The School of Journalism welcomes John Wihbey, a writer, researcher and producer with expertise in data and multimedia journalism, who will join the faculty this fall as an assistant professor. During the fall semester he will teach two sections of Fundamentals of Digital Journalism, a required class for master’s students in the Professional and Media Innovation concentrations.

“I’m absolutely thrilled to come to Northeastern, which has such a long tradition of excellence in terms of training journalists,” Wihbey said. “With the media industry going through such rapid change, I hope we can not only prepare students for this dynamic future but empower them to be leaders and change-agents themselves.”

Before coming to Northeastern University, Wihbey was the assistant director of Journalist’s Resource at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. He was also a lecturer in journalism at Boston University, where he taught multimedia and beat reporting. His areas of interest include social networks, online research and information-seeking behavior, data and access to knowledge issues, and sustainability and climate change. He writes for The Boston Globe, the Nieman Journalism Lab and Yale Climate Connections. He has also reported for The Star-Ledger of Newark, New Jersey, where he covered environmental issues, and was a producer and digital editor for the NPR show “On Point with Tom Ashbrook” at WBUR Radio (90.9 FM) in Boston.

Wihbey recently wrote “Big data changes the way you buy a home,” an article that appeared in the Ideas section of the Globe on June 5.  His article, “The credit cards and the arms race,” appeared in the Globe’s Ideas section on July 19.

He is a graduate of Bowdoin College and holds master’s degrees from the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.