“We trust you are all reading AMERICAblog” – Rolling Stone
AMERICAblog is a journal of news and opinion about US politics, both domestic and foreign, from a progressive point of view. You can follow AMERICAblog on Twitter at @americablog and @americabloggay, and on Facebook at AMERICAblog and AMERICAblogGay.
AMERICAblog was created by John Aravosis, a former writer for the Economist with a joint law degree (JD) and masters in foreign service (MSFS) from Georgetown University, and twenty-five years experience working in national politics in Washington, DC. At AMERICAblog, we don’t just link to the news, we give you an insider’s look at what’s important and why.
AMERICAblog launched on April 24, 2004, and quickly became one of the most influential political blogs in the United States, with monthly traffic exceeding 1.5 million page views and 700,00 unique readers (Google Analytics). The AMERICAblog family of sites now includes AMERICAblog Gay (2009) and AMERICAblog Elections (2011), and has been recognized as a “top website” by PC Magazine, a top ten liberal political blog by Personal Democracy Forum, and PeekScore recognized John Aravosis as one of the “top ten liberal bloggers.”
In addition to expert analysis of the day’s news, AMERICAblog has broken a number of high-profile stories, including:
* BP photoshops fake photo of oil spill crisis command center to make it look busy.
* AMERICAblog just bought General Wesley Clark’s cell phone records for $89.95. (AMERICAblog’s reporting was responsible for “pretexting” finally being outlawed in this country.)
* Conservative White House reporter Jeff Gannon exposed.
OUR STAFF
JON GREEN – EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Jon Green graduated from Kenyon College with a B.A. in Political Science and High Honors in Political Cognition. While at Kenyon, he re-founded and edited the Kenyon Observer, the school’s student-run political journal. Jon worked as a field organizer for Tom Perriello in 2010 and as a Deputy Regional Field Director for President Obama’s reelection campaign. He writes on a variety of topics, but pays particularly close attention to voting rights, secularism and political cognition. In March of 2015, Jon took over the role of editor in chief at AMERICAblog.
JOHN ARAVOSIS – EXECUTIVE EDITOR
John Aravosis is a writer and political consultant, specializing in using the Internet for politics. He is in the executive editor of AMERICAblog, AMERICAblog Gay, and AMERICAblog Elections.
John has a degree in rhetoric from the University of Illinois (Champaign/Urbana), a diploma from the University of Paris (Sorbonne), and a joint law degree and masters in foreign service from Georgetown University, where he studied under Madeleine Albright.
John’s writing experience includes working as a stringer for both the Economist and RADAR, serving as the US Politics editor at About.com, and having been published in the New Republic and New York Daily News, among others. Washingtonian magazine’s annual “50 Best Journalists” issue named John one of “journalism’s rising stars, those likely to have a major impact in coming years.” John has also been honored as one of the “Out 100,” and by the Advocate as one of the fifty “most powerful gay men and women in America.”
Profile of John in Paris-daily Le Parisien.
John’s policy experience includes working as a legislative attorney in the United States Senate (specializing on arms control, foreign policy and commerce issues), a consultant at the World Bank, and a children’s right’s advocate at the Children’s Defense Fund. In 1997, John launched his own political Internet consulting firm, with clients ranging from governments (US Department of State, HHS, CDC, the city of Barcelona, the Social Democratic Party of Sweden) to non-profits (ACLU, Planned Parenthood, NEA, AFSCME). John then went on to become the head of online and digital strategy at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
John has also been a frequent TV pundit, and has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor, Hardball with Chris Matthews, ABC News, Nightline, CNN’s Reliable Sources, MSNBC and more. John has also been regularly quoted in American and foreign media. John speaks five languages (has worked and done interviews in French, Spanish and Italian), and has visited or worked in 29 countries, including conducting lectures and training about the Internet and politics in France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Greece, Morocco, Indonesia and Cote d’Ivoire.
Follow John on Twitter @aravosis, Facebook, and Instagram. And find out more about him on LinkedIn.
CHRIS ANDOE – DEPUTY EDITOR
Chris Andoe is an author and seasoned activist. After meeting John Aravosis at a Chicago “StopDrLaura.com” protest in 2000, Chris was inspired to organize his own major demonstrations in St. Louis, which drew national attention. Since then, his activism has revolved around LGBT, affordable housing, and mass transit issues. In 2011 Andoe made headlines taking on the amorphous hacker group Anonymous for publishing nude photos of a Bay Area Rapid Transit spokesperson, saying “Puritanical shame-based tactics have no place in the capital of sexual liberation”, and he extensively covered San Francisco’s jarring gentrification, from mass evictions to the nudity ban. Andoe was on the ground in Ferguson at the height of the unrest, recording events as they unfolded.
Always in the fray, Andoe’s been interviewed by NPR, CBS, and has been quoted from CNN to The St. Louis Post Dispatch.
WRITERS
Melissa Ryan is a political consultant. She’s spent a decade leading digital campaigns for nonprofits and political races, including EMILY’s List, Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, the New Organizing Institute, and Senator Russ Feingold’s campaign. Visit her website at melissaryan.net, or follow her on Twitter @MelissaRyan.
Mark Thoma, MD is a physician who did his residency in internal medicine. Mark has a long history of social activism, and was an early technogeek, and science junkie, after evolving through his nerd phase. Favorite quote: “The most exciting phrase to hear in science… is not ‘Eureka!’ (I found it!) but ‘That’s funny.’” – Isaac Asimov
Christian Trejbal is a member of the board of directors of the Association of Opinion Journalists, writes for Opinion in a Pinch and is an open government chairman for the Association of Opinion Journalists. Overcoming graduate degrees in philosophy, he worked as an editorial writer at The (Bend) Bulletin and The Roanoke Times for more than a decade. In 2013, he and his wife moved to Portland, Ore., where he writes freelance and provides public policy analysis. Follow him on Twitter @ctrejbal.
