About
Damon Kiesow (@dkiesow) is the Knight Chair for Digital Editing and Producing at the Missouri School of Journalism. He teaches a freshman writing course, and a Senior Journalism Capstone that focuses on audience research and product management.
He is the co-founder of the Missouri Information Corps, sponsors a diversity internship program in audience engagement and product management in collaboration with the Institute for Nonprofit News and is a founding member of the News Product Alliance.
Kiesow is currently authoring the first textbook for News Product Management, which is due to be released in fall 2022.
Before joining Mizzou, he was a Senior Product Manager at The Boston Globe helping guide mobile strategy and developing new mobile apps and mobile websites for Boston.com and BostonGlobe.com. and then the Director of Product at McClatchy Inc. working with a chain of local media companies (formerly known as newspapers) from California to Pennsylvania.
In 2010-2011 he was the Digital Media Fellow at the Poynter Institute in St Petersburg, Fla., writing about the use of mobile technology in journalism at http://poynter.org/mobilemedia. He has presented at numerous conferences and webinars on the topics of product management, user experience, mobile media, change leadership, multimedia newsroom management and photojournalism.
In 2011 Kiesow also served as a Knight-McCormick Leadership Fellow, a program run by the Knight Digital Media Center and the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism at the University of Southern California. In 2009 he was a Poynter-McCormick Change Leadership Fellow in a change management teaching program at the Poynter Institute.
As the managing editor/online at The Telegraph in Nashua, NH from 2005 – 2010, he worked to help the newsroom pursue a digital-first local news strategy. Prior to joining the Telegraph he spent six years at AOL in Dulles, VA serving most recently as principal photo editor for AOL News & Sports.
Kiesow is a past board member of the National Press Photographers Association, the Northern Short Course in Photojournalism and the New Hampshire Press Association. He co-chaired the NPPA’s Flying Short Course in 2000-2001 and was chair of the Northern Short Course for five years.
He has taught for a variety of regional and national groups including the Poynter Institute, the American Press Institute, Online News Association, the New England Press Association, the New England New Media Association, the Associated Press Sports Editors, the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, The Society of American Travel Writers and the National Press Photographers Association.
Kiesow has a B.S in Business Administration from Rivier College in Nashua, NH and an M.S. in Human Factors in Information Design from Bentley University in Waltham, MA.
He currently lives with his wife Annette and son Josh in Columbia, Missouri. Originally from Maine, he has also worked at the Bangor Daily News, Ellsworth American and Biddeford Journal Tribune in that state and the Laconia Citizen in New Hampshire.
