John Barth's Bio

John Barth has spent the bulk of his career tackling big projects, both in public radio and on the Internet. Over the years, he's been a reporter, producer, anchor, teacher, news director and vice president.

In 1988, John was part of the small team that created Marketplace. He left the show in 1995 to join AOL. As General Manager of News and Politics, he grew the AOL news channel to one of the most popular news sites online. Then, John joined Audible.com, a spoken word website where he developed and supervised Audible's original programs and worked on the overall look and feel of the site. He's also been an adjunct professor at George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs.

After more than eight years looking at public radio from the Internet-business side of things, he's back. John is the editorial director of the Public Radio Collaboration project Whose Democracy Is It? Programs from the series will air on most public radio stations November 3-9, 2003.

A Delaware native, John studied political science at the University of Delaware and earned his MA from the University of Missouri School of Journalism in 1979. He's lived in Philadelphia, Missouri, Minnesota, the D.C. suburbs and Los Angeles and even though he misses sunny California, he now lives in Montclair, New Jersey, with his wife, author Kirsten Lagatree and their colorful collection of cats.

Audio
  Lessons of History [excerpt] (01.54). Download: MP3 [1.7mb]