Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 01:56, 26 February 2012

David Pogue
Pogue in October 2010
Born	David Welch Pogue (1963-03-09) March 9, 1963 (age 61) Shaker Heights, Ohio, U.S.A.
Alma mater	Yale University
Spouse(s)	Jennifer Pogue, MD
Children	son Kelly, daughter Tia, and son Jeffrey
Website	http://www.davidpogue.com/

David Welch Pogue (born March 9, 1963) is an American technology writer, technology columnist and commentator. He is a personal technology columnist for the New York Times, an Emmy-winning tech correspondent for CBS News Sunday Morning, weekly tech correspondent for CNBC, and a columnist for Scientific American. He has hosted numerous NOVA miniseries on PBS, including “Making Stuff,” a four-part series that aired in early 2011. Pogue has written or co-written seven books in the For Dummies series (including Macintosh computers, magic, opera, and classical music). In 1999, he launched his own series of computer how-to books called the Missing Manual series, which now includes over 100 titles covering a variety of Macintosh and Windows operating systems and applications. Among the dozens of books Pogue has authored is The World According to Twitter (2009), written in collaboration with around 500,000 of his Twitter followers.

Early life

Pogue was born in Shaker Heights, Ohio, the son of Richard Welch Pogue, an attorney and former Managing Partner at Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue, and Patricia Ruth (née Raney). He is a grandson of aviation attorney L.Welch Pogue and Mary Ellen Edgerton. He is also a great nephew of Harold Eugene "Doc" Edgerton, a professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and credited with transforming the stroboscope from an obscure laboratory instrument into a common device.

He graduated from Yale University in 1985, summa cum laude with Distinction in Music. He spent ten years working in New York, for a time in the office of Music Theatre International and also intermittently as a Broadway musical conductor. On August 29, 2007 he received an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Music) from Shenandoah Conservatory of Shenandoah University in Winchester, Virginia.

Career

Pogue wrote for Macworld Magazine from 1988-2000. His back-page column was called The Desktop Critic. Pogue got his start writing books when Macworld-owner IDG asked him to write Macs for Dummies to follow on the success of the first ...for Dummies book, DOS for Dummies, written by Dan Gookin.

Since November 2000, Pogue has served as the The New York Times personal-tech columnist; his column, "State of the Art," appears each Thursday on the front page of the Business section. He also writes "From the Desk of David Pogue," a tech-related opinion column that is sent to readers by e-mail. He also maintains a blog at nytimes.com called Pogue's Posts.

Each Thursday, he appears on CNBC's "Power Lunch" in a taped, three-minute comic tech review, which then appears on the New York Times website, nytimes.com, as well as iTunes, YouTube, TiVo, and JetBlue.

In 2007, the HD Theater and Science channels aired his six-episode series, It's All Geek to Me, a how-to show about consumer technology.

He hosted a four-part PBS NOVA miniseries about materials science, called "Making Stuff," that aired on 4 consecutive Wednesdays starting January 19, 2011 on PBS.

He also writes and hosts several segments each year for CBS News Sunday Morning.

Pogue is a frequent speaker at over 50 educational, government, and corporate conferences per year, addressing such topics as disruptive technology, social media, digital photography, and why products fail. In 2009 he was the keynote speaker at the international Summit Conference of the Society for Technical Communication, the largest professional organization of technical writers and editors. Pogue also headlined the annual EduComm Conference, a nationwide gathering of higher education leaders pursuing breakthrough technologies with the potential to transform the college experience. He has performed three times at TED, a conference in Monterey, CA: in 2006, a 20-minute talk about simplicity; in 2007, a medley of high-tech song parodies at the piano (or, as Pogue joked, "a tedley,") and most recently in December 2008, talking about cellphones, the cool tricks they can be made to do, and how the phones are often so much better than the companies that market them. In 2008, he performed at the EG conference, also in Monterey. He has also spoken at the 2008 and 2009 ASTD TechKnowldge Conference and expo as a keynote speaker. On March 16, 2009, he was the keynote speaker for the ASSET conference in Huntington, New York. Also on 2009, he gave a conference about Web 2.0 at Tecnologico de Monterrey in Monterrey, Mexico. He discussed three trends in technology and also played his entertaining technology songs.

Controversy

In 2005, Pogue was the subject of a conflict-of-interest controversy. In a New York Times review of a hard drive recovery service, Pogue noted that the service, which can cost from $500 to $2,700, was provided to him at no charge for the purposes of the review; but when describing the service for National Public Radio's Morning Edition program on September 12, 2005, he failed to mention this. NPR's Vice President of News Bill Marimow later stated that NPR should have either not aired the review or paid for the services itself. Ultimately, the Times paid for the service.

In June 2009, Pogue accepted a speaking fee from the Consumer Electronics Association, which puts on the annual Consumer Electronics Show to promote new gadgets, likely in violation of the Times's ethics policy. In response to the incident, Pogue argued that the group may not have lobbying as a "major focus", in which case his paid appearance wouldn't have been in violation of "Times" policy. Nevertheless, he agreed to run future speaking engagements by his editors.

In September 2009, Pogue’s New York Times review of the Snow Leopard Macintosh operating system, a product for which he had also authored a Missing Manual book, was the subject of a column by The Times’ Public Editor Clark Hoyt. Pogue’s “multiple interests and loyalties raise interesting ethical issues in this new age when individual journalists can become brands of their own, stars who seem to transcend the old rules that sharply limited outside activity and demanded an overriding obligation to The Times and its readers," Hoyt wrote. “It is no intended knock on Pogue’s integrity — he has panned Apple products and praised those of competitors — to point out that the (Snow Leopard) review put him in the kind of conflict-of-interest situation that The Times regularly calls others to account for.” Of three ethicists Hoyt consulted, each agreed Pogue's position created a "clear conflict of interest" and placed the paper on "tricky ethical terrain." In response, Pogue posted a statement of ethics on his Times Topics page and a disclosure was added to his Snow Leopard review on The Times’ web site.

Beginning in December 2010 and continuing at least through May 2011, Pogue dated Nicki Dugan, a vice president at a San Francisco PR firm. During that time, he reviewed products made by companies represented by Dugan's firm without publicly disclosing his relationship to Dugan. While some commentators claimed this constituted a conflict of interest, Pogue wasn't in violation of Times policy as he did disclose the relationship to his editor.

In June 2011, Pogue gave a presentation at the Media Relations Summit sponsored by Ragan Communications, in which he offered advice to PR professionals on how to successfully pitch him. The presentation caught the attention of Arthur S. Brisbane, The New York Times’ reader representative, because the paper’s ethics policy states that staff members and freelancers on assignment “may not advise individuals or organizations how to deal successfully with the news media.” Though Pogue is not a Times staff member and was not on assignment, an internal review determined that his presentation wasn’t appropriate. In an email to Brisbane about the matter, Pogue agreed “not to do any more speaking for Ragan or any P.R.-related event or organization” and added that in the future, “my speaking agent will now present every offer to my (Times) editor and me simultaneously. In other words, every single talk will now be approved in advance, as it’s supposed to be.”

Personal life

Pogue married Jennifer Letitia O'Sullivan on September 16, 1995, at Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

Works

Non-fiction

• Classical Music for Dummies (ISBN 978-0764550096)
• Crossing Platforms: A Macintosh/Windows Phrasebook (with Adam C. Engst) (ISBN 978-1565925397)
• CSS: the Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596802448)
• David Pogue's Digital Photography: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596154035)
• The Flat-Screen iMac for Dummies (ISBN 978-0764516634)
• GarageBand: the Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596006952)
• GarageBand 2: the Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596100353)
• The Great Macintosh Easter Egg Hunt (ISBN 978-0425160060)
• The iBook for Dummies (ISBN 978-0764506475)
• iLife '04: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596006945)
• iLife '05: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596100360)
• The iMac for Dummies (ISBN 0764504959)
• iMovie: The Missing Manual (ISBN 1565928598)
• iMovie 2: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596001049)
• iMovie 3 & iDVD: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596005078)
• iMovie 4 & iDVD: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596006938)
• iMovie HD & iDVD 5: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596100339)
• iMovie 6 & iDVD: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596527266)
• iMovie '08 & iDVD: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596516192)
• iMovie '09 & iDVD: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596801410)
• iMovie '11 & iDVD: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-1449393274)
• iPhoto: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596003654)
• iPhoto 2: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596005061)
• iPhoto 4: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596006921)
• iPhoto 5: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596100346)
• iPhoto 6: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596527259)
• iPhoto '08: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596516185)
• iPhoto '09: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596801441)
• iPhoto '11: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-1449393236)
• Mac OS 9: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-1565928572)
• Mac OS X: The Missing Manual (ISBN 0596000820)
• Mac OS X Hints (with Rob Griffiths) (ISBN 978-0596004514)
• Macs for Dummies (ISBN 978-0764503986)
• Macworld Mac Secrets (with Joseph Schorr) (ISBN 978-0764534157)
• Magic for Dummies (ISBN 978-0764551017)
• The Microsloth Joke Book: A Satire (editor) (ISBN 978-0425160541)
• More Macs for Dummies (ISBN 978-0764502675)
• Opera for Dummies (with Scott Speck) (ISBN 978-0764550102)
• PalmPilot: The Ultimate Guide (ISBN 1565926005)
• Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596004521)
• Tales from the Tech Line: Hilarious Strange-But-True Stories from the Computer Industry's Technical-Support Hotlines (editor) (ISBN 978-0425163634)
• The Weird Wide Web (with Erfert Fenton) (ISBN 978-0614262995)
• Windows Me: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596000097)
• Windows Vista: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596528270)
• Windows Vista for Starters: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596528263)
• Windows XP Home Edition: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596008970)
• Windows XP Pro: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596008987)
• The World According to Twitter (ISBN 978-1579128272)

Fiction

• Hard Drive (1993), a techno-thriller (ISBN 978-0441002559)
• "Abby Carnelia's One and Only Magical Power" (2010, novel for middle-schoolers) (ISBN 978-1596433847)

References

1. "Jennifer O'Sullivan, David W. Pogue - New York Times". The New York Times. September 17, 1995.
2. "Making Stuff: Series Overview". NOVA. PBS.org. Retrieved 27 November 2011.
3. The Bradford Family Compact bulletin - Google Books
4. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/making-stuff-stronger.html 16 minutes into program discusses Edgerton
5. ^ David Pogue. "David Pogue's Bio". Retrieved 2007-06-28.
6. Pogue, David. "Pogue's Pages". Speaking Inquiries. David Pogue. Retrieved 27 November 2011.
7. TED. "David Pogue on the music wars".
8. ^ David Pogue (September 1, 2005). "Can You Save a Hard Drive?". The New York Times. Retrieved May 1, 2010.
9. ^ Jeffrey A. Dvorkin. "The Cost of a Story: Who Pays?". Retrieved 2007-07-05.
10. "EXCLUSIVE: David Pogue, In Violation Of NYT Ethics Rules, Took Fee To Speak To Industry Trade Group Last Week". The NYT Picker. Retrieved 26 February 2012.
11. ^ Hoyt, Clark (5 September 2009). "He Works for The Times, Too". The New York Times. Retrieved 6 December 2011.
12. Pogue, David. "A Note About Ethics and Disclosure". The New York Times. The New York Times. Retrieved 6 December 2011.
13. Lyons, Dan. "David Pogue and Nicki Dugan: A Conflict of Interest?". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 26 February 2012.
14. Lyons, Dan. "David Pogue and Nicki Dugan: A Conflict of Interest?". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 26 February 2012.
15. Clark Estes, Adam. "David Pogue's Conflict of Interest". The Atlantic Wire. Retrieved 26 February 2012.
16. ^ Brisbane, Arthur S. (6 July 2011). "Times curbs Pogue's P.R. appearances". The New York Times. Retrieved 1 December 2011.
17. Jennifer O'Sullivan, David W. Pogue

External links

• Official website
• David Pogue on Twitter
• Making Stuff, 2011 Nova science series on PBS
• David Pogue at O'Reilly Media
• David Pogue collected news and commentary at The New York Times
  • Pogue's Posts blog
• Template:TED
• Template:Worldcat id
• David Pogue at IMDb
• David Pogue at the Internet Broadway Database

Template:Persondata

• 1963 births
• Living people
• American technology writers
• People from Shaker Heights, Ohio
• O'Reilly writers
• Yale University alumni
• The New York Times columnists
• Gerald Loeb Award winners