Bill Jensen.com

I met Bill briefly at the poker tournament last year, and now he is coming to the ThinkTank.

One of the things I really push is the power that we all hold publishing on the Internet and how we can honestly, truly, immediately change the world.

Long before there were teenage girls live blogging from Jordan, or German popstars releasing their relationship details on their blog, there were these things called News Papers.

I grew up in L.A. in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s with a very carefully manicured set of information being distributed by all of the major news channels. Then almost simultaneously two new animals appeared on my horizon. One of them was KROQ, which at the age of 15 introduced me at midnight to “Beat on the Brat” by the Romones and thrust me into Punk. On a more intellectual note I discovered the L.A. Weekly. The L.A. weekly told stories that didn’t make it into mainstream news until decades later. Some of the stories covered in it, I still have have never seen published anywhere else, things every American should know. They also published an unknown comic artist Matt Groening who wrote a very ahead of its time comic called Life in
Hell. You may know Matt now as the creator of the Simpsons. In my little universe as a 20 year old punk in L.A., the L.A. weekly was a Big Deal.

So I am reading Bill’s bio below and realize that he is resonsible each week for putting the L.A. weekly on the web, as well as the Village Voice and the S.F. Weekly. These three papers have definitely caused some waves that are still reverberating around the globe.

Bill’s offical title is the director of New Media for Village Voice Media.
He has the task of transforming 15 weekly newspapers into 15 daily online publications. The sites include villagevoice, LAweekly, and SFweekly. WOW!

He has an insatiable need for page views and building communities, and he recognizes (translation: bows at the alter of) the power of SEO and social media in getting the content of the sites out to the world, on both a local and global level.

He’s also launches a series of sites toplessrobot, heartlessdoll, and nudecelebritydeathsuv to diversify the Voice’s content and join deadlinehollywooddaily to form a stable of national blogs.

He once recruited Amy Fisher to write a crime column for one of his newspapers, played professional roller hockey, thinks the Jedi had it coming, and will be looking to get his money back in alcohol after being dealt hand after worthless hand of crap at last year’s poker tourney in Vegas. Photo below proves the fact before.