Mike Cassidy is a business columnist at the San Jose Mercury News who writes about the distinctive culture of Silicon Valley. His Silicon Valley Dispatches column has for years looked at the entrepreneurship, diversity and risk-taking tradition that makes the valley a place like few others in the world.
 
Cassidy, who joined the Mercury News in 1986, has covered local government and politics, written a column for the local news section and a column about family life. Before coming to the Mercury News, he worked for daily newspapers in Florida, where he covered the state house.
 
Before finding the good sense to move to Florida, Cassidy was the sports editor of a weekly newspaper in the suburbs of Minnesota’s Twin Cities. There he oversaw a staff of one, himself.
 
Over the years he has been recognized by the Associated Press, the California Newspaper Publishers Association, the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors, the Gerald Loeb Awards for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism and the Peninsula Press Club for his column and news writing.
 
He shares with a team of Mercury News colleagues the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for general news reporting.