Damon Kiesow
Professor
Endowed Chairs, Journalism Professions
Knight Chair in Journalism Innovation216 Reynolds Journalism Institute Missouri School of Journalism Columbia, MO 65211-1200
B.S.in Business Administration from Rivier College in Nashua, NH
M.S. in Human Factors in Information Design from the McCallum Graduate School of Business at Bentley University in Waltham, MA
- Paywalls
- Business of Media
- Journalism Innovation
- Product Management
DAMON KIESOW is a digital media pioneer who specializes in aligning community information needs and business strategy in support of sustainable local journalism. He teaches a senior capstone in news product thinking, is authoring the first textbook in News Product Management and is a co-founder of the international News Product Alliance. He is co-founder of the summer pop-up newsroom, the Missouri Information Corps, and creator of an audience and product-focused diversity internship program in partnership with the Institute of Non-profit News.
Before joining Mizzou, he served as director of Product for McClatchy in Raleigh, North Carolina, working with a group of locally-focused news organizations from California to Pennsylvania. While there he reorganized the Product group and created the company’s first Product Design and User Experience Research teams.
Before joining McClatchy, Kiesow 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. He served as the managing editor/online at The Telegraph in Nashua, New Hampshire, where he helped the newsroom pursue a digital-first local news strategy — launching the newspaper’s first mobile app and video journalism efforts. Kiesow worked at AOL in Dulles, Virginia, serving as principal photo editor for AOL News and Sports. His early career included stints at several newspapers in the Northeast.
Kiesow has served as a Knight-McCormick Leadership Fellow, a program run by the Knight Digital Media Center and the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California, in 2011. Kiesow was the Poynter Institute‘s first Digital Media Fellow In 2010-11, where he studied and taught the use of mobile and social tech in newsrooms as well as founded the Mobile Media blog writing daily for Poynter.org.
He is a past board member of the National Press Photographers Association, and the New Hampshire Press Association, was the co-director of the NPPA’s Flying Short Course in 200-2001 and is a former director of the Northern Short Course in Photojournalism.
Kiesow has a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from Rivier College in Nashua, New Hampshire, and a Master of Science degree in Human Factors in Information Design from the McCallum Graduate School of Business at Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts.
Updated: November 17, 2023