David "Doc" Searls (born July 29, 1947), is an American journalist, columnist, and a widely read blogger.

He is the host of FLOSS Weekly, a free and open-source software (FLOSS) themed netcast from the TWiT Network, a co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, author of The Intention Economy: When Customers Take Charge, editor-in-chief of Linux Journal, a fellow at the Center for Information Technology & Society (CITS) at the University of California, Santa Barbara, an alumnus fellow (2006–2010) of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and co-host of the Reality 2.0 Podcast.

His work with Linux Journal, and as an advocate of free software and open-source, earned him a Google-O'Reilly Open Source Award for Best Communicator in 2005.

In early 1999 Searls joined Christopher Locke, David Weinberger and Rick Levine in writing The Cluetrain Manifesto, an iconoclastic website that was followed in January 2000 by the book with the same title.

Among Searls' contributions to the Manifesto was its first thesis, "Markets are conversations"—also the title of the Cluetrain chapter he co-wrote with David Weinberger.

At the Berkman Center for Internet & Society he leads ProjectVRM, which guides independent software development communities working on Vendor Relationship Management (VRM).

The nickname "Doc" is what Searls calls a "fossil remnant" of "Doctor Dave", his humorous persona at WDBS (now WXDU) radio at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, in the late 1970s.