Gary Kebbel was dean of the College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a journalism professor. He created the MobileMe&You annual conference on mobile media best practices to better inform students, faculty and journalists how to reach audiences on the devices they are using. He was an editor at newspapers in Upstate New York, Night Graphics Editor at USA TODAY, Home Page Editor at washingtonpost.com and Director of AOL News. He was Journalism Program Director at the John S. and James L Knight Foundation, and an Instructor at Northern Illinois University.

Kebbel is a two-time Fulbright Specialist grant recipient where he conducted digital media and social media training sessions at Tshwane University of Technology in Pretoria, South Africa, and later at the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He is a U.S. State Department consultant and trainer who taught digital media election reporting to journalists in Nigeria, Kenya, Tunisia and Fiji and lectured in Russia, Taiwan and Latvia. He has spoken at conferences in London, Paris, Vienna, Salzburg and Beirut. He is a reviewer of Fulbright Specialist applications.

Kebbel is a member of the board of Investigate Midwest, an independent, nonprofit newsroom based at the University of Missouri. He is a reviewer for the Newspaper Research Journal and was a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Digital Media Literacy.

While Kebbel was dean, the UNL College of Journalism and Mass Communication created

• The Nebraska News Service – a student news agency to report about state government and distribute written, photo and video news. The Nebraska News Service has more than 100 clients.
• The Jacht Agency – a multidisciplinary, student-run, independent advertising, marketing and social media business. It was one of the first student advertising agencies in the country.
• The Drone Journalism Lab – the first college lab to study the use of drones for journalism
• The Mosaic Reporting Project – to report on underrepresented populations in Lincoln. The multidisciplinary project was team-taught by advertising and journalism professors.
• The Heartland Project – a year-long, professional journalist-in-residence program designed to increase media coverage of racial and ethnic minorities and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities in Nebraska. The project was funded by the Ford Foundation and was a partnership with the Asian American Journalism Association and the National Lesbian and Gay Journalism Association.
• The Olympic Cities Discovery Project – for journalism, broadcasting and advertising students to become experts in how cities transform when hosting the Olympics
• The Global Eyewitness iPad app – created with students from the Raikes School of Computer Science and Management for student photojournalism trips among the world’s needy and deprived populations. Kebbel doubled the endowment and the number of students who could join the Global Eyewitness international reporting trips.
• The college’s first Maker Space – for student experimentation and innovation
• The college’s first digital photojournalism lab
• An academic minor in media literacy
• Faculty teaching relationships with Tsinghua University in Peking, China
• Faculty teaching relationships with Moscow State University in Moscow, Russia
• Faculty teaching opportunities in New Delhi, India
• A month-long digital newsroom training program at MSNBC.com for faculty who never had worked in a digital newsroom

Before coming to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Kebbel was the Journalism Program Director at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation where he helped create and was in charge of the $25 million Knight News Challenge program to fund journalism and community news innovations.

Kebbel helped create and launch usatoday.com and newsweek.com. 

Kebbel holds an M.S. degree in journalism from the University of Illinois, an M.A. degree in political science from the University of Illinois and a master’s degree in social work from Catholic University in Washington, D.C.