Mike Toner

Toner was born in 1944 in Le Mars, Iowa, and grew up in northwest and north central Iowa. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Toner attended Humboldt High School (Iowa), leaving in 1962. He received a B.A degree in journalism and mass communications from the University of Iowa in 1966 and participated in the University of Oklahoma H.H. Herbert School of Journalism field study in Peru in 1966. He received an M.S. from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in 1967. He was a professional journalism fellow at Stanford University in 1973.

Toner worked as a photographer for The Daily Iowan from 1962 to 1966. He was a night desk editor for United Press International in Chicago in 1966. He was the Key West bureau chief for the Miami Herald in 1966 and a general assignment reporter, copy editor, assistant city editor and science/environment/aerospace reporter at the Herald from 1967 to 1984. He was the science editor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution from 1984 to 1991 and a science writer for the newspaper there until he retired in 2004. He has written for American Archaeology, Archaeology, the Nation, Science Digest, Discover, National and International Wildlife magazines, Cure, and AARP:The Magazine. His reporting is included in Bruce Garrison's "Professional Feature Writing" (1994), Bruce J. Evensen's The Responsible Reporter (1995), William David Sloan's Masterpieces of Reporting (1997) and in the National Association of Science Writers' A Field Guide for Science Writers (1997).