Michael Higdon is a designer, photographer, writer and public journalist.
He spends most of his time contemplating the future of journalism, evangelizing about new journalism on forums and to colleagues, studying to finish school on time and working for the University of Nevada, Reno's student newspaper, The Nevada Sagebrush.
In 2005, he joined the Sagebrush staff as arts & entertainment editor. But after discovering page design - with the help of Chuck Norris - he took the vacant design editor position and won SSND Designer of the Year in 2007. That summer, he worked at The Courier-Journal in Louisville and redesigned the Sagebrush.
In 2008, he started studying public and entrepreneurial journalism at the Reynolds School of Journalism under David Ryfe and Donica Mensing. Scott Goldman offered Michael the Pulliam Fellowship where he will work as the visual intern doing print and web design, multimedia and his own social-networked blog experiment.
At The Nevada Sagebrush the following school year, he will be in charge of creating a "pillar of the community" using the paper's Web site as a social-networked news tool.
He will be speaking at the Society for News Design Conference in Las Vegas in September.
Michael Higdon wants to help journalism transform into something new and sustainable.
