Daniel G. Newman
Daniel G. Newman is a national expert on government accountability and money in politics. He is president and co-founder of MapLight, a nonpartisan nonprofit that promotes transparency and political reform, earning a Knight-Batten Award for Innovations in Journalism, a James Madison Freedom of Information Award, a Library Journal Best Reference award, and a Webby Award nomination for Best Politics Website. Newman has appeared in hundreds of media outlets, including CNN, CBS, MSNBC, FOX Business, and NPR. He led a ballot measure campaign establishing public funding of elections in Berkeley, California, and was named one of Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business. Newman received an MA in political psychology from U.C. Berkeley and a BA from Brown, and was a Fellow at the Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Twitter: @danielgnewman
What’s your favorite comic strip or graphic novel?
My favorite graphic novel is my own book, Unrig: How to Fix Our Broken Democracy! I also especially like A People's History of American Empire by Howard Zinn--this graphic book makes history so much more understandable and engaging than prose.
Favorite non-reading activity?
With swimming pools closed during shelter-in-place, I started swimming in the San Francisco Bay with a group called Odyssey open-water swimming. It's the most vacation-like thing I've done in the COVID-19 era.
Is there another profession you would like to try?
Software engineering. Before starting a democracy reform nonprofit, MapLight, I used to run several tech companies--one in the area of speech recognition software, and the other in computer education. I love pushing technology to do new things.
What’s the difference (at least for you!) between being a writer and an author? How do you shift gears between the two?
For my graphic novel Unrig, I wrote the text and the award-winning cartoonist George O'Connor drew the art. When I was focused on the words of the script, I was a writer, but for the big picture, which brings the words and art together, it was about being the author--thinking about how to create an integrated experience that engages the reader in the inspiring stories of activists improving our democracy.
What do you worry about?
The long-running attacks on U.S. democracy by several hundred billionaire families. These "wealth hoarders," as I call them, are seeking to turn America into a fiefdom, where the very wealthy write the laws and control the government. Why was the U.S. so ill-prepared for COVID-19? Systematic efforts to discredit and weaken government, dating back fifty years and continuing today.
