About
Hi, I’m Anthony DeBarros. I’m a journalist, husband, dad, musician, native New Yorker, data miner, teacher, coder and truth seeker. Not necessarily in that order.
This is my personal site covering my work in data-driven journalism and other random things from life. Any opinions here belong to me alone and do not reflect the opinions of my employers past or present.
Now
I’m currently the senior database editor at USA TODAY, where I head a team of database editors. Our job is to find news in data. We build data sets, or acquire them, and then we mine them to discover stories. The topics range from the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to the Census to tracking the top money makers on the concert circuit. Once we find stories, we work with reporters to craft them and with designers to tell them visually. No two days are the same, and the only constant is change.
In the past
Before USA TODAY, I spent a decade at the Poughkeepsie Journal, a newspaper covering New York’s mid-Hudson Valley. I started as an obit writer and police reporter. Over time, I covered local government, became a copy editor, assistant city editor and features editor, covered music and technology and wrote two different weekly columns. In the early 1990s, I 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. I still speak to students whenever and wherever someone invites me.
Prior to my career in print and digital, I had the gift of spending 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.
About this site
I’m using WordPress and a theme I built from scratch. It’s easier than you think. I had lots of help from this tutorial from wpdesigner.com. I also borrowed some ideas from the Hemingway theme, particularly in the header. 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.
