The Blog
Rogue Columnist focuses on sustainability, urban issues, and politics in the Great Disruption that is shaping our future. Phoenix and Arizona are particular areas of focus.
The Writer
Jon Talton is a journalist and author. His 12 novels include the David Mapstone Mysteries, the Cincinnati Casebooks, and the thriller Deadline Man. His book Dry Heat was named 2005 Fiction Book of the Year by Arizona Highways magazine. He is also the author of the non-fiction book A Brief History of Phoenix.
For more than 25 years, Jon has covered business and finance, specializing in urban economies, energy, real estate, economics, and public policy. He has been a columnist for the Arizona Republic, Charlotte Observer, and Rocky Mountain News, and his columns have appeared throughout North America via the New York Times News Service and other news services. He has been a regular guest on CNBC and is currently the economics columnist at the Seattle Times.
Jon also served as business editor for several newspapers, including the Dayton Daily News, Rocky Mountain News, Cincinnati Enquirer, and Charlotte Observer. At Dayton, he was part of a team that became a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Public Service for the nation’s first computer-assisted report on worker safety. In Charlotte, the business section was honored as one of the nation’s best by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers.
Among the major stories he covered are the landmark Texaco-Pennzoil trial, the collapse of energy prices in the 1980s, the troubles of General Motors and the American auto industry, the big bank mergers of the 1990s, America’s downtown renaissance, and the Great Recession. He was a Knight Western Fellow in Journalism at the University of Southern California and a community fellow at the Morrison Institute at Arizona State University.
Before journalism, Jon worked for four years as an ambulance medic in the inner city of Phoenix and elsewhere. He also served as a theater instructor at Southeastern Oklahoma State University. A fourth-generation Arizonan, Jon attended Kenilworth School, Coronado High School, Arizona State University, and Miami University.