Rusty Coats started
his career as a reporter for his hometown newspaper, The Evening News in
Jeffersonville, Indiana, and has worked in media ever since. He’s worked for
newspapers in Maine, Miami and Modesto, CA, as an investigative reporter and
columnist, before becoming a technology reporter in 1993, covering the birth of
interactive media. Since then, as an interactive media executive, he has driven
audience and revenue for such news companies as McClatchy, Media General and
E.W. Scripps. Rusty holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and English from
Indiana University and has attended the Iowa Writer’s Festival – which is where
“Out of Touch” began as a character sketch. He and his wife, Janet – a journalist
and former executive editor and multi-year Pulitzer judge – run Coats2Coats, a
consultancy that focuses on a media future that is participatory, profitable
and mobile. They live in Sarasota, Florida and, in true “Brady Bunch” style,
have five children.
