My name is John Tierney and I’m a journalist from Portland, Oregon.

I’ve spent the last seven years working for TV stations owed by Fisher Communications (now a part of Sinclair Broadcast Group). I started my career making television, including stints as a producer and executive producer for KVAL-TV in Eugene, Ore. and as a special projects producer at KATU-TV in Portland.

Working in broadcasting was a fantastic experience, but a few years back I realized my passion was in online news. Like many news consumers of my generation, I saw the internet as the best medium to produce and consume quality journalism.

I traded in my newscast scripts and started a new job as a web producer. Within a few months I was promoted to be the executive producer for KATU.com and I ran the website until November 2013 when KATU decided to eliminate the digital executive producer role during a newsroom reorganization.

I’m a proud Oregon Duck and graduated from the UO School of Journalism and Communication with a degree focusing on both newspaper and broadcast journalism. I enjoyed Eugene so much that I stayed there for an additional four years after graduating. As anyone who has lived there can attest, no matter where you go you’ll take a little bit of the hippie Eugene spirit with you.

While in college I decided to search out a study abroad program. I knew I wanted to study in an atypical location and learned the journalism school hosted a summer program in Accra, Ghana. Much to my mother’s chagrin, I decided that spending a summer in a third-world country that most Americans couldn’t point out on a map sounded like a wonderful idea.

I was right; my summer in Accra was absolutely wonderful. That trip started a love affair with the African continent that persists to this day. I’ve had the good fortune to travel quite a bit through the continent, including stops in six African countries. (No, I don’t have a favorite – they were all wildly different.)

In January I’ll be returning once again to South Africa for three months based in Cape Town with my close friends who run Volunteer Adventure Corps. While there I will be blogging and writing articles about my experiences throughout southern Africa.

Me during a cruise down the Zambezi River in 2011.