Rusty Coats is Executive Director of the Local Media Consortium, which includes nearly 40 media companies driving more than two billion pageviews and 10 billion advertising impressions per month. He also is President and founder of Coats2Coats, a consultancy that focuses on a media future that is participatory, profitable and mobile, working with for-profit and non-profit media companies, startups and foundations funding journalism innovation. Rusty has worked in interactive media since 1993, driving audience and revenue for such news companies as McClatchy, Media General and E.W. Scripps. He started his career as a reporter for his hometown newspaper, The Evening News in Jeffersonville, Indiana, and has worked for newspapers in Maine, Miami and Modesto, CA, as an investigative reporter and columnist, before becoming a technology reporter in 1993, covering the birth of interactive media. He also is the author of the novel "Out of Touch," published in 2011.