A career journalist, editor and international media manager with a knack for finding new ways of doing news. A former endowed university professor and professional-in-residence who embedded a media start-up in a major journalism program to train editorial entrepreneurs. Now founder and executive news experience producer of The Newsplexer Projects L3C, developing massive-media editorial productions worldwide with the help of specially trained teams of fusion journalists.

Working with nearly three dozen newsrooms in more than 20 countries over 30+ years, Northrup has helped lead news media into their online future and ushered digital tools into the hands of thousands of journalists. He was among the industry’s earliest adopters and innovators in day-to-day editorial use of personal and laptop computers, digital infographics, mobile texting networks, scripting languages, digital photo archives and online video. Eventually he conceived, funded and built the US$2.5 million Newsplex model newsroom (2002)open_in_new (2004)open_in_new for research, demonstration and training in convergent print-video-online-mobile newshandling.

The Newsplexer Projects advances the Newsplex legacy with a series of non-traditional editorial productions that are designed to change the way significant journalism is done and to more successfully engage essential millennial and post-millennial news participants. Each project is a platform for proofing new editorial techniques and for launching bands of fusion journalists. Fusion journalists are adaptive storytellers who combine the ethics, mission, production values and professionalism of quality editorial work with an atypical range of expertise in making that work more visual, more tangible, more accessible to a contemporary audience. They are editorial entrepreneurs primed to work in the start-ups, spinoffs, NGOs, non-profits, social networks, digital divisions and corporate activities that are becoming society’s new mainstream media.

Northrup’s career includes serving as Director of Publications at the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA open_in_new), as the inaugural Turner Multimedia Professor at Western Kentucky University, a founding board member of the Global Editors Network, originator of the Media Scenarios Project (2007)open_in_new (2011)open_in_new using scenario mapping methods to envision the future of the news business, and executive producer of the 2000 Telly Award-winning “Tomorrow’s News” open_in_new concept video depicting multichannel news operations. He has worked as a reporter, writer, designer, multimedia producer, editor and executive at a variety of U.S. newspapers, magazines and broadcasters including several posts at The St. Petersburg (now Tampa Bay)Times and a corporate position at Gannett. He also served in the U.S. Navy as a Surface Warfare Officer, navigator and nuclear weapons security officer.

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The Newsplexer Projects is registered in Maine, USA, as a Low-profit Limited Liability Company, or L3C. It is a for-profit, social-enterprise form of the typical LLC with a stated goal of performing a socially beneficial purpose, not maximizing income. It is obligated to be mission-driven, so there is a clear order of priorities for its fiduciaries. As such, its hybrid structure bridges the gap between a non-profit and for-profit enterprise, and simplifies compliance with U.S. Internal Revenue Service rules for program-related investments (PRI) by private foundations.