Jonathan Weber

Jonathan Weber was the cofounder and editor in chief of The Industry Standard, a weekly business news magazine and online service that rocketed to prominence in the late 1990s only to crash and burn along with the rest of the dot-com economy in 2001. He had long had ties to Montana — his first job out of college was waiting tables at Chico Hot Springs — and moved to Missoula in early 2002 to serve as a visiting professor at the University of Montana Journalism School. He quickly became fascinated by the myriad issues associated with growth and change in the region, but was also frustrated by the lack of media devoted to those issues. He began to think about how the dramatic changes under way in the media world might create an opportunity for a new kind of publication about the Rocky Mountain region, and the result was New West. Weber has also served eight years as a writer and editor at the Los Angeles Times, and was a cofounder of the Geneva-based international affairs publication World Link.