Blow was a graphic artist at The Detroit News. Blow became the paper’s design director for news before leaving in 2006 to become the art director of National Geographic magazine. He also led the paper to its first two best of show awards from the Malofiej Infographics World Summit, for work that included coverage of the Iraq war.
In that role, he led The Times to a best of show award from the Society for News Design for The Times’s information graphics coverage of 9/11 - the first time the award was given for graphics coverage. Blow joined The New York Times in 1994 as a graphics editor and quickly became the paper’s graphics director, a position he held for nine years. His column appears on Monday and Thursday. Blow has been a New York Times Opinion columnist since 2008.