Ari Soglin, Patch Staff

Twitter (Patch): twitter.com/eastbaypatch

Twitter (personal): twitter.com/asoglin

Ari is a senior regional editor with Patch. He can be found mostly in San Francisco's East Bay. 

When you start reading Mike Royko before Dr. Seuss, when you develop a passion for community news, and when believe the web makes for better journalism, you wind up as a Patch regional editor. 

After growing up near Chicago and getting a graduate degree from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, Ari wanted to work on small town newspapers, but he didn't want to see any more corn. So, he headed west. His first full-time job was as the entire sports department for the Paso Robles Daily Press. That was before Paso was wine country, and it seemed just like the Midwest – without the corn.

Ari soon went to work at a tiny weekly paper, The Cambrian, where he kept the citizenry informed about coastal land use battles and fights over water rights while also sharing tales about Captain Nit Wit, other local characters and Hearst Castle.

Ari has continued to focus on stories that directly affect people's lives in the Bay Area, reporting and editing about Sonoma Valley, Alameda, Contra Costa and Solano counties. Ari was a reporter and editor in the Contra Costa Times chain for 11 years before becoming the paper's online editor in 1999. He was the founding editor of GetLocalNews.com, one of the first online community news and citizen journalism networks and winner of an Online News Association General Excellence Award (for pilot site BeniciaNews.com). He also wrote the blog Citizen Paine on citizen journalism. After another stint running newspaper web sites – ContraCostaTimes.com and InsideBayArea.com – he joined Patch in 2009.

Other stuff:

Father of two

Cubs, not Sox

Phone: Galaxy S3

Foursquare junkie