Before mov­ing to the Cres­cent City in 1997, he was found­ing edi­tor and man­ager of the web site affil­i­ated with the San Anto­nio Express-​News. Accord­ing to Media Audit, NOLA​.com and MySA​.com are the No. 1 and No. 2 newspaper-​connected web­sites in the coun­try for mar­ket penetration.

Jon began his career at weekly news­pa­pers in Iowa, then moved to dailies in Texas, includ­ing a 14-​year stint at the Express-​News. After nearly two decades in print jour­nal­ism — as reporter, colum­nist, news edi­tor, opin­ion edi­tor and technical/​electronic-​reporting liai­son — Jon moved full time into new media. Recog­ni­tion for his work in San Anto­nio new media led to his 11−1÷2 year lead­er­ship of the lead­ing New Orleans and Mardi Gras web sites.

Dur­ing Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina, Jon cov­ered the storm from the Times-Picayune’s hur­ri­cane bunker, not only blog­ging and over­see­ing online com­mu­nity cov­er­age, but work­ing work­ing to keep unin­ter­rupted news­pa­per cov­er­age online after the loss of the newspaper’s print­ing and deliv­ery capa­bil­ity. He also directed NOLA’s expan­sion of forums, blogs and other fea­tures to guide search and res­cue efforts, reunite scat­tered hur­ri­cane vic­tims, and facil­i­tate grass-​roots report­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Jon was part of the team of jour­nal­ists awarded the 2006 Pulitzers for pub­lic ser­vice and break­ing news. NOLA​.com also received the first Knight Foun­da­tion Online Jour­nal­ism Award for Pub­lic Ser­vice in 2006, and a 2007 Award of Excel­lence from the Pic­tures of the Year Inter­na­tional Com­pe­ti­tion for Best Use of Inter­ac­tiv­ity in its Kat­rina Anniver­sary package.

Jon is rec­og­nized by new media indus­try groups as an author­ity on com­mu­nity jour­nal­ism, online com­mu­nity build­ing and tech­niques for cov­er­ing break­ing news events with mobile, mul­ti­me­dia tools. He’s been a fea­tured speaker at many indus­try groups, includ­ing the Knight Dig­i­tal Media Cen­ter, regional press asso­ci­a­tions and the Aspen Institute.

Jon left NOLA​.com in early 2009 to focus full-​time on his free­lance and con­tract work through Dawnsinger LLC. He is based out of his farm­stead in rural Wil­son County, Texas, near San Anto­nio, and also main­tains his busi­ness in the New Orleans area.