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What are the professional backgrounds of David Mikkelson and Barbara Mikkelson before founding Snopes?
Executive summary
David and Barbara Mikkelson founded the site that became Snopes in 1994 after collaborating on Usenet’s alt.folklore.urban; David is described repeatedly as having a technical/computer background and a series of engineering and tech-related jobs, while Barbara is repeatedly described as a bookkeeper with bookkeeping and administrative roles on the site [1] [2]. Biographical sketches and Snopes’s own team page also note retirement dates and confirm their roles [3] [2].
1. How they met and why their pre-Snopes backgrounds matter
David Mikkelson emerged from early internet forums as an active participant in alt.folklore.urban and had the technical skills to build and run a website; Barbara Hamel (later Mikkelson) is identified in multiple profiles as a Canadian bookkeeper who brought administrative and bookkeeping skills to the enterprise—this combination of tech and bookkeeping directly shaped Snopes’ origin as a hobbyist Usenet offshoot turned public site in 1994 [1] [2].
2. David Mikkelson: the technical résumé and early jobs
Profiles and Snopes’ own author bio list David’s formal education as a B.S. in Computer Science and describe prior employment spanning newspapers, electronics and aerospace firms, government mail, and HMO work—explicitly naming the News-Chronicle, Teledyne Electronics, USPS, JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), Digital Equipment Corporation, Rocketdyne, and Health Net (HMO) as previous employers [4]. Journalistic reporting and features add that he was a computer programmer active in online message boards before Snopes [1] [5].
3. Barbara Mikkelson: bookkeeping, administration, and early editorial work
Contemporary coverage and Wired’s reporting say Barbara handled bookkeeping for the pair’s incorporated company and assisted with research and writing early on; profiles describe her as a bookkeeper from Canada who contributed administratively and editorially before reducing her on-site writing by the mid-2010s [2] [1] [6]. Snopes’ team page lists her retirement in 2014, consistent with reporting that she had not written for the site in several years by mid‑2014 [3] [6].
4. How their backgrounds translated into governance of Snopes
When David lost a job in 2002 he focused on the site full time and, per reporting, incorporated the venture as Bardav Inc. in 2003—combining David’s technical management with Barbara’s bookkeeping oversight while both researched and wrote posts early on. That twin skill set—site technical maintenance plus financial/administrative oversight—helped Snopes scale from Usenet discussions to a widely cited fact-checking resource [2] [5].
5. Later controversies and how background claims are treated in reporting
Later reporting documents managerial and editorial controversies—litigation over ownership and accusations about financial management, and separate reporting about David’s admitted plagiarism and lack of formal journalism training, where he stated he “didn’t come from a journalism background” [7] [8]. These items are treated as developments distinct from their original professional backgrounds but show how expertise gaps (e.g., no formal journalism training) were later cited in explanations of journalistic lapses [8].
6. What the sources agree on — and what they don’t say
Sources consistently agree that David was the technical/creator force and had a computer-science/tech work history, while Barbara was a bookkeeper who managed finances and helped with research and early writing [4] [2] [1]. Available sources do not mention other detailed pre-Snopes occupational histories beyond the named employers for David and the general bookkeeping/administrative role for Barbara; they also do not provide exhaustive CVs or exact job titles/dates for every pre-1994 role (not found in current reporting).
7. Why these backgrounds mattered for Snopes’ trajectory
The pairing of a technically skilled founder who could build and operate an early web property with a partner who handled bookkeeping allowed Snopes to grow from a Usenet project into an incorporated site that drew millions of monthly visitors—coverage highlights that this blend of skills enabled both editorial work (researching urban legends) and the day-to-day business/financial side of running a site [2] [5].
Sources cited: Snopes author/team pages and multiple news profiles including Wired, Fast Company, The Seattle Times, BBC, AP, and site bio material [4] [3] [2] [5] [1] [8] [7] [9].