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Peter Rinearson |
| Peter Rinearson | ||
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| Born | April 8, 1954 Seattle, Washington |
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| Occupation | journalist, author, entrepreneur | |
| Notable credit(s) | "Making It Fly," The Road Ahead | |
Peter Rinearson (b. April 8, 1954, Seattle1) is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times best-selling journalist, author and businessman.2
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Rinearson attended the University of Washington from which he graduated with a bachelor's degree in communications. During his time in college, Rinearson won first prize at the William Randolph Hearst Journalism Awards program.2
Rinearson originally wrote for the Seattle Times, for which he covered Boeing.2 In 1984, Rinearson won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for a series he wrote on Boeing's development of the 757. By the time he won the Pulitzer, he had left the Times to write books.3
The Pulitzer Prize Board announced a new category of "Explanatory Reporting" in November of 1984, citing Rinearson's series of explanatory articles that seven months earlier had won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing. The series, "Making It Fly," was a 29,000-word account of the development of the Boeing 757 jetliner. It had been entered in the National Reporting category, but judges moved it to Feature Writing to award it a prize.3 In the aftermath, the Pulitzer Prize Board said it was creating the new category in part because of the ambiguity about where explanatory accounts such as "Making It Fly" should be recognized.
Rinearson was subsequently a national semifinalist for NASA's Journalists in Space project, cancelled in the wake of the Space Shuttle Challenger tragedy.2
Rinearson was also the recipient of the Lowell Thomas Prize from the American Society of Travel Writers for his consumer affairs journalism regarding air travel and the John Hancock Award for Business Writing for his Japan coverage.2
He has served as a member of the national advisory board of the Poynter Institute.2
Rinearson co-wrote The Road Ahead with Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold. It was Gates' first book and spent seven weeks at the top of The New York Times best-seller list.2
Previously in the 1980s, Rinearson had written how-to books on using Microsoft Word in MS-DOS for Microsoft Press.4 According to Rinearson's official bio at his company, he "created the first software disk to accompany a Microsoft Press book, which presented a system of styles and style sheets that Microsoft later commissioned him to revise for Word for Windows. This work laid the foundation for the formatting styles built into Word today."2
In 1988, Rinearson founded Alki Software, which created third-party products for Microsoft Word.2 The company created several products it later licensed to Microsoft. He later founded a digital design company, which he sold to Oxygen Media. He then became a senior vice-president at the Oxygen television network, followed by a stint as a vice-president at Microsoft. In 2005, he returned to Alki Software full-time.2
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