December 29, 2003

My Résumé

Here is my online résumé...

I am William H. "Bill" Hobbs and I live in Franklin, Tennessee. I am a highly experienced journalist and commentator who has extensive experience as a newspaper reporter, magazine editor and in editing and publishing news online.

I work in the University Marketing and Communications office at Belmont University, where I do a variety of public relations and press relations work and assist faculty members in setting up weblogs. I have successfully leveraged one faculty member's blog into mainstream media coverage and frequent publication of his commentaries.

I was born near Philadelphia, Pa., and attended K-12 public schools on an accelerated college-prep track. I studied history and political science for three years at David Lipscomb University in Nashville, then served as a legislative aide in the Tennessee state legislature before transferring to Abilene Christian University in Texas to complete my B.A. degree in Journalism. ACU, by the way, has one of the finest journalism programs anywhere.

My wife, Anna, and I have two children - a daughter, age 7 , and a son, age 2.

I do freelance work, including writing, editing and public relations work, including writing press releases, ghost-writing opeds, and editing book manuscripts, and am currently accepting freelance writing and editing projects.

My email address is bill-at-billhobbs.com. You may email me for additional contact information. Substitute the @ symbol for the -at-.

A litte more info:

For more than two years, until January 2004, I was a senior editor of Corante.com, a technology business news weblog. My reporting experience includes many years covering business and public policy for newspapers and magazines, and covering general news and the police-crime-courts beat, as well as writing political commentary, and helping launch two Internet-based news distribution companies. I also have served as a magazine editor, and vice president of an Internet news database company.

I also helped launch this company, which provides electronic news feeds for business and organization web sites, and provides research tools and information services like this to businesses and consumers.

Before all of that, I was a writer for and then assistant editor of a monthly entertainment magazine called New Country, a monthly magazine for country music fans. That gig started in February 1994 and ended in June 1996 issue. The magazine shut down due to financial difficulties a year later. Before that, I was a regional general assignments reporter for The Tennessean, a reporter for the Nashville Business Journal (where I covered a variety of business beats including real estate, healthcare and economic development). A long time ago, I was a reporter for the Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle, the Lubbock Avalanche Journal, and the Abilene Reporter News.

I have been a freelance writer and editor either part-time or full-time since 1993. I have a large and varied portfolio of freelance work for various newspapers, magazines and trade journals. I write extensively on business topics, and have also done a large amount of music and entertainment-related writing.

I did extensive editing work on the second edition of this book, Paying With Plastic: The Digital Revolution in Buying and Borrowing, which the last I heard was scheduled to published sometime in 2004 by MIT Press. I recently edited two other business books.

I wrote a weekly column from January 2001 to May 2002 on business, public policy and economic issues for Nashville City Paper, and made numerous radio and television appearances in connection with the column. I've posted a complete list of links to all of my City Paper columns here, along with other things I've written.

I wrote extensively for Business Nashville magazine, published by Nashville Post and recently re-launched as Business Tennessee, from September 1993 until a couple years ago, covering topics ranging from healthcare, transportation and economic development to technology, ecommerce, real estate and the music industry. The magazine did not publish its content online, however, one of these days I'll add those to my online portfolio as PDF files. I also wrote a lot of articles for Nashville Life magazine, a sister lifestyles publication. And I wrote extensively for In Review, a Nashville weekly newspaper, from May 1997 through November 2000 when two unrelated things happened: It ceased publication and I got married.

I've also served as a press assistant for a mayoral candidate, authored two comprehensive guides to Nashville for the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, and have been a contributing writer to two books, MusicHound Country: The Essential Album Guide (Visible Ink Press, 1997 ) and the Country Music Foundation's Encyclopedia of Country Music (Country Music Foundation/Oxford University Press, 1998). And I've written country music record reviews for the St. Petersburg Times, and articles for trade publications as diverse as Amusement Business, Plastics News and Plants Sites & Parks.

At Abilene Christian University, I was an editor of the The Optimist, the student newspaper. At David Lipscomb University, I majored in American history and also served as a legislative aide during the 1985 session of the Tennessee General Assembly

If you are interested having me do some writing for you, email me!