Rate My Professor Jeff Howe

Jeff Howe is an associate professor of journalism in Northeastern University’s College of Arts, Media and Design, School of Journalism. He earned a BSJ in Journalism from Ohio University, an MA in Creative Writing from Boston University, and served as a Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard University from 2009 to 2010. A distinguished journalist and scholar, Howe coined the term 'crowdsourcing' in his 2006 Wired magazine article 'The Rise of Crowdsourcing,' which has been widely cited with nearly 950 citations for the definition alone. He authored the influential book Crowdsourcing: How the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business (2008, published by Random House and translated into ten languages), amassing over 5,100 citations according to Google Scholar.

In his career, Howe was a longtime contributing editor at Wired and has published in The Washington Post, The New Yorker online, The New York Times, Time, Newsweek, and numerous other outlets. He joined Northeastern University as an assistant professor of multimedia journalism on October 25, 2012, advancing to associate professor. He also holds a position as visiting scholar at the MIT Media Lab, where he co-authored Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future (2017) with Joi Ito, director of the Media Lab. Howe's research specializations include crowdsourcing, massive online collaboration, resilience particularly in COVID-19 contexts and beyond, journalism, technology and innovation, media innovation, citizen journalism, and the future of technology and society. He founded Northeastern's Media Innovation Program, developed a new graduate track in media innovation aimed at journalists, and contributes to the Public Engagement with Science Hub and Science Media Lab. His foundational contributions have profoundly shaped academic and industry perspectives on digital collaboration, crowdsourced production, and the rapid evolution of media landscapes.