Nancy Malitz is the founding music critic at USA Today and a pioneer in journalism on the internet. Writing as the cultural columnist for The Detroit News, she concentrated on the intersection of the arts and technology, and she was tapped to create the newspaper's first websites.

She subsequently moved into senior management and worked on strategic planning for media change with Gannett publications. Early in her career, she worked as music critic for the Cincinnati Enquirer and as a European cultural correspondent.

She has written about the arts and technology for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Ovation, Classical Magazine, Opera News and dozens of other publications. Also active as a commentator, she has appeared on NPR, the CBC and Detroit's WQRS, where she did a daily spot aimed at culture lovers.

She grew up in Chicago, where she studied piano at the American Conservatory of Music, taught at the University of Illinois Chicago and wrote her first music reviews for the Chicago Sun-Times. She did postgraduate work at the University of Chicago, where her mentors included the composer Ralph Shapey, musicologists Edward Lowinsky and Philip Gossett, and aesthetic theorist Leonard B. Meyer.

She now divides her time between Chicago, New York City and the Montana Rockies.