Merrill Brown is an educator, consultant, advisor, investor and veteran media executive and journalist. In addition to writing for The Washington Post, he launched MSNBC.com and was the website’s founding Editor-in-Chief. He is currently the Director of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. Brown was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland. He graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a BA in political science in 1974.