR, and CNBC. He has spoken about the Internet and media technology at conferences and academic institutions including the American Society of Association Executives, the MIT Enterprise Forum, Blackbaud’s Annual Conference on Philanthropy, the ePhilanthropy Foundation, Content Management Summit, the Performance Institute, Association of Fundraising Professionals, the Software Summit, City University London, Harvard Business School, Columbia University, and New York University.

Previously, Tom was the executive editor of The Riverdale Press, a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper in the Bronx, where he covered politics, and won more than a dozen state and national awards for excellence in journalism. The paper won national acclaim during his tenure for not missing an issue after terrorists linked to Iran destroyed the newspaper's offices with firebombs.

Tom holds a BA in English literature from Columbia University, and has served as an adjunct professor of new media at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism.

Note: The opinions expressed on this site are not those of Tom's employers or of the organizations he's a part of. They're his alone.