I’m excited to announce that Dan Sinker will soon be joining us to lead the Knight Mozilla News Innovation Challenge (MoJo). MoJo is already kicking butt. It’s about to kick even more.

I knew Dan was the right guy for this gig when I learned that he a) taught web dev to journalists at Columbia College for 3 years and b) successfully ran Punk Planet magazine for 13 years. Web dev, journalism and gritty business chops to boot. Exactly the sort of things MoJo is about.

Dan’s other claims to fame include: a year as a Knight Fellow at Stanford; entertainingly imitating the Mayor of Chicago on Twitter; and belonging to a secret mailing list of menschy hipster dads with young children.

Of course, it’s what Dan is about to do with MoJo that has me most excited. When we first met over tap water in an AirBNB’d living room, we jumped right onto the topic of ‘wow we could build a huge and really awesome news innovation community‘. We’re still talking about this today. Dan wants to make it happen.

Dan is going to do an excellent job running the MoJo fellowship, for sure. I also believe he has the chops and vision to turn MoJo into something much bigger.

Welcome, Dan. See you on August 8th.