Hi, I’m Anthony DeBarros. I work with words, code and data. I’m also a husband, father, musician, gardener, occasional poet and, at heart, an analog guy. I love finding and telling stories. I also love to create things (lately on my development server). Any opinions I express here or elsewhere — e.g., my Twitter feed — belong to me alone and do not reflect the opinions of my employers past or present. Thanks for reading.

Now: In November 2012 I was named Director, Content at Gannett Digital, where my role is to guide the development of interactive news applications and tools for data visualization. Exciting opportunity, both to explore the boundaries of news technology and work with some very smart, creative people.

Before now: Most recently, I spent 15 years in the newsroom at USA TODAY, first as database editor for health, religion, travel and entertainment and, for four years, as senior database editor heading up a team of database editors and developers. That team’s work is to find news in data — build data sets, or acquire them, and then mine the data to discover stories. The topics ranged from the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to the Census to tracking the top money makers on the concert circuit.

Before joining USA TODAY in 1997, I spent a decade at the Poughkeepsie Journal, a historic newspaper covering New York’s mid-Hudson Valley. I started as an obit writer and police reporter, hired shortly after finishing an internship in my senior year of college. Over the years, I covered local government, became a copy editor, assistant city editor and features editor and wrote many features about the musicians who played the local concert scene. In the early 1990s, my interest in computing led to me to launch a personal tech section and take our first steps in what used to be called computer-assisted reporting. I also launched one of the news industry’s earliest online ventures — a dial-up service called the Poughkeeepsie Journal Bulletin Board System.

I’m twice a graduate of Marist College, where I also taught journalism as an adjunct. I still enjoy speaking to students, so invite me.

Prior to my career in print and digital, I spent several years behind the microphone at WPDH-FM, at the time the top-rated FM rock station in the mid-Hudson Valley.

When I’m not working, I’m most often enjoying time with my family. I enjoy the guitar, music, chess, art, poetry and systematic theology.

If you’re interested in more details about my career, you can download my resume.

About this site

I’m using WordPress and a theme I built from scratch (and tinker with incessantly). It’s easier than you think. You can follow its progress and download it from Github. I had lots of help from this tutorial from wpdesigner.com. I also borrowed some ideas from the Hemingway theme, particularly in the header.

Body font is PT Sans, and post and sidebar headlines are Arvo, both from Google Web Fonts.

Web hosting is by WebFaction.

All material is mine; any reproductions of my published work are owned by the respective copyright holders and are displayed for portfolio purposes only.