Daniel Cloud, formerly a programmer and producer at the Rocky Mountain News http://www.rockymountainnews.com, in Denver, has joined the staff of the Knight Center for International Media as the new senior programmer.

Cloud said he has high expectations for the job and is enjoying the city and warm weather.  He also said he likes a challenge and hopes to develop new applications that will enhance multimedia projects at the Knight Center, such as working with videos online.

“I want to be able to develop solutions that make it easier for videographers to upload their videos and have them appear the way they want to,” he said.

Cloud, 28, has explored several areas in the communications’ field before deciding programming was his calling. 

He studied video and film production and computer science as an undergraduate and went back for a master’s degree in Mass Communications at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, hoping to develop those skills further.

But soon, his focus changed.

“When I got to school and took the programming class my second semester, I realized that that was really where I was going to end up,” Cloud said, adding that he also knew he would like to stay close to journalism.

“My family history is around news and newspapers, so that has always been a part of my life,” he said. 

Tilghman R. Cloud, his grandfather, ran the Pleasant Hill Times in Missouri, the paper Cloud’s great-grandfather, Roy T. Cloud, founded.  Cloud’s father, Bill Cloud, a former Miami Herald reporter, teaches journalism at UNC-CH, and his parents met at Newsday, on Long Island

“That [journalism] stuck with me, not necessarily consciously,” he joked.

Cloud was born in Long Island and grew up in Chapel Hill, where he met the man responsible for introducing him to the Knight Center.  Rich Beckman, currently Knight Chair in Visual Journalism at the University of Miami, has been his teacher and a mentor. 

Cloud worked on several projects with Beckman, including “South of Here” http://www.southofhere.org/, an award winning multimedia project about Tierra del Fuego.  He was also one of three programmers Beckman took to produce the Web site http://live.specialolympics.org/ for this year’s Special Olympics in Idaho.

Beckman is pleased to have Cloud carrying on the Knight Center’s online initiatives.  “He [Cloud] is a high-end programmer with a solid background in documentary multimedia storytelling and is an excellent producer who understands how to manage and work with a skilled team of content-gathers and designers,” Beckman said.

Sanjeev Chatterjee, Knight Center’s executive director, agrees.  “Daniel’s joining the Center makes a new chapter,” Chatterjee said.  “His expertise helps us add custom functionalities that will allow us to tell better multimedia stories.”