David Welch Pogue (born March 9, 1963) is an American technology and science writer and TV presenter, and correspondent for CBS News Sunday Morning.

He has hosted 18 Nova specials on PBS, including Nova ScienceNow, the Making Stuff series in 2011 and 2013, and Hunting the Elements in 2012. Pogue has written or co-written seven books in the For Dummies series, and in 1999, he launched his own series of computer how-to books called the Missing Manual series, which now includes more than 100 titles. He also wrote The World According to Twitter (2009) and Pogue's Basics (2014), a New York Times bestseller.

In 2013, Pogue left The New York Times to join Yahoo!, where he would create a new consumer-technology Web site. In 2018 he returned to the Times as the writer of the "Crowdwise" feature for the "Smarter Living" section.

Early years

Pogue was born in Shaker Heights, Ohio, the son of Richard Welch Pogue, an attorney and former managing partner at Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue, and Patricia Ruth Raney. Pogue graduated from Yale University in 1985 summa cum laude, earning a bachelor's degree in music. He spent ten years working in New York intermittently as a conductor and arranger in Broadway musicals.

Career

thumb|Pogue in 2007

Pogue wrote for Macworld magazine from 1988–2000. His back-page column was called The Desktop Critic. Pogue got his start writing books when Macworld owner IDG asked him to write Macs for Dummies to follow on the success of the first ...For Dummies book, DOS For Dummies, written by Dan Gookin. In the same year, the Discovery HD and Science channels aired his six-episode series, It's All Geek to Me, a how-to show about consumer technology.

From 2010 to 2019, Pogue wrote a monthly column for Scientific American called "Techno Files".

He hosted a four part PBS Nova miniseries about materials science called "Making Stuff," which aired on four consecutive Wednesdays from January 19, 2011.

Taking up where "'Hunting the Elements' left off, Pogue hosted a three part PBS Nova series 'Beyond the Elements'," about how key molecules and chemical reactions paved the way for life on earth, including humans and their civilizations. The series aired on February 3, 2021.

Pogue's December 2022 report for CBS Sunday Morning, which questioned the safety of the Titan submersible, went viral on social media after the submersible went missing in June 2023 with five people on board.

Pogue is a frequent speaker at educational and government conferences, addressing such topics as disruptive technology, social media, digital photography, and why products fail. He has performed three times at TED conferences: in 2006, a 20-minute talk about simplicity; in 2007, a medley of high-tech song parodies at the piano (or, as Pogue joked, "a tedley,"); and in 2013, offering tips everyone should know ("a driver's ed for tech"). In 2008, he performed at the EG conference, also in Monterey, talking about cellphones, the tricks they can be made to do, and how the phones are often better than the companies that market them.

Consumer advocacy

In July 2009, Pogue launched "Take Back the Beep." The campaign was designed to raise consumer awareness about American cellphone carriers’ mandatory 15-second voice mail instructions. Pogue wrote that the instructions are unnecessary, as most everyone knows "what to do at the beep". Pogue explained how consumers could bypass the voice mail instructions, encouraged readers to complain about the practice to their carriers, and provided links where they could file complaints. Other media outlets reported on the "Take Back the Beep" campaign, including radio stations and blogs such as Gizmodo, Engadget, The Consumerist, and Technologizer. and Verizon Wireless did not respond to the campaign.

In November 2009, Pogue reported on a Verizon customer's complaint that the wireless carrier charged $1.99 for "bogus data downloads" every time an internet connection was established, even if the user did not intend to use the connection. The practice was validated by a reader who claimed to work for Verizon. In October 2010, in response to the FCC inquiry, Verizon agreed to pay up to $90 million in refunds to 15 million customers "wrongly charged for data sessions or Internet use," one of the largest refunds by a telecommunications company.

Conflict of interest and other issues

In a 2005 New York Times review of a hard drive recovery service, Pogue noted that the service, which can cost from $500 to $2,700, was provided to him at no charge for the purposes of the review; but when describing the service for National Public Radio's Morning Edition program on September 12, 2005, he neglected to mention this. NPR's Vice President of News Bill Marimow later stated that NPR should have either not aired the review or paid for the services itself. Hoyt wrote that Pogue's "multiple interests and loyalties raise interesting ethical issues." and a disclosure was added to his Snow Leopard review on The Times web site. Arthur S. Brisbane, The New York Times reader representative, subsequently wrote that the paper's ethics policy states staff members and freelancers on assignment "may not advise individuals or organizations how to deal successfully with the news media."

Shenandoah Conservatory awarded Pogue an honorary doctorate in music in August 2007 for "his unique imagination of the boundary between music as a classical discipline and the computer of the future, and his artistic contributions".

In 2008, Pogue received a Society of Business Editors and Writers Best in Business Journalism award for his New York Times video, The iPhone Challenge: Keep it Quiet.

On May 5, 2009, Pogue won two Webby Awards. His New York Times online video series "was the only winner in multiple categories, earning nods for Best Reality/Variety Host and Technology."

His blog, "Pogue’s Posts" in The New York Times, received the 2010 Gerald Loeb Award for Online Commentary & Blogging.

In 2011, Pogue won the second "Golden Mouth Organ" award on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson for being the second person on the show who, when presented with a harmonica, could actually play it.

In 2013, Pogue was named an Honorary Fellow of the Society for Technical Communication.

Works

Nonfiction

  • Apple: The First 50 Years ()
  • CSS: the Missing Manual ()
  • David Pogue's Digital Photography: The Missing Manual ()
  • The Flat-Screen iMac For Dummies ()
  • GarageBand: the Missing Manual ()
  • GarageBand 2: the Missing Manual ()
  • The Great Macintosh Easter Egg Hunt ()
  • How to Prepare for Climate Change: A Practical Guide to Surviving the Chaos ()
  • The iBook For Dummies ()
  • iLife '04: The Missing Manual ()
  • iLife '05: The Missing Manual ()
  • The iMac For Dummies ()
  • iMovie: The Missing Manual ()
  • iMovie 2: The Missing Manual ()
  • iMovie 3 & iDVD: The Missing Manual ()
  • iMovie 4 & iDVD: The Missing Manual ()
  • iMovie HD & iDVD 5: The Missing Manual ()
  • iMovie 6 & iDVD: The Missing Manual ()
  • iMovie '08 & iDVD: The Missing Manual ()
  • iMovie '09 & iDVD: The Missing Manual ()
  • iMovie '11 & iDVD: The Missing Manual ()
  • iPhoto: The Missing Manual ()
  • iPhoto 2: The Missing Manual ()
  • iPhoto 4: The Missing Manual ()
  • iPhoto 5: The Missing Manual ()
  • iPhoto 6: The Missing Manual ()
  • iPhoto '08: The Missing Manual ()
  • iPhoto '09: The Missing Manual ()
  • iPhoto '11: The Missing Manual ()
  • Mac OS 9: The Missing Manual ()
  • Mac OS X: The Missing Manual ()
  • Mac OS X Hints (with Rob Griffiths) ()
  • Macs For Dummies ()
  • Macworld Mac Secrets (6 total editions) (with Joseph Schorr) ()
  • Magic For Dummies ()
  • The Microsloth Joke Book: A Satire (editor) ()
  • More Macs For Dummies ()
  • Opera For Dummies (with Scott Speck) ()
  • PalmPilot: The Ultimate Guide ()
  • Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual ()
  • Tales from the Tech Line: Hilarious Strange-But-True Stories from the Computer Industry's Technical-Support Hotlines (editor) ()
  • The Weird Wide Web (with Erfert Fenton) ()
  • Windows Me: The Missing Manual ()
  • Windows Vista: The Missing Manual ()
  • Windows Vista for Starters: The Missing Manual ()
  • Windows XP Home Edition: The Missing Manual ()
  • Windows XP Pro: The Missing Manual ()
  • The World According to Twitter ()
  • Windows 8.0: The Missing Manual ()
  • Windows 8.1: The Missing Manual ()
  • Windows 10: The Missing Manual ()
  • Windows 10 May 2019 Update: The Missing Manual ()
  • Pogue's Basics: Essential Tips and Shortcuts (That No One Bothers to Tell You) for Simplifying the Technology in Your Life ()
  • Pogue's Basics: Life: Essential Tips and Shortcuts (That No One Bothers to Tell You) for Simplifying Your Day ()

Fiction

  • Reprint 1995: Ace (). Mass market paperback edition: Diamond Books
  • Abby Carnelia's One and Only Magical Power (2010, novel for middle-schoolers) ()

References

  • Pogue's Posts blog