Gary Kebbel teaches classes in mobile media, ethics, media literacy, global news, editing, and principles of mass media. He is a former dean of the College of Journalism and Mass Communications. He joined the faculty in 2010.

Kebbel taught journalism for seven years at Northern Illinois University, where he was named the best teacher in the Department of Journalism and one of the 10 best in the College of Arts and Sciences. He also was in charge of the DeKalb News Service, which published students’ work in area newspapers.

Before coming to the University of Nebraska–Lincoln he was the journalism program director at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation in Miami, Fla. In that role, he administered the Knight News Challenge, a $25 million contest to find digital news innovations that are used to inform and engage communities. At Knight Foundation, he also helped create the Knight Citizen News Network and the Knight Digital Media Center.

He was the director of the AOL newsroom, helping AOL News grow into one of the largest news sites on the Internet. He is a founding editor of USA TODAY.com and Newsweek.com and is a former home page editor of Washingtonpost.com.

Kebbel is a two-time Fulbright Senior Specialist who worked in South Africa and Ethiopia. He has taught about online news for the U.S. State Department in Russia, Taiwan, Tunisia, Nigeria and Latvia. He also has been a trainer at the U.S. Foreign Service Institute and has consulted on social networking for NORAD and for the U.S. Department of Defense.

Earlier in his career, he was the managing editor of the Troy (N.Y.) Record and the Glens Falls Post-Star. He also was city editor of the Ithaca (N.Y.) Journal.

He has master’s degrees in journalism and in political science from the University of Illinois and a master of social work degree from the Catholic University of America.

His areas of interest are mobile communications, news that engages communities and digital news and advertising experiments.