James Michael Surowiecki (icon ; born 1967) is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

. He is a staff writer at The New Yorker

The New Yorker

The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

, where he writes a regular column on business and finance called "The Financial Page".

Background

Surowiecki was born in Meriden, Connecticut

Meriden, Connecticut

Meriden is a city in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States. According to 2005 Census Bureau estimates, the population of the city is 59,653.-History:...

 and spent several childhood years in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...

 where he received a junior high school education from Southwestern Educational Society

Southwestern Educational Society

Southwestern Educational Society Society is a private, bilingual School in the western part of Puerto Rico founded in 1973.-History:...

 (SESO). On May 5, 1979, he won the Scripps-Howard Regional Puerto Rico Spelling Bee championship. He is a 1984 graduate of Choate Rosemary Hall

Choate Rosemary Hall

Choate Rosemary Hall is a private, college-preparatory, coeducational boarding school located in Wallingford, Connecticut...

 and a 1988 alumnus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States...

, where he was a Morehead Scholar. Surowiecki pursued Ph.D. studies in American History on a Mellon Fellowship at Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

 before becoming a financial journalist. He lives in Brooklyn, New York and is married to Slate culture editor Meghan O'Rourke

Meghan O'Rourke

Meghan O'Rourke is an American poet, critic, and a contributing writer for the online magazine Slate. She is a graduate of Yale. O'Rourke was formerly a fiction editor at The New Yorker and from 2005-2010 was poetry co-editor at The Paris Review...

.

Career

Surowiecki's writing has appeared in a wide range of publications, including The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

, the Wall Street Journal, The Motley Fool, Foreign Affairs

Foreign Affairs

Foreign Affairs is an American magazine and website on international relations and U.S. foreign policy published since 1922 by the Council on Foreign Relations six times annually...

, Artforum

Artforum

Artforum is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art.-Publication:The magazine is published ten times a year, September through May, along with an annual summer issue...

, Wired, and Slate

Slate (magazine)

Slate is a US-based English language online current affairs and culture magazine created in 1996 by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. On 21 December 2004 it was purchased by the Washington Post Company...

.

Before joining The New Yorker, he wrote “The Bottom Line” column for New York

New York (magazine)

New York is a weekly magazine principally concerned with the life, culture, politics, and style of New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it was brasher and less polite than that magazine, and established itself as a cradle of New...

magazine and was a contributing editor at Fortune

Fortune (magazine)

Fortune is a global business magazine published by Time Inc. Founded by Henry Luce in 1930, the publishing business, consisting of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated, grew to become Time Warner. In turn, AOL grew as it acquired Time Warner in 2000 when Time Warner was the world's largest...

.

He got his start on the Internet when he was hired from graduate school by Motley Fool co-founder David Gardner

David Gardner

David Gardner is one of the three founders of The Motley Fool, established in 1993.He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on a Morehead-Cain Scholarship, graduating in 1988. He was a writer for Louis Rukeyser's Wall Street newsletter before joining the Motley Fool...

, to be the Fool's editor-in-chief of its culture site on America Online, entitled "Rogue" (1995–1996). As The Motley Fool closed that site down and focused on finance, Surowiecki made the switch over to become a finance writer, which he did over the succeeding three years, including being assigned to write the Fool's column on Slate from 1997–2000.

In 2002, Surowiecki edited an anthology, Best Business Crime Writing of the Year, a collection of articles from different business news sources that chronicle the fall from grace of various CEOs. In 2004, he published The Wisdom of Crowds

The Wisdom of Crowds

The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations, published in 2004, is a book written by James Surowiecki about the aggregation of information in groups, resulting in decisions that, he argues, are often better...

, in which he argued that in some circumstances, large groups exhibit more intelligence than smaller, more elite groups, and that collective intelligence

Collective intelligence

Collective intelligence is a shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision making in bacteria, animals, humans and computer networks....

shapes business, economies, societies and nations.

External links

• Better and Better: The Myth of Inevitable Progress James Surowiecki's review of the book "The Improving State of the World: Why We're Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives on a Cleaner Planet" by Indur M. Goklany in the magazine Foreign Affairs
• James Surowieki (sic) – Independent Individuals and Wise Crowds Audio interview from IT Conversations
• James Surowiecki – The Wisdom of Crowds Audio interview from NPR affiliate WAMU American University – Mr. Surowiecki explains how collective wisdom shapes business, economies, societies, and nations. (60 min. Real Audio stream).
• Meghan O'Rourke, James Surowiecki – New York Times Weddings/Celebrations
• Power: 2012 Conference Video
• TEDTalks James Surowiecki: The moment when social media became the news