Contact
- Email: john (@) reallygoodsmarts.nyc
- LinkedIn
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Signal: My preferred method of secure communication. Reach me using one of the other methods for my Signal phone number.
- Protonmail: johnkeefenyc (@) protonmail.com. Email between protonmail accounts is encrypted, and making an account is free.
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PGP: The fingerprint for my public key is:
30D1 B2EF ECD0 BCA9 EBFA E13A CC77 A709 6A9C 5F59. Or you can download my full public key.
What I'm Doing Now
I am the Weather Data Editor at the New York Times, leading a team focused on building interactive features to cover day-to-day and extreme weather. Previously, I was a multimedia/graphics editor at the New York Times, where I helped cover the 2020 election and was one of the many people who worked on coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, for which the paper was awarded the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Public Service.
I was a senior data & visuals editor at CNN working on breaking news and with the CNN Climate Team. I was also the investigations editor at Quartz, created and led the Quartz AI Studio, and led the Quartz Bot Studio.
I established and led the WNYC Data News Team, which powered the public radio station's data-driven journalism, pursued original-source investigative reporting and created useful, playful projects. At WNYC, I also was the news director for nine years, executive producer of On The Media, head of digital media, and executive producer for special projects.
I have a little side company called Really Good Smarts LLC, centered on tinkering with and teaching data journalism, physical computing, machine learning, and DIY projects.
I wrote Family Projects for Smart Objects: Tabletop Projects That Respond to Your World from Maker Media, which draws from projects I built while trying to Make Every Week for a year.
For several years, I was an adjunct lecturer teaching classes in data journalism, product prototyping, and online investigations at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. I also have taught classes and workshops at Columbia University, Stanford University, the New School University, the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, and New York University. I was an Innovator in Residence and co-instructor of a sensor-journalism class called "Stream Lab" at West Virginia University.
Bio Paragraph
Let's put that all together:
John Keefe is the Weather Data Editor at the New York Times. He previously made graphics at the Times about the 2020 election and contributed to coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic, for which the paper won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. He has been a senior data and visuals editor for breaking news and climate coverage at CNN and worked at Quartz, where he was the investigations editor and also led the Quartz AI Studio. Keefe established the Data News Team at public radio station WNYC, leading a team of journalists who specialized in data reporting, coding, and design. He ran WNYC's news division for nearly a decade. A self-described "professional beginner," Keefe runs a tinkering and teaching company called Really Good Smarts LLC. He has taught classes about online investigations, data journalism, machine learning, and journalism products at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. Keefe also has led classes and workshops at Columbia University, Stanford University, the New School University, New York University, the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, and was an Innovator in Residence at West Virginia University's Reed College of Media.
