Rusty Coats started his career as a reporter for his hometown newspaper, The Evening News in Jeffersonville, Indiana, and has worked in media ever since. He’s worked for newspapers in Maine, Miami and Modesto, CA, as an investigative reporter and columnist, before becoming a technology reporter in 1993, covering the birth of interactive media. Since then, as an interactive media executive, he has driven audience and revenue for such news companies as McClatchy, Media General and E.W. Scripps. Rusty holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and English from Indiana University and has attended the Iowa Writer’s Festival – which is where “Out of Touch” began as a character sketch. He and his wife, Janet – a journalist and former executive editor and multi-year Pulitzer judge – run Coats2Coats, a consultancy that focuses on a media future that is participatory, profitable and mobile. They live in Sarasota, Florida and, in true “Brady Bunch” style, have five children.