Xeni Jardin
Xeni Jardin |
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Xeni Jardin (IPA: [ʃhɛniː dʒɑːrdæn]) (born August 5 1972)is a journalist and weblogger in the United States. She is known for her position as co-editor of the collaborative weblog Boing Boing; as a contributor to Wired and Wired News, and as a correspondent for the National Public Radio show Day to Day. She has also worked as a guest technology news commentator for television networks such as CNN, Fox News and ABC.
Life and work
Xeni Jardin was born in Richmond, Virginia. Her father, artist Glenn B. Hamm Jr., died in August 1980 of ALS. She left home at age 14, but remained in school in Richmond. Formerly known as Xeniflóres Hamm, and Xeniflóres Jardin Hamm, she currently goes by the name Xeni Jardin. "Xeniflóres" is a Guatemalan name meaning "protector of plants/flowers", and jardin is the French word for "garden."
Prior to becoming a journalist, she was site editor for travel agency Traveltrust, then Supervisor of Enterprise Web Technology for Latham & Watkins before working at Quaartz, an internet calendaring startup.
Her career as a journalist began in 1999 when she was associated with Jason Calacanis's Silicon Alley Reporter, first as a contributing editor, and later as Vice President of Silicon Alley's parent company, Rising Tide Studios. In 2001 she became a freelance writer for Wired and other magazines, and in 2002 she began contributing to Boing Boing after Mark Frauenfelder met her at a party and invited her to be a co-editor. Jardin has also written op-ed pieces for the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. She has also been the main source of an article in The Age talking about the cultural relevance of Wikipedia articles, and the source for an The New York Times article discussing Boing Boing's part in the creation of the Flying Spaghetti Monster internet meme.
Jardin is also involved in television and radio work. In 2003, she began contributing the "Xeni Tech" segment for NPR's show Day to Day, and has appeared as a guest on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer to discuss the Washington Post's decision to remove their comments section (a step Boing Boing had also taken). She has also made appearances on CNN, Fox News and ABC World News Tonight and featured on the BBC Radio 5 show Pods and Blogs discussing her work at Boing Boing.
Criticism
Many readers of the Boingboing site feel that her posts are uninformed, repetitive, cut-and-paste articles from other sources, or factually incorrect (especially from a "journalist").
In March 2005, Jesse Andrews created a script for GreaseMonkey that filters out Boing Boing posts by Jardin. de-xeni plugin
In March 2006, the site XeniSucks.com was created, which criticizes and parodies Jardin's posts on Boing Boing. http://www.xenisucks.com