User:EnvoyJT

Hello Wikipedia. I’m John and I’m honored to be part of the Wikipedia community. I’m a former CNN journalist — in fact I was one of the team of mostly 20-somethings in 1980 that got CNN off the ground. I see a lot of parallels between Wikipedia’s goals and standards and that of good journalism. Truth, transparency, accuracy, objectivity, accountability were the concepts drilled into me by my mentors at CNN four decades ago and I see similar aspirations in the articles in Wikipedia. I like that. It feels very familiar.

I own a consulting firm now and provide strategic communications advice to clients. Most of my work revolves around thought-leadership. I do have clients with Wikipedia pages so I do have professional conflicts of interest. I am more than happy to disclose both the conflict of interest and any financial relationship with any of my clients on whose articles I may engage. But I can’t imagine I would dare edit any of their articles even with fully disclosed conflicts. Why? Because, when at CNN I would not assign a reporter to cover a story in which I knew they had a personal interest or conflict not because it wasn’t their job to be professional and put personal interests aside but because I thought it was unfair to put them in that position. The same applies here I believe. That doesn’t mean I won’t engage on the talk page if there is good reason and would of course divulge any conflicts/financial relationship there as well.

When I’m not working, I like to talk to my wife, a novelist, about her latest book idea, or try and stay up with my four 20-something children. And given my hoosier heritage, I like to day dream of my youth and the days when I could beat just about anyone in a pick-up basketball game.