User:Dcourtneyjohnson/Dave Johnson (blogger)

Dave Johnson, described as "a fantastic grandfather of the blogosphere ," is the founder and principal author at Seeing the Forest, one of the original progressive blogs, a blogger at Speak Out California and at other sites including Open Left, MyDD and Huffington Post.

Apart from blogging he is a Senior Fellow with the Institute for the Renewal of the California Dream, a Fellow at Campaign for America's Future and a Fellow at the Commonweal Institute -- which are liberal think tanks.

Mr. Johnson co-founded Carbon Tracing, Inc. a company involved in technology for carbon market trading.

Think tank activities
A Commonweal institute Fellow, Johnson researches and writes about the activities of the conservative movement's network of foundations and think tanks and the extent of their influence on American society. He also conducts research and writes about Progressive Infrastructure and issues involving democracy and labor.

Following his widely-circulated report on tort reform, Mr. Johnson addressed the 2004 American Trial Lawyers Association (ATLA) (now the American Association for Justice) national convention on the subject of the funded conservative movement's involvement in tort reform.

He introduced Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos, keynote speaker at the 2006 Progressive Roundtable and introduced Rob Stein of Democracy Alliance at the 2007 Bay Area progressive Roundtable.

A Senior Fellow with the Institute for the Renewal of the California Dream, he works on on progressive messaging and issues involving democracy and government.

A Fellow with Campaign for America's Future, he writes about manufacturing and economic strategy.

Commonweal Institute reports
In his Commonweal reports Mr. Johnson has investigated and reported possible attacks on public education and teacher unions, university professors, trial attorneys and the tort legal system, and labor unions.


 * Responding to the Attack on Public Education and Teacher Unions, A November, 2004 Commonweal Institute report by David C. Johnson and Leonard M. Salle analyzes the conservative movement’s multi-pronged attack on teacher unions and public schools as a long-term, strategic process aimed at privatizing education.
 * The Attack on Trial Lawyers and Tort Law, a Commonweal Institute report by David C. Johnson, October, 2003, looks at the origins of the tort reform movement and its ties to core conservative-movement funders.

Blogging activities
Seeing the Forest, launched in July, 2002, was one of the first progressive blogs. Johnson is also a regular front-page contributor at Huffington Post and co-writes regularly with James Boyce. His work appears regularly at many other sites, including as a front-page author at MyDD, at AlterNet, DailyKos, BuzzFlash, Smirking Chimp and Common Dreams.

In 2004 Johnson was one of a small group of bloggers invited to cover the Democratic National Convention in Boston. The fact that bloggers were invited to covern a national political convention was considered noteworthy, with the bloggers themselves being covered in a number of news stories. Also in 2004 he was a "Hardblogger," blogging on election night from the MSNBC New Jersey studios. In 2006 he was among a small group of progressive bloggers invited to a widely-reported 2-hour roundtable with former President Bill Clinton in his office, further legitimizing the progressive blogs. Each year, he blogs from the Clinton Global Initiative as a featured part of the Social Edge blog.

In 2007, Johnson was invited to cover the 2007 Carter Center Human Rights Defenders conference,.

In February 2009, he appeared for an hour on BBC Radio's "World Have Your Say" program to discuss issues of trade.

He is a front-page author at the political blog Open Left.

Progressive movement activities
Until their merger with Media Matters for America, Mr. Johnson was on the Board of Directors of Media Transparency.

Mr. Johnson has been a regular speaker and panelist at the Netroots Nation (formerly YearlyKos) conventions. He participated in the keynote "Building Progressive Infrastructure" panel of the first YearlyKos convention in 2006 and in 2007 he chaired or appeared in five different panel sessions.

Technology career
Prior to becoming a professional blogger and research fellow, Dave Johnson had a long and varied career in the software development industry, starting out in the early 1980's as a noted video game developer for Imagic and Atari, most prominently as the lead programmer on Quick Step for the Atari 2600 and Atari 400 and Atari 800 series home computers. He also helped port Demon Attack and Atlantis to the Atari 400/800, as well as porting the former to the Odyssey 2 gaming console and programming Injured Engine for the Commodore 64 home computer.

In the mid-1980's, he founded Working Software, Inc. which (among other products) produced Spellswell, the leading spell checker on the Macintosh platform for many years and the first Word Services Apple Event Suite speller. He invented the "keystroke recorder," which was the inspiration for David Pogue's novel, "Hard Drive". Working Software also developed the first spelling checker for AOL, Microsoft Works and the Eudora (e-mail client) on the Macintosh.

Later on, Dave serviced as Director of Sales and BeOS Product Manager at Be, Inc. and as Vice President of Marketing for Gobe Software, Inc. Later he was Vice President for Marketing at Music Republic, a consumer electronics startup.

External articles

 * Watch Out For Wikipedia, Huffington Post, March 3, 2009.


 * Johnson, Dave, Opinion: Why America needs to go back to taxing the wealthy, San Jose Mercury News, November 18, 2009.

Citations in external articles

 * Liberal Bloggers Gather in Las Vegas, Kate Phillips, New York Times, June 9, 2006. Article mentions Dave Johnson and Seeing the Forest
 * Sen. Clinton Expands Appeal to Chagrin of Diehards, Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, Fox News, August, 2005. Article uses Dave Johnson as source.
 * Blogs Face Possible FEC Regulation, Fox News, June, 2005. Article uses Dave Johnson as source.
 * Leaks Continued to Flow in 2006, Fox News, January, 2007. Article uses Dave Johnson of Commonweal Institute as source.


 * "Dave Johnson of Seeing the Forest was asking his readers not to give up. "Read Bloggers NEXT WEEK, Too!" he pleaded Wednesday morning."


 * The Right, The Left, Ideology, the Law and Tort Reform, LawPundit, July 26, 2004. "'I refer here to David C. Johnson of the Commonweal Institute, who, in a speech ... gives an interesting analysis of modern politics at work in America, suggesting that political 'ideology' is the motive force behind current legal and societal change, for example, in the alleged need for 'tort reform'. Regardless of your political affiliation, this article is a must read for anyone wishing to gain a broad understanding of the modern political processes at work in the background of events, especially in terms of how these processes relate to changes in the American judicial system. '"

"David C. Johnson's ... work ... has gotten a small foothold on the far left ... [where] he attempts to smear the liability reform movement as extremist."
 * David C. Johnson and the Commonweal Institute, PointofLaw.com, October 19, 2005.

Citations in books

 * "Dave Johnson, a former MSNBC hardblogger and founder of Seeing the Forest"


 * Jerome Armstrong, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, Simon Rosenberg. “Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics‎”. 2006 - 216 pages. “... but in the current political environment this money is largely wasted," says Dave Johnson, a research fellow at the Commonweal Institute. ...” Page 131.


 * Matt Bai, “The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics”. 2007 - 316 pages. "I think part of what Hunter's asking," said Dave Johnson from the Commonweal Institute, "is, what if they don't? What if, just like with Hillary Clinton's ...” Page 249.


 * James T. Downs, Jim Downs, Jennifer Manion. “Taking Back the Academy!: History of Activism, History as Activism‎.” 2004 - 221 pages. “Dave Johnson of the Commonweal Institute, in a story on History News Network revealed how these organizations work. Pipes is funded by the Bradley ...” Page 119.


 * Andy Stern, “[A country that works: getting America back on track”‎ 2006 - 212 pages. “... the unappreciated Internet voices of the Democratic Party — its young, digital future: Duncan Black of "Eschaton," Dave Johnson of "Seeing the Forest." Page 119.