Jonathan Katz (born 1947) is a U.S. journalist and writer. He is mostly known for his contributions to the online magazine HotWired and the technology website Slashdot as well as for his books on dogs. // Slashdot (often abbreviated as /.) is a technology-related news website which features user-submitted and editor-evaluated current affairs news with a nerdy slant. ... Rob Malda Rob Malda (born May 10, 1976), also known as CmdrTaco, is the founder of the website Slashdot. ... Jonathan Pater is an editor and co-founder[citation needed] of Slashdot. ... Anonymous Coward is a term applied within some online communities to describe users who post without a handle; it is a dummy name attributed to anonymous posts used by some weblogs that allow posting by people without registering for accounts. ... The Slashdot effect is the term given to the phenomenon of a popular website linking to a smaller site, causing the smaller site to slow down or even temporarily close due to the increased traffic. ... Slash (a backronym for Slashdot Like Automated Story-telling Homepage) is the open source collection of Perl scripts which runs Slashdot, one of the oldest and most popular collaborative weblogs around. ... Geeks in Space was a semi-weekly Internet audio show produced from June 1999 to June 2001. ... 1947 (MCMXLVII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1947 calendar). ... United States is the current Good Article Collaboration of the week! Please help to improve this article to the highest of standards. ... HotWired was the first commercial web magazine, launched on October 27, 1994. ... // Slashdot (often abbreviated as /.) is a technology-related news website which features user-submitted and editor-evaluated current affairs news with a nerdy slant. ... Trinomial name Canis lupus familiaris The dog is a mammal in the order Carnivora. ...

Career

Traditional media

He initially worked as a reporter and editor for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Boston Globe and Washington Post, and later as executive producer of the CBS Morning News. He wrote a successful series of mystery novels centered around the character Kit DeLeeuw, a former Wall Street financier turned private investigator, based in the fictional Rochambeau, New Jersey. His media criticism, columns and book reviews appeared in such periodicals as Rolling Stone and New York (he was a contributing editor to both magazines), Wired, GQ, and the New York Times. The Philadelphia Inquirer is one of a two Knight Ridder newspaper duopoly daily for the Philadelphia area. ... The Boston Globe is the most widely-circulated daily newspaper in Boston, Massachusetts and in the greater New England region. ... ... CBS Morning News is the half-hour daily television broadcast from CBS News that airs following Up to the Minute. ... Elaborate marble facade of NYSE as seen from Broad and Wall Streets For other uses, see Wall Street (disambiguation). ... The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view. ...

Online

Expressing disenchantment with "traditional media", he joined HotWired, the online version of Wired magazine, to which he contributed articles as a pundit and media critic. Wired is a full-color monthly magazine and on-line periodical published in San Francisco, California since March 1993. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

Slashdot.org

In 1999, Katz left HotWired to join Slashdot.org. Many of his contributions to Slashdot were focused on the youth subculture of geeks and social misfits. In the article Voices from the Hellmouth, written shortly after the Columbine school shootings in Littleton, Colorado (near Denver), he commented on the relationship of the shootings with the angst and social isolation of teenage geeks within high school subcultures.^[1] Look up geek in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Staff and students evacuate Columbine High School shortly after the shooting. ... Littleton is a city located in the Denver-Aurora metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Colorado. ... Nickname: The Mile-High City Location of Denver in Colorado, USA Coordinates: Country United States State Colorado City-County Denver (coextensive) Founded November 22, 1858 Incorporated November 7, 1861 Mayor John Hickenlooper (D) Area    - City 401. ... // Metalhead Redneck Chavs Jock Nerd Prep Band geek(or Bando) Indie Stoner Hip-hopper Goth Emo Punk Rocker Religious freaks Metrosexuals Greasers Gang Members Rappers Scene hardcore kids Standard teenagers who dont fall into any of the above categories A high school subculture is a group of students in...

Controversy

His writing was frequently not well-received by Slashdot readers.^[2] Among the charges often levelled at him were that he was not an authentic geek and was seeking to co-opt and sensationalize geek subculture, that his writings (especially those on technical topics) were uninformed gibberish, and that he had an unhealthy fixation on the Columbine shootings. In the Slashdot subculture, variants on the phrase "in this post-Columbine world" are occasionally used with satirical intent, and are regarded as typical of Katz. Sensationalism is a manner of being extremely controversial, loud, attention-grabbing, or otherwise sensationalistic. ... As understood in sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a set of people with a distinct set of behavior and beliefs that differentiate them from a larger culture of which they are a part. ... 1867 edition of the satirical magazine Punch, a British satirical magazine, ground-breaking on popular literature satire. ...

There was a large controversy when Katz posted an article about an e-mail he believed to be from an Afghan teenager named "Junis", writing to him via the newly-restored Internet. Katz never disclosed the original e-mail, but it was an evident hoax and probably a parody designed to fool him. According to Katz, Junis wrote his e-mail from "his ancient Commodore computer", which he had 'dug up' and was now using to download movies, pornography, and MP3s thanks to the recent liberation of Afghanistan.^[3] This would be near-impossible with the Commodore 64's hardware and software specifications, and points out Katz's lack of technical knowledge about computers. The Commodore 64 is the best selling single personal computer model of all time. ...

In 2002 he wrote one last article on Slashdot, about his dog books, but many readers rejected it as self-promotion.^[4]

Writing on Dogs

Katz' writing on dogs began in 2001 with A Dog Year: Twelve Months, Four Dogs, and Me and continuing with The New Work of Dogs and The Dogs of Bedlam Farm. Plans to turn A Dog Year into a movie, starring Jeff Bridges as Katz, were announced in November 2006.[5] His columns on dogs and on rural life now appear regularly on Slate.com, and his latest book, "A Good Dog", was published in late September 2006. 2001: A Space Odyssey. ... Jeff as The Dude in The Big Lebowski. ...

Katz has described dogs as having been part of his life since fourth grade, and began writing about them after taking in a difficult border collie. He has written extensively on the way we train dogs, arguing that most approaches fail because they are too inflexible, and because--as dog owners--we over-anthropomorphize our companion animals: "we give them too much credit, make them too complex, muddying our communications" by treating them as "soul mates" rather than understanding and respecting their animal nature.^[6] "I can't imagine life without a dog," Katz said in a 2002 interview. "I don't think dogs are substitutes for people, but I must confess I often find them more reliable."^[7] Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Border Collie The Border Collie is a hard-working breed of herding dog that originated in the border country of England and Scotland. ... For album titles with the same name, see 2002 (album). ...

List of publications

Kit DeLeeuw series

• Death by Station Wagon (1993)
• The Family Stalker (1994)
• The Last Housewife (1995)
• The Father's Club (1996)
• Death Row (1998)

1993 (MCMXCIII) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar and marked the Beginning of the International Decade to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination (1993-2003). ... 1994 (MCMXCIV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated as the International Year of the Family and the International Year of the Sport and the Olympic Ideal by United Nations. ... 1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1996 (MCMXCVI) was a leap year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty. ... 1998 (MCMXCVIII) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year of the Ocean. ...

Other Publications

• Sign Off (1991)
• Virtuous Reality (1997)
• Running to the Mountain: A Midlife Adventure (1999)
• Geeks (2000)
• A Dog Year (2001)
• The New Work of Dogs (2003)
• The Dogs of Bedlam Farm (2004)
• Katz on Dogs (2005)
• A Good Dog (2006)

1999 (MCMXCIX) was a common year starting on Friday, and was designated the International Year of Old Farts by the Sometimes-United Nations. ... This article is about the year 2000. ... 2001: A Space Odyssey. ... 2003 (MMIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 2006 (MMVI) is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

References

• ↑  Katz, Jon, "Voices from the Hellmouth." Slashdot.org, April 26, 1999.
• ↑  Cadenhead, Rogers, The Katzdot Effect, 25 March 1999.
• ↑  Katz, Jon, "Message from Kabul." Slashdot.org, November 17, 2001.
• ↑  Katz, Jon, "Dog Bites Website." Slashdot.org, April 23, 2002.
• ↑  Katz, Jon, "Train in Vain: Why dog training fails." Slate, January 14, 2005.
• ↑  Petura, Barbara, "Conversation with Jon Katz." WorkingDogWeb.com, April, 2002.

External links

• Slashdot User JonKatz (user id 7654)
• Being Jon Katz, interview by Julia Lipman for Poppolitics.com
• Nytimes on the Junis fiasco