Jonathan Greenberg is an author, investigative business journalist and digital media executive who has written more than 100 articles for national publications including New York Magazine, The New Republic, Forbes, Mother Jones, GQ, Self, Avenue, New York Post, Manhattan, inc., Playboy, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Money, Us, Avenue, The Village Voice, In These Times, The Catholic Worker, The Cable Guide, Penthouse and Newsday.
Jonathan's new blog, Democracy, started October 6 with an appreciation of teacher and author Frank McCourt. Jonathan received his B.A. in
rhetoric and literature from the State University of New York at Binghamton and a Masters Studies in Law degree from Yale Law
School. He is the author
of the biography “Staking A Claim: Jake Simmons and the Making of an
African-American Oil Dynasty.” Published by Atheneum in 1990, the book was a multi-generational saga of an
African American civil rights leader descended from the only black chief of a
Native American tribe. Reviews of the well-acclaimed book can be accessed from
this site, including a page one Washington Post Book World review which called the book “a rare biography…that
consistently undermines a reader’s assumptions and prejudices.”
Jonathan spent the first three years of his career as a reporter at Forbes Magazine. There, he worked for more than a year creating the first Forbes 400 list of wealthy Americans, published in 1982. The story of how that special issue was created, and Jonathan’s role in it, was recounted in a biography of Malcolm Forbes, a few pages of which can be read here.
As a journalist, Jonathan specialized in big picture investigative and feature articles. He co-edited the 1992 book, Buying America Back: Economic Choices For the 1990’s, an anthology of 45 progressive, solution-oriented essays by prominent activists, writers and non-profits. Publisher’s Weekly called the book “an immensely important resource for policymakers, community activists, and everyone concerned with building a more humane future.” Jonathan authored two essays in the book, “The Hidden Cost of Corporate Takeovers,” and “Creating a Conservationist Economy.”
Jonathan also authored the novel, America 2014: An Orwellian Tale. Using the pseudonym “Dawn Blair," styled after George Orwell’s real name (Eric Blair), the dystopian novel is a frightening sequel to 1984, in the renamed God’s United States.A review by the progressive website Buzzflash stated, "Destined to become an underground classic...This author has accomplished the most difficult task for a novelist: writing a sequel, with the skill and verisimilitude of another person's work. We couldn't put this book down. It is just too close to the truth, just a couple of turns of the screw away from what America is becoming.”
During the 1990's, Jonathan was founder and for six years CEO of Gist Communications, an 80-person Internet content and software applications company that created the Webby Award-winning gist.com and competed successfully with TV Guide Online. Gist Communications operated in the USA, France and Germany. Greenberg managed a staff of software engineers, editors, designers and marketing professionals who built, implemented and maintained custom TV listings and entertainment editorial packages for clients, including Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft, NBC, CBS, USA Today, CNN and Hewlett-Packard.
Jonathan left Gist in the months following the attacks of September 11, 2001 when he was appointed Policy Director for the New York City Council's Select Committee on Lower Manhattan Redevelopment. On behalf of the City Council, he assessed the federal assistance programs for Lower Manhattan, and wrote reports and lobbied for changes which resulted in earmarking an additional $300 million in federal assistance to small businesses and residents in the area.
During recent years, much of Jonathan’s writing has been focused on strategic messaging for nonprofit organizations. From 2005-2006, he helped manage the New York office of Fenton Communications, the nation’s leading “Public Interest Communications” firm. At Fenton, Jonathan helped manage outreach campaigns for clients that included the two “Save Darfur” rallies in Washington and New York, the Action Against Hunger "Campaign to End Starvation in the Congo" initiative and Stonyfield Farms’ “Profits for the Planet.”
Jonathan has since started, and currently manages two Internet companies. Progressive Source Communications focuses on public interest digital marketing for non-profit organizations. Its most recent work, on behalf of Solar Cookers International, can be found at www.solarcookerscarbonoffset.com.
The consumer-focused www.TV1.com is still in beta format but available for public use. It is a social video network to help people find and share the best web videos and video blogs.