Joan Indiana Rigdon
joan@ericandjoan.com

SUMMARY OF EXPERIENCE
· One year of  feature editing and managing staff for Red Herring magazine
· More than six years as a staff reporter for the Wall Street Journal

Sept. 2001-present
Freelance Writer based in Silver Spring, MD.
Pitch, report and write 5,000-word features for Washington Lawyer magazine, an in-house publication of the District of Columbia Bar.

April 2001-August 2001
Investigative Editor, Red Herring magazine.
Work with my staff and teams of in-house writers to generate, assign, pitch, direct and edit major investigative projects for Red Herring, a 325,000 circulation magazine that covers innovation in business and technology. Projects so far include a seven-part series about the role bribery, price-fixing and kickbacks played in IPO allocations during the boom; and a story about the rise and fall of the empire Jay Walker built around Priceline.

June 2000-March 2001
Section Editor, Red Herring magazine
Managed two senior writers, as well as other in-house writers and freelancers to produce Lead, a section on business management issues, including boardroom coups, book cooking and bribery . Oversaw my section’s stories from concept to print. Worked closely with my staff to hone their reporting and writing skills. Managed page counts, freelance negotiations and freelance budgets through a period of fast growth followed by equally fast contraction. Spearheaded a company-wide effort to institute a detailed policy on ethical journalism, which is now referenced in brief in every copy of the magazine, and at length on the Red Herring web site. Organized weekly in-house seminars to help writers improve their journalistic skills.

September 1999-May 2000
Freelance writer. Wrote features for Red Herring Magazine and Upside.

July 1997-August 1999
Columnist, Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition
Wrote “Global Village,” a regular column on how people around the world use information technology, based on my two-year, 12,000-mile bicycle trip through Southeast Asia, over the Tibetan Himalayas and across Europe and parts of North America. The column was originally scheduled to run for only six months, but ran for over two years because of its popularity.

January 1994-May 1997
Staff Writer, Wall Street Journal, San Francisco bureau.
Covered management and high technology beats for the world's largest daily circulation newspaper. Broke news on Netscape, Sun Microsystems and others. Wrote regular features including stories on Quicken addicts and profiles of Internet startups. Broke the story about how Morrison Knudsen fired its chief executive Bill Agee for questionable accounting practices, while my competitors relied on a press release and reported that Mr. Agee was retiring.

September 1990-December 1993
Staff Writer, Wall Street Journal, Pittsburgh bureau.
Covered Eastman Kodak Co. and management beats. Consistently broke news and scooped my competitors with agressive coverage of Kodak's mounting money woes and subsequent firing of its chief executive Kay Whitmore. Wrote front page stories about Asian youth suicide, Kodak's executive reshuffles, the Dow-Corning breast implant debacle, and a Santa Barbara pitbull on doggie death row.

May 1989-August 1990.
Staff Writer, Santa Barbara News-Press, Santa Barbara, Calif.
Covered courts, cops and education beats for this 50,000 circulation daily newspaper (then owned by the New York Times), starting as an intern and working my way up to full time staff writer. One of my feature stories, about a huge fire that left 800 families homeless, was awarded a writing prize by a  California journalists' association.

OTHER EXPERIENCE
Co-Editor, The Rosebud, (school newspaper, UCB's Graduate School of Journalism) 1988-89.
Co-Editor, the South Sound Alliance, a 3,000-circulation newspaper, Olympia, WA, 1986-87.
Editor, the Stylus, Boston College's literary magazine, 1982-83.

EDUCATION
Master's of Journalism, 1989, Graduate School of Journalism, University of California, Berkeley
Bachelor's degree (English major), 1986, Boston College, Boston, Mass.

LANGUAGES
French (80%), Spanish (50%), German (enough to get the East Germans to buy me beer).

REFERENCES
Available on request.

CLIPS Back to Joan's clips
‘Before and after’ copy available on request.