Jake Dobkin
American journalist and blogger
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jacob "Jake" Dobkin[1] is an American journalist, blogger, author, and co-founder of Gothamist. He is currently a director of New York Public Radio.[2][3]
New York University (MBA)
Jake Dobkin | |
|---|---|
| Born | Jacob Dobkin New York City, U.S. |
| Education | Columbia University (BA) New York University (MBA) |
| Occupations | Journalist, publisher, author |
| Employer | New York Public Radio |
| Known for | Co-founding Gothamist |
Biography
Dobkin is a native of New York City and grew up in Park Slope, Brooklyn.[4] He graduated from Stuyvesant High School, attended Binghamton University, and graduated from Columbia University in 1998.[5][6] He also received an MBA from New York University Stern School of Business in 2005.[7]
Dobkin worked as an IT consultant when he co-founded the blog Gothamist in 2003 with his Columbia classmate, Jen Chung.[8][9] He left his job to work for the blog full-time in 2005. In 2007 and 2008, he and Chung were named one of "New York's coolest tech people" by Business Insider.[10]
He once criticized The New York Times prior to a panel with media critic David Carr, calling the paper's “old-fashioned reporting” out-of-touch with a younger generation of readers.[11] New York magazine and Gawker claimed that his comments sabotaged the company's supposedly successful acquisition by James L. Dolan's media company Cablevision.[12][13][14][15]
In 2017, Gothamist was purchased by DNAinfo, founded by conservative billionaire Joe Ricketts, and Dobkin was kept to run the blog.[16][17] Ricketts shut down the site in November 2017 after writers voted to unionize.[18] WNYC announced in 2018 that it has pooled the resources to buy the blog and hired Dobkin and Chung.[19]
In 2013, he started a column called Ask a Native New Yorker, and adapted his columns into a book of the same name that was published in 2019.[20] He is also a photographer of street art and urban landscapes.[21][22]