Before becoming a journalist, Gillmor worked as a musician for seven years. During the 1986–87 academic year he was a
Michigan Journalism Fellow at the
University of Michigan in
Ann Arbor, where he studied history, political theory and economics. Gillmor worked at the
Kansas City Times and several newspapers in Vermont, followed by six years at the
Detroit Free Press. From 1994 to 2005, Gillmor was a columnist at the
San Jose Mercury News,
Silicon Valley’s daily newspaper, during which time he became a leading chronicler of the
dot-com boom and its subsequent bust. Starting in October 1999, he wrote a weblog for
The Mercury News, which is believed to have been the first by a journalist for a traditional media company. Gillmor's
eJournal archives were believed to be lost but have been found in the
Internet Archive and are now restored at Bayosphere.com. Gillmor left
The Mercury News in January 2005 to work on a start-up venture in
citizen journalism called
Bayosphere, which aimed to "make it easier for the public to report and publish on the Internet." Launched in May 2005,
Bayosphere closed in January 2006. After closing
Bayosphere, Gillmor moved on to a new project, the Center for Citizen Media, a non-profit organization affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University Law School. In November 2007, Gillmor was named founding director of
Arizona State University's new Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at the
Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. ;Awards and honors Gillmor won the
EFF Pioneer Award in 2002. ==Works==