Richard Menta

Richard Menta is an American journalist, and the publisher of MP3 Newswire. Known for over a decade of commentary that followed the evolution of digital media and intellectual property protection, Menta is also an information security professional. David L. Green, in his book iQuote: Brilliance and Banter From the Internet Age, wrote “Richard Menta is editor in chief of MP3 Newswire, founded in 1998. His commentaries were key in fostering debate on the role of digital music”.^[1]

Professional

During the 1990s Menta worked for various publishers, including Simon and Schuster and American Lawyer Media (New York Law Journal), where he built business models designed to leverage their offline content into the then burgeoning online world. This included heavy early experimentation with digital audio and video, which he oversaw, and this eventually led him to found MP3 Newswire.^[2]

Originally conceived as a site to aggregate news articles from other sources, Menta recognized there was very little informed commentary on a topic that was already beginning to generate heated conflict. By 1999 he steered MP3 Newswire to original content, making it a place for knowledgeable professionals to share their opinions.^[3]

The site proved influential. Yahoo Internet Life named MP3 Newswire one of the “50 Most Incredibly Useful Sites” on the Net in its July 2002 edition. In 2004 MP3 Newswire was named “Best of the Internet” by PC Magazine^[4] and was recommended by noted technology journalist John C. Dvorak in his book “Online!: the book”^[5]

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