John Ryan
John Ryan (johnryan.pressfolios.com), the Editor-in-Chief and Senior VP for Content, is an awarding-winning journalist with more than a dozen years of experience in print, new media and film covering complex matters related to the criminal and civil justice systems and more recently human rights and global justice issues. Prior to co-founding Lawdragon, where he oversees all online and magazine content, the Los Angeles Press Club named him a “Print Journalist of the Year Finalist” all three years between 2003 and 2005 for his coverage of high-profile national issues, such as the war on terror, the drug war, political corruption, corporate fraud, film and music piracy and disparities in criminal sentencing, among many others when he served as a staff writer for the Los Angeles Daily Journal. John also twice won the Los Angeles Press Club’s award for “Best Magazine Feature,” once for his coverage of a pro bono effort to overturn a murder sentence and once for his story on a major religious-discrimination dispute. The Press Club awarded him a “Best News Feature, Runner Up” distinction for his feature story on the legal-defense efforts on behalf of accused terrorists Zacarias Moussaoui and Yaser Hamdi.
John moved to New York in 2008 to spearhead Lawdragon’s east coast editorial outreach and has also served as a producer for Zeila Films on the documentary Displaced, about the Somali-American community in Minnesota and a related terrorist investigation there. He has recently traveled to South Africa, The Hague, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Rwanda to research how post-conflict societies forge accountability mechanisms for war crimes and other human rights abuses. Prior to entering journalism, John worked as a research fellow for a major arms control lobbying group in Washington, D.C. and as a researcher for a policy consulting firm.