John Markoff joined The New York Times in March 1988 as a reporter for the business section. He writes about computers and technology issues and is based in San Francisco as a senior writer. Prior to joining the Times, he worked for The San Francisco Examiner from 1985 to 1988.

Markoff has written about the field of technology since 1977. He covered technology and the defense industry for The Pacific News Service in San Francisco from 1977 to 1981; he was a reporter at Infoworld from 1981 to 1983; he was the West Coast editor for Byte Magazine from 1984 to 1985 and wrote a column on personal computers for The San Jose Mercury from 1983 to 1985.

He has also been a lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley School of Journalism. He is currently an adjunct faculty member of the Stanford University Journalism Department where he teaches a course on reporting on Silicon Valley.

The Times nominated him for a Pulitzer Prize in 1995, 1998 and 2000. The San Francisco Examiner nominated him for a Pulitzer in 1987. In 2005, with a group of Times reporters, he received the Loeb Award for business journalism. This year he shared the Society of American Business Editors and Writers Breaking News award.

In 2007 he became a member of the International Media Council at the World Economic Forum. Also in 2007, he was named a fellow of the Society of Professional Journalists, the organization’s highest honor.

Markoff is the co-author of “The High Cost of High Tech,” published in 1985 by Harper & Row. More recently he wrote “Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier” with Katie Hafner, which was published in 1991 by Simon & Schuster. In January of 1996 Hyperion published “Takedown: The Pursuit and Capture of America’s Most Wanted Computer Outlaw,” which he co-authored with Tsutomu Shimomura. “What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture shaped the Personal Computer Industry,” was published in 2005 by Viking Books.

He is married to Leslie Terzian Markoff and they live in San Francisco, Calif.