Andrew Michael Baron (born 1970) is the creator of

Rocketboom Rocketboom was a daily vlog produced by Andrew Baron in the format of a newscast with a comedic slant. Since 2004 Rocketboom has presented oddities, vlog excerpts, social and political commentary. The Rocketboom weblog and Apollo Pony featured s ...

Know Your Meme ''Know Your Meme'' (''KYM'') is a website and video series which uses wiki software to document various Internet memes and other online phenomena, such as viral videos, image macros, catchphrases, Internet celebrities and more. It also inves ...

, the video aggregator site, Magma and Humanwire. Baron has taught undergraduate and graduate classes at Parsons and was teaching IDTech at M.I.T. when he came up with the idea for Rocketboom. In 2017 Baron was arrested on charges that he stole money from his non-profit, Humanwire, to which he pled no contest.

Early life

Baron holds a BA in Philosophy from

Bates College Bates College () is a private liberal arts college in Lewiston, Maine. Anchored by the Historic Quad, the campus of Bates totals with a small urban campus which includes 33 Victorian Houses as some of the dormitories. It maintains of nature p ...

and an MFA in Design and Technology from Parsons School of Design.

Early career

In 1999, Baron was the owner of a visual and performing arts gallery, Movements Gallery on 6th Street in Austin, Texas which the

Austin Chronicle ''The Austin Chronicle'' is an alternative weekly newspaper published every Thursday in Austin, Texas, United States. The paper is distributed through free news-stands, often at local eateries or coffee houses frequented by its targeted demogra ...

named 'Best New Multi-Disciplinary Space in Austin' in the 'Best of Austin's Critics Poll'. An active music composer throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Baron scored numerous scores for Austin-area artists, including "Mad About Harry", a film by AMFILMS awarded as a Hollywood Film Festival, 2000 finalist. He was appointed by the City of Austin Arts Commission to serve as a Mixed Arts Advisory Panelist, 2001.

Online video

After releasing Rocketboom in late 2004, Baron established himself as one of the first

vloggers A video blog or video log, sometimes shortened to vlog (), is a form of blog for which the medium is video. Vlog entries often combine embedded video (or a video link) with supporting text, images, and other metadata. Entries can be recorded in ...

and arguably one of the most influential. With Rocketboom, Baron built one of the first large audiences around a video show, and went on to generate the first large-scale advertising deals. On August 19, 2005, Baron was interviewed on ''CBS Evening News''. In an "Eye on America", segment CBS veteran

Jim Axelrod Jim Axelrod (born January 25, 1963) is the Chief Investigative Correspondent for CBS News and reports across all CBS News programs and platforms. Axelrod was one of CBS News' embedded correspondents in Iraq and was the first TV reporter to bro ...

commented on the effort at daily news coverage on a limited budget and Baron's early grasp of the next Internet wave. "You know what they call that? Vision." Baron directed a portion of "Killer," an episode of ''

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation ''CSI: Crime Scene Investigation'', also referred to as ''CSI'' and ''CSI: Las Vegas'', is an American procedural forensics crime drama television series that ran on CBS from October 6, 2000, to September 27, 2015, spanning 15 seasons. This wa ...

'' which aired February 2, 2006. Steve Jobs featured Baron's Rocketboom on stage when releasing the

video iPod The iPod Classic (stylized and marketed as iPod classic and formerly iPod Video or just iPod) is a discontinued portable media player created and formerly marketed by Apple Inc. There were six generations of the iPod Classic, as well as a sp ...

and again when releasing the AppleTV. In March 2006, Baron commented on the sale of a week of advertising for $40,000 on eBay in ''Brandweek'': In 2008, Baron created the first version of the

database, to accompany a spin-off show he created and produced for Rocketboom. Also in 2008, with one of the most followed Twitter accounts, Baron made international news when he put his Twitter account up for sale on eBay. Baron released his third major site, Magma, in 2009. In 2011, Baron sold Know Your Meme to Cheezburger in a reported "low seven-figure deal".

Awards

Baron's work had been recognized by the Webbys, the Vloggies and Streamys.

Personal life

Andrew Baron is the son of trial lawyer Fred Baron. Andrew Baron made international news again in 2008, when he used his blog to plead with a drug company to help save his father's life.

Arrest for fraud

On November 16, 2017, Baron was charged with theft in excess of $100,000 from Humanwire, the nonprofit he established to help Syrian refugees. Baron entered a plea of no contest in October 2018. "Prosecutors dropped two counts of theft between $100,000 and $1 million as part of the plea deal." Baron was also given a one-year deferred sentence, charged $26,999.97 in restitution, and made to perform 40 hours of community service. "An investigative report by The Denver Post in 2017 found that the charity, which Baron founded in 2015, struggled with delays in promised aid to refugees. The newspaper found that more than 100 refugees who had been promised aid from Humanwire faced evictions and other deprivations, according to interviews with former volunteers, workers and donors."

References

*Axelrod, Jim. ''CBS Evening News'': "Eye on America" (August 19, 200

*Farhi, Paul. "Rocketboom!": ''American Journalism Review'' (June–July, 2006

External links

Andrew Baron's Official BlogAndrew Baron's Biography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Baron, Andrew 1970 births American television directors Television producers from New York City American Internet celebrities Living people Parsons School of Design alumni Bates College alumni