Jon Katz

This article is about the technology writer. For the queer studies professor, see Jonathan D. Katz.

Jonathan Katz (born 1947) is a U.S. journalist and writer. He is mostly known for his contributions to the online magazine HotWired and the technology website Slashdot.

He initially worked as a reporter and editor for the Boston Globe and Washington Post, and later as a producer for CBS Morning News.

He wrote a successful series of mystery novels centered around the character Kit DeLeeuw , a former Wall Street financier turned private investigator, based in Rochambeau, New Jersey .

Expressing disenchantment with "traditional media", he joined HotWired, the online version of Wired magazine, to which he contributed articles as a pundit and media critic.

In 1999, Katz left HotWired to join Slashdot.org. Many of his contributions to Slashdot were focused on the youth subculture of geeks and social misfits. In the article Voices From The Hellmouth, written shortly after the Columbine school shootings in Littleton, Colorado, he commented on the relationship of the shootings to the angst and social isolation of teenage geeks within high school subcultures.

His writing was frequently not well-received by Slashdot readers. Among the charges often levelled at him were that he was not an authentic geek and was seeking to co-opt and sensationalize geek subculture, that his writings (especially those on technical topics) were uninformed gibberish, and that he had an unhealthy fixation on the Columbine shootings. In the Slashdot subculture, variants on the phrase "in this post-Columbine world" are occasionally used with satirical intent, and are regarded as typical of Katz.

List of Publications

Kit DeLeeuw series

• Death by Station Wagon (1993)
• The Family Stalker (1994)
• The Last Housewife (1995)
• The Father's Club (1996)
• Death Row (1998)

External links

• Voices from the hellmouth, Slashdot.org
• Being Jon Katz, interview by Julia Lipman for Poppolitics.com