Before making the move to teaching, he spent 10 years as informational graphics director at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, where he led the creation of the first newspaper-based multimedia graphics department. Under his direction, the Sun-Sentinel created its first interactive project in December 1996 and continued as an industry leader throughout his tenure. Wittekind's work has won top honors from the Newspaper Association of America, Editor & Publisher, the Online News Association and the SNDies. In addition to treaching, Wittekind continues in multimedia production as the CEO of Swarm Interactive (www.swarminteractive.com), a company he co-founded in 1998. Swarm specializes in medical animation and custom interactive graphics for news Web sites.