Me at Muir Woods National Park, just north of San Francisco. Featuring 1,000-year-old trees!
Hi, I’m John D. Sutter. That middle initial is pretentious, I know, but if you Google “John Sutter” you get a whole bunch of stuff about the California Gold Rush. And pictures of a guy with a rockin handlebar mustache. I wasn’t alive back then. And my beard is not nearly as cool as John “Gold Rush” Sutter’s, so I threw the “D” in there to differentiate. Hope that’s OK.
This is my portfolio and resume website. Thanks for visiting. I work as a writer/producer at CNN.com in Atlanta, Georgia. Before that, I did all kinds of random stuff — from working as an environmental writer at The Oklahoman in Oklahoma City, to freelancing and documentary writing in Antananarivo, Madagascar, and, shortly after that, standing on my feet for 8 hours a day while working as a security guard at an art museum. I even had the blue blazer.
At CNN, I write mostly about technology, and thrown in a dash of science. I have a Friday column on “innovation,” which is just nebulous enough of a topic to be really fun. My favorite stories have been about climate change in Alaska, the oil spill in the Gulf and profiles of tech innovators, like Foursquare’s co-founder and the brothers behind Google Wave. I also co-managed the team behind CNN.com’s “Walk in Our Shoes” project, which I’m really proud of. I go on TV to talk about all of this sometimes. That’s always surreal. I’m lucky.
Check out the portfolio section of the site for more on what I’ve been up to there.
To go back a little further, I’m from Oklahoma. Born and raised, through high school. I went to college at Emory in Atlanta, where I was on the diving team. There’s a video of me on YouTube landing on my face while trying to do a front 3.5 off the 3-meter board at a meet in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. That hurt. Black eye. People cheered. But I’m glad so many people like the video. And I promise that didn’t happen at every meet.
On the journalism side of things, I’ve done some fellowships — a post-graduate gig with Poynter in 2005 and environment- and new-media-related fellowships with various Knight centers for journalism.
I love the outdoors, traveling, skiing, writing, meeting new people — all those standard gerunds. I play the saxophone and piano, although not as much as I’d like these days. I’m driven by the idea that all of us are connected, but that no one you meet is ever who you expect them to be on first impression.
So don’t judge me too much off this haphazard profile, deal? Feel free to send me a note with any questions, etc.
