Jon Katz
Encyclopedia
Jonathan Katz is a U.S.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
journalist, author, and snowballer. He is known for his contributions to the online magazine HotWired
HotWired
Hotwired was the first commercial web magazine, launched on October 27, 1994. Although it was part of Wired Ventures, Hotwired was a separate entity from Wired, the print magazine, and had original content....
, the technology website Slashdot
Slashdot
Slashdot is a technology-related news website owned by Geeknet, Inc. The site, which bills itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters", features user-submitted and ‑evaluated current affairs news stories about science- and technology-related topics. Each story has a comments section...
, the online news magazine Slate.com, and his series of crime novels, books on the geek subculture, and his books on dog
Dog
The domestic dog is a domesticated form of the gray wolf, a member of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term is used for both feral and pet varieties. The dog may have been the first animal to be domesticated, and has been the most widely kept working, hunting, and companion animal in...
s.
Journalism
Katz initially worked as a reporter for The Philadelphia InquirerThe Philadelphia Inquirer
The Philadelphia Inquirer is a morning daily newspaper that serves the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, metropolitan area of the United States. The newspaper was founded by John R. Walker and John Norvell in June 1829 as The Pennsylvania Inquirer and is the third-oldest surviving daily newspaper in the...
, The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been owned by The New York Times Company since 1993...
and The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
, and later as of the CBS Morning News
CBS Morning News
For CBS's main morning news program, formerly known as CBS Morning News, see The Early Show.CBS Morning News is the half-hour daily television broadcast from CBS News that airs following Up to the Minute and features late-breaking news stories, weather forecasts, and sports scores...
.
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.
Expressing "disenchantment with the world of old media", he joined the now defunct HotWired, the online version of Wired magazine
Wired (magazine)
Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...
, to which he contributed articles on technology, culture and the media.
In 1999, Katz left HotWired to join Slashdot
Slashdot
Slashdot is a technology-related news website owned by Geeknet, Inc. The site, which bills itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters", features user-submitted and ‑evaluated current affairs news stories about science- and technology-related topics. Each story has a comments section...
. Many of his contributions to Slashdot were focused on the youth subculture of geek
Geek
The word geek is a slang term, with different meanings ranging from "a computer expert or enthusiast" to "a carnival performer who performs sensationally morbid or disgusting acts", with a general pejorative meaning of "a peculiar or otherwise dislikable person, esp[ecially] one who is perceived to...
s and social misfits.
Katz's first article on Slate.com appeared in December 2005 and he has since become a regular contributor to the online magazine. The majority of his writings at Slate revolve around animals and his rural life.
Books
Katz has written several novels as well as non-fiction works which cover topics ranging from geek culture to his relationship with dogs. He wrote a successful series of mystery novels centered around the character Kit DeLeeuw, a former Wall StreetWall Street
Wall Street refers to the financial district of New York City, named after and centered on the eight-block-long street running from Broadway to South Street on the East River in Lower Manhattan. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, or...
financier turned private investigator, based in the fictional Rochambeau, New Jersey.
Katz' most recent books have described his relationships with dogs. He began writing about them after taking in a difficult border collie
Border Collie
The Border Collie is a herding dog breed developed in the Anglo-Scottish border region for herding livestock, especially sheep. It is the most widespread of the collie breeds....
, whom Katz credited with changing his life by causing him to take up sheepherding and move to a farm. 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. "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."
On Slashdot
Katz's writing was often criticized by Slashdot readers. Some criticism was leveled at Katz when he posted an article about an e-mail message he purportedly received from a teenager named "Junis" in AfghanistanAfghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
who had just rejoined the Internet in late 2001. Some Slashdot readers believed the e-mail message to be a hoax or parody designed to fool Katz. 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. Because of the unlikelihood of performing these activities on the Commodore 64
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595...
, some Slashdot readers felt this demonstrated Katz's lack of technical knowledge about computers. An article in the Technology section of the New York Times discussed the Slashdot piece and its criticisms.
In the Border Collie Community
Katz's books about dogs have received favorable reviews in the literary press, but have been met with a hostile reaction in segments of the Border CollieBorder Collie
The Border Collie is a herding dog breed developed in the Anglo-Scottish border region for herding livestock, especially sheep. It is the most widespread of the collie breeds....
community. Notable examples of this criticism have included Donald McCaig's review of The Dogs of Bedlam Farm in [The Bark] magazine, and Penny Tose's review of Katz on Dogs in The American Border Collie magazine, as well as comments on various Internet forums such as the BC Boards and the Working Stockdog Forum. Critics have faulted Katz for a fundamental lack of understanding of the dogs and their work and for offering misguided training advice while professing an expertise that he in fact lacks. Katz has claimed to enjoy "riling the border collie snobs," but criticism of the author intensified after he gave away his second border collie and had the first put down for behavioral problems.
Kit DeLeeuw Series Novels
- Death by Station Wagon (1993)
- The Family Stalker (1994)
- The Last Housewife (1995)
- The Father's Club (1996)
- Death Row (1998)
Books about Dogs
- Running to the Mountain: a journey of faith and change (2000)
- A Dog Year: twelve months, four dogs and me (2003)
- AKA A Dog Year: rescuing Devon, the most troublesome dog in the world (2008)
- AKA Devon: the totally true story of Devon the naughtiest dog in the world (2010)
- The New Work of Dogs: tending to life, love and family (2003)
- The Dogs of Bedlam Farm: an adventure with sixteen sheep, three dogs, two donkeys and me (2004)
- AKA A Home For Rose: how my life turned upside down for the love of a dog (2009)
- Dog Days: dispatches from Bedlam Farm (2005)
- Katz on Dogs: a commonsense guide to training and living with dogs (2005)
- A Good Dog: the story of Orson who changed my life (2006)
- Izzy and Lenore: two dogs, an unexpected journey, and me (2008)
- Soul of a Dog: reflections on the spirits of the animals at Bedlam Farm (2009)
- Saving Izzy: the abandoned dog who stole my heart (2010)
- The Dog Who Loved - Lenore: the puppy who rescued me (2010)
- AKA Izzy and Lenore: two dogs, an unexpected journey, and me (2008)
- Rose in a Storm: A novel (2010)
Other Books
- Sign Off (1991)
- Virtuous Reality (1997)
- Media Rants: Post Politics in the Digital Nation: A Netizen Takes on Washington and the Media Empire (1997)
- Running to the Mountain: A Midlife Adventure (1999)
- Geeks (2000)
External links
- Slashdot User JonKatz (user id 7654)
- Being Jon Katz, interview by Julia Lipman for Poppolitics.com
- New York Times article on the Junis story: Afghan E-Mail Seen as Too Geek To Be True
- Author Page at BarnesandNoble.com which includes an interview and biography.
- Articles by Katz on Slate.com
- The Seattle Times review of The Dogs of Bedlam Farm.
- An interview with Katz on NPR's Day to Day
- An interview with Katz on NPR's Fresh Air
- Katz's personal site