Joe Garofoli writes about media at the intersection of politics and culture for the San Francisco Chronicle, an extension of a beat he created several years ago called Red and Blue to examine the political and cultural differences in the country. Over the past 20 years of feature writing, he has covered Seventh Avenue fashion shows, the Jeffrey Dahmer serial murders, two Olympic Games and been on the road covering the presidential race in Missouri and Ohio.

He has won national and regional awards for health, education and lifestyle stories and column writing during a journalistic journey that has taken him from Chicago to Fort Lauderdale to Washington, D.C. to Milwaukee to the Bay Area. He received his masters and undergraduate degrees in journalism from Northwestern University.