About

I’m Ryan Sholin.

Last updated October 2023.

By day, I work at WordPress VIP on the Customer Success team. (See this post for the origin story, or jump straight to my Work page for a brief history of my employment and whatnot.)

In recent years, I worked for a nonprofit news network,  a newspaper company, a startup, a newspaper company, and before that, a newspaper.

In Spring 2009, I finished up a graduate degree in Mass Communications at San Jose State University, with a thesis project called ReportingOn, funded by the Knight News Challenge.

I’ve been a corporate online news evangelist, an online editor, a reporter, a bartender, a motion picture lighting and rigging technician, a photo assistant, an administrative assistant, and a retail foot soldier in the record store wars of the 1990s.

I’m a self-taught Web developer and designer. Sometimes.

I’ve lived on both coasts, the Southwest, Western New York, I am a native Florida Man, and currently reside in the Loudoun County suburbs (exurbs, some say) of Washington, D.C.

Want to know more? Start at the beginning.

From September 2006 through July 2011, this blog was called “Invisible Inkling.”

Here’s why:

The news business is changing, and so is journalism education, and so are the technological paradigms that supposedly mark the boundaries of both. So, as the nineteenth-century mass communication method of ink-on-paper dries up, it’s time to go stand under the waterfall of clues, open your mouth and your ears, and see how the information flows.

Well that was more visceral than I expected.

The point is, clues are everywhere, but if you’ve got ink on your fingers, you might be looking in the wrong places.

Welcome.

The Usual Disclaimer:

Nothing I write, post, or link to here necessarily has anything to do with any past, present, or future employer, educator, or family member of mine. My opinions are mine and mine alone. Hands off.