Roger Fidler
Program Director for Digital Publishing
Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute
310C Reynolds Journalism Institute
Columbia, MO 65211-1200
Phone (office): 573-884-0175
Phone (cell): 573-808-2137
E-mail: fidlerr@missouri.edu
Roger Fidler was a journalist and newspaper designer for 34 years and has been on the leading edge of online and digital publishing development since the late 1970s. As program director for digital publishing at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI), he coordinates digital publishing research projects and the Digital Publishing Alliance (DPA). He has been at RJI since 2004, when he was named as the first RJI Fellow. Before that he was a tenured professor of journalism in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Kent State University.
Before joining the Kent State faculty in 1996, Fidler served as Director of New Media for Knight-Ridder, Inc., and headed the company’s Information Design Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado (1992-1995). He founded and headed two successful companies and was a member of Knight-Ridder’s videotex development team. He served as the first director of design for the company’s pioneering consumer online service, Viewtron (1979-1983).
Fidler first conceived and wrote about digital publications and portable electronic reading devices in 1981. Ten years later, he created the first prototype while he was a Freedom Forum Media Studies Fellow at Columbia University. In 2001, he developed a model for digital editions that would take full advantage of Adobe’s Acrobat software and emerging tablet PCs. At RJI, he has continued to develop the Electronic Media Print (eMprint) model and has field tested it through the Missourian eMprint experiment. He now works with DPA members to develop eMprint newsbooks for reading on eReaders, notebook computers and other mobile devices.
Fidler was named one of four finalists in 2003 (and again in 2004) for the World Technology Award in Media and Journalism and inducted as a World Technology Network Fellow. In 1999, the Freedom Forum Newseum honored Fidler as one of history’s “Most Intriguing Newspeople” in its book Crusaders, Scoundrels, Journalists.
Fidler attended the University of Oregon (1962-66) and earned a master’s degree in Journalism and Mass Communication from Kent State University in 1999. In 2004, he was inducted into the University of Oregon School of Journalism’s Hall of Achievement.