Gary is working to create a multidisciplinary, multicampus Center for Mobile Media at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He was dean of the UNL College of Journalism and Mass Communications for two years during which the college created the nation's first Drone Journalism Lab. Before going to Nebraska, Gary was the journalism program director at the Knight Foundation in Miami, where he administered the Knight News Challenge, a $25 million contest to fund digital news innovations and experiments. Previously, as News Director at AOL, he helped build one of the largest news and social sites on the Internet. He is a founding editor of USA TODAY.com and Newsweek.com. He is a member of the U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission subgroup on media and has taught online news and social media for the U.S. State Department, the 
U.S. Foreign Service Institute and the U.S. Department of Defense. He holds master’s degrees in journalism and in political science.