Joe Shea

I founded The American Reporter with 30 members of an SPJ mailimng list on April 10, 1995, and we won a US Supreme Court case, Shea v Reno, to save the Net from government censorship in 1997. We also got the scoop on the IRA's Good Friday ceasefire in 1998, and have played a key role in several foreign elections. We have never made any real effort to earn money, but the editor-in-chief of Open Source publishing, who lives here near me in Bradenton, Fla., says were also the first blog, because we aggregated our e-mail articles on a Website that was updated as often as we wanted. Right now, I'm trying to sell ultra low-cost WiFi to condominiums, write about the presidential campaign and cover debates, keep my wife happy and lose weight playing tennis. I love movies and sci-fi first contact novels and medical, diplomatic and political thrillers. As a contributor to the Village Voice, I traveled around the world, and I was alongtime contributor to the LA Weekly. I was founding editor of the most lavish, polyglot travel book ever, The Beverly Hills Goldbook, speak Spanish at home with my Peruvian wife, knocked down Huckabee's bodyguard at the St, Petersburg, Fla,, GOP debate, and was momentarily famous for shutting down the Hollywood Palladium and forcing changes to end the riots there. I used to work at Esquire, and ave been an OpEd contributor to the LA Times and SF Chronicle. I collected my sonnets in a volume called "A Native Music." I was born on the birthdays of Sir Thomas More, Charles Dickens and Sinclair Lewis, and wish I had their talent!