Speaking on the idea of mass media, the blogosphere, where they meet and their place within a global village, David Liroff launches the Public Media Roundtable Speakers Series at American University's Center for Social Media. The Center for Social Media showcases and analyzes strategies to use media as creative tools for public knowledge and action. It focuses on social documentaries for civil society and democracy, and on the public media environment that supports them. The Center is part of the School of Communication at American University.
David Liroff is the senior vice president of System Development and Media Strategy. David B. Liroff joined CPB in April, 2007, after having served as vice president and chief technology officer at the WGBH Educational Foundation in Boston, Massachusetts. Liroff joined WGBH in 1979, and during his tenure with the station had senior management responsibility for broadcasting, local program production, creative services, membership, major gifts and capital campaign fundraising, and for national "how-to" program production. Most recently at WGBH, Liroff had been responsible for production services, engineering, information technology, telecommunications, and audience research, and he had senior management responsibility for overseeing WGBH's transition to digital production and broadcasting. While at WGBH, Liroff had served on the boards of the Association of Public Television Stations (APTS), American Public Television (APT), Public Interactive (PI), and the Northeast Document Conservation Center. He also served on the Public Broadcasting Service Technology and Distribution Committee and was a member of the Association of Moving Image Archivists. Prior to joining WGBH in 1979, Liroff was director of broadcasting at PBS member station KETC-TV9/St Louis, where he was responsible for programming, production, and audience research. From 1971-1977, he was PTV program director at WOUB-TV20 at the Ohio University Telecommunications Center in Athens, Ohio and was an assistant professor in the College of Communication, School of Radio/Television at Ohio University. Liroff holds a PhD in radio, TV and film from Northwestern University, a master's in speech and theater from Brooklyn College/City University of New York, and a bachelor's in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.