Some of them have Pulitzers, Emmys, Peabodys. Some are in their 20s.
A handful of them are in bands, and many of them have traveled the
world. One of them even wore the San Diego Chicken on his head while
asking a question of the president.
They’ve covered AIDS in the Midwest, sidewalk poets in St. Petersburg,
religion in the Pacific northwest, the Olympics and Hurricane Katrina.
They are copy editors, photojournalists, coordinators, writers, editors
and designers. But most of all, they’re teachers. Some of them will be
dropping in for a session or two, others will stay the whole six weeks.
And they’ll all leave their mark on the 2006 summer program.
Each year is different, with a new crop of students and a new crew of
professionals eager to share what they’ve learned as they’ve explored
the horizons of high technology and the fundamentals of shoe-leather
reporting.
A note to participants: Sit back, pay attention and prepare to be inspired.
Jacqui Banaszynski holds the Knight Chair in Editing at the
Missouri School of Journalism and is an Editing Fellow at the The
Poynter Institute. She has worked as a reporter and editor for more
than 30 years, most recently as Associate Managing Editor of the The
Seattle Times, where she was in charge of special projects and staff
development. She spent 18 years as a beat and enterprise reporter, then
worked as a projects editor at newspapers in the Midwest and Pacific
Northwest. While at the St. Paul Pioneer Press, her series “AIDS in the
Heartland” — an intimate look at the life and death of a gay farm
couple — won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize in feature writing and a national
SPJ Distinguished Service Award. She was a finalist for the 1986
Pulitzer in international reporting for coverage of the Ethiopian
famine, and won the national AP Sports Editors deadline writing contest
with a story from the 1988 Summer Olympics. Her work has exposed a
fraudulent developer, explored the plight of Kurdish refugees in Iraq
and followed a dogsled expedition across Antarctica. She has edited
several award-winning projects, including work that won the 1997 ASNE
Best Feature Writing Award and the 2003 Ernie Pyle Award for Human
Interest Writing. In 2004, she edited a four-part investigative series
on the failure of public defense that was a finalist for the Goldsmith
Award and for the Selden Ring Award. That same year, a series she
edited on the global economy was a finalist for the prestigious Gerald
Loeb Award for economic journalism. Banaszynski, a native of a
Wisconsin farm village, is a 1974 graduate of Marquette University. She
leads workshops for editors and reporters around the world, is a
regular presenter at the Nieman Narrative Conference, APME NewsTrain
and the National Writers Workshops, has taught at API, the University
of Kansas and the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, and has served
as a Pulitzer juror.
Becky Bowers, 27, is a copy editor on the A Desk of the St.
Petersburg Times. She handles wire copy from the world and nation, as
well as local stories that make it to the front page. Two days a week
she acts as news editor, pitching stories for 1A at the afternoon
meeting. In high school, she was executive editor of the school
newspaper and produced teen segments for the local NBC affiliate’s
morning news. She got her first pro reporting job at 18 for a
33,000-circulation daily, the Chico (Calif.) Enterprise-Record, while
studying journalism at hometown California State University, Chico. At
Chico State’s award-winning weekly The Orion, she was a features writer
and chief copy editor. She joined the Times in June 2002, moving to the
A Desk in January 2003. She coordinates one of the newsroom’s in-house
seminar programs, TimesU, founded and chairs the Tampa Bay chapter of
the Association of Young Journalists, and has led sessions for
conferences of the American Copy Editors Society, Florida Scholastic
Press Association and Poynter’s own Florida High School Writers
Workshop. She and her husband Jeremy — who met at debate camp in
Vermont — celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary in July.
Jeremy Bowers, 27, is an operations support engineer for the St.
Petersburg Times — which means if critical computer systems fail on
deadline, he’s the one taking the call. He’s the first to admit he
never dreamed he’d have such a cool job: He always thought he’d be a
lawyer, and has the college policy debate trophies to prove it. He
attended the University of South Carolina, California State University,
Chico, and in August will have a degree in political science from the
University of South Florida, St. Petersburg. So, how did he end up with
a tech job? A computer addiction, and a sweet gig as one of the Tampa
Bay area’s first Best Buy Geek Squad agents. (If you’re nice, he might
show you his badge.) Around here, he’s also known as “Mr. Right Click,”
the name of a column he debuted for the St. Petersburg Times‘ weekly
tabloid tbt*. He and his wife Becky — who met at debate camp in
Vermont — celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary in July.
Roy Peter Clark is vice president and senior scholar at The Poynter
Institute, where he has taught writing since 1979. He is a graduate of
Providence College and has a Ph.D. in English from SUNY at Stony Brook.
He worked at the St. Petersburg Times as a writing coach and served
briefly as a reporter, feature writer and critic. He founded the
Writing Center at Poynter, lending support to the writing coach
movement. Since 1980, Roy has also taught writing to children and their
teachers. That work is described in a book “Free To Write: A Journalist
Teaches Young Writers,” which was published in 1986 by Heinemann
Educational Books. With Don Fry, he is the author of “Coaching
Writers,” published by St. Martin’s Press. Bedford/St. Martin’s Press
published the second edition of “Coaching Writers” earlier this year.
In 2002, Roy with Raymond Arsenault edited an inspirational collection
of newspaper columns under the title, “The Changing South of Gene
Patterson: Journalism and Civil Rights, 1960-1968.” He is the co-editor
of “America’s Best Newspaper Writing: A Collection of ASNE
Prizewinners,” and he was the director of the National Writers
Workshops. In 1996, Roy wrote, “Three Little Words,” a book-length AIDS
narrative that appeared as a monthlong series in the St. Petersburg
Times. In 1997, he wrote “Sadie’s Ring,” published in The Miami Herald,
The Charlotte Observer, Star Tribune in Minneapolis and The
Philadelphia Inquirer. His newspaper novel on millennial themes, “Ain’t
Done Yet,” was commissioned by the New York Times Regional Newspaper
Group and was published as a monthlong series in more than two-dozen
newspapers.
Lane DeGregory is a features writer at the St. Petersburg Times.
She writes about people in the shadows: She went backstage with a
middle-aged singer before his band opened for Molly Hatchet. She traced
the path of a Pepsi bottle — and the boy who stuffed a note in it 19
years ago. She hung out with a fugitive, followed Russian orphans,
spent a week on a carnival midway with the fat man and the midget.
Before joining the Times in 2000, Lane covered news and features for
The Virginian-Pilot for 10 years. She also wrote a travel book: “The
Insiders’ Guide to North Carolina’s Outer Banks.” Her work has appeared
in a variety of publications, including Pagan World Report, Rural
Migration News, Cannibas News, Commercial Fisherman and Music Therapy
Today. Lane received a master’s degree in Rhetoric and Communication
Studies and an undergraduate English degree, both from the University
of Virginia. She was editor-in-chief of her daily college paper, The
Cavalier Daily, and editor-in-chief of her high school’s monthly paper,
The Rockville Rampage. Under her tenure, both student papers won Gold
Crown awards from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association.
Eric Deggans is the first Media Critic to serve at the St.
Petersburg Times, filling a position the newspaper created specifically
for him. Before assuming the media critic duties in August 2005, he
served on the newspaper’s editorial board and as an opinion columnist,
specializing in race issues, pop culture, media and national affairs.
From 1997 to 2004, he worked as TV critic for the Times, crafting
reviews, news stories and long-range trend pieces on the state of
the media industry both locally and nationally. A Times employee since
November 1995, he originally joined the paper as music critic. Now
serving as president of the Tampa Bay area chapter of the National
Association of Black Journalists, he has also served on the board of
directors for the national Television Critics Association and on the
board of the Mid-Florida Society of Professional Journalists. In 2005,
he was selected to lecture at Columbia University’s prestigious
Graduate School of Journalism as a winner of the school’s Let’s Do It
Better! Awards honoring coverage of race and ethnicity. He also was
invited to speak at the 2005 National Critics Conference in Los Angeles
and won top honors for commentary writing in the National Association
of Black Journalists’ Chuck Stone Awards. A recipient of a 2003 ethics
fellowship at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St.
Petersburg, he served as an instructor in the program the following
year – helping teach media ethics to a distinguished class of
journalists drawn from across the nation. As a past vice president at
NABJ chapters in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, he spearheaded creation
of minority affairs reporting positions at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
newspaper in 1993 and the Asbury Park (N.J.) Press newspaper in 1994.
He has also developed a training program on racial sensitivity for
recruits at the Pennsylvania State Troopers Academy. As a guest
lecturer and adjunct professor, he has taught at the University of
Tampa, the University of South Florida, Eckerd College, St. Petersburg
College, Indiana University and many other schools. Additionally, he
worked as a professional drummer in the 1980s, touring and performing
with Motown recording artists The Voyage Band throughout the Midwest
and in Osaka, Japan. He continues to perform with area bands and
recording artists as a drummer, bassist and vocalist.
Andrew DeVigal is a tenure-track assistant professor at San
Francisco State University. He teaches visual and online journalism and
is the coordinator for the online sequence in the school’s journalism
department. Andrew was a Visiting Professional with The Poynter
Institute in Florida, teaching and collaborating in the area of New
Media and Visual Journalism. Formerly, he was web producer/site
& interface designer for Knight-Ridder New Media,
ChicagoTribune.com. Andrew is the founder of
InteractiveNarratives.org, a
site that celebrates the best of Interactive Journalism on the
Internet. He is also co-principal of DeVigal Design, a San Francisco
based interactive firm. Recent design work includes Albany’s
timesunion.com and his J-Dept.’s online
publication Xpress Online.
Steve Dorsey is the Assistant Managing Editor/Presentation at
the Detroit Free Press, a design consultant, and the President of the
Society for News Design Foundation. Steve edited SND’s quarterly Design
Journal for three-and-a-half years, and was a member of their
competition committee for 11 years. He served as SND contest
coordinator for the 21st edition (published in Fall 2000) and has been
a judge for the annual competition, as well as a jury member and
speaker at the 2005 Malofiej in Pamplona, Spain. He’s been a speaker at
conferences and workshops internationally, a visiting professor at
Syracuse University, a guest speaker at The Poynter Institute, and a
frequent speaker and coach at numerous papers. Before Detroit,
Steve spent time at the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader (named one of the
World’s Best Designed in 1998), the York (Pa.) Daily Record, The
Syracuse (N.Y.) Newspapers and the Norwich (N.Y.) Evening Sun. He
graduated from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School and the
Poynter visual apprenticeship program. Steve is a news and
culture junkie, but when he’s not working, he enjoys playing poker and
X-Box games — although any success with either is purely accidental.
Karen Dunlap is president of The Poynter Institute in St.
Petersburg, Florida, as well as a Trustee at Poynter and a member of
the Board of Directors of the Times Publishing Company. As a teacher in
writing, she has led seminars throughout the nation and abroad,
including sessions in South Africa. She is co-author of The Effective
Editor with Foster Davis, and co-author of The Editorial Eye with Jane
Harrigan. She was editor of the Institute’s Best Newspaper Writing
series, and continues as a regular contributor. Dunlap, who has twice
served as a Pulitzer Prize jurist, publishes articles on award-winning
writing. She was a reporter for the Macon News and the Nashville
Banner, and staff writer at the St. Petersburg Times. She also edited a
weekly. After 10 years of teaching journalism at Tennessee State
University in Nashville, she joined the journalism faculty at the
University of South Florida in Tampa in 1985. She began her tenure at
Poynter in 1989. Dunlap is a graduate of Michigan State University and
Tennessee State University, and received her Ph.D. in mass
communications from the University of Tennessee. Her husband, four
children, and grandchildren are the “j” in her joy.
Tom French began work as a St. Petersburg Times reporter soon
after his graduation from Indiana University. He worked on several
reporting beats and began the development of serial narrative projects
that grew into books. The first was a newspaper series titled “A Cry in
the Night,” an account of a dramatic murder investigation and trial
that French turned into a book called “Unanswered Cries.” A year
reporting in a public high school produced the series and book “South
of Heaven.” His series “Angels & Demons,” about the murder of three
women visiting Florida, earned him a Pulitzer Prize for feature
writing. And in 2003, he was one of four Times staffers who spent
months shadowing a handful of Tampa seventh-graders to research “13:
Life at the Edge of Everything.” They went to the kids’ slumber
parties, hung out at their homes, witnessed all the mini-dramas of
growing up. Along the way, they gained access into a secret world
normally hidden from parents. Tom is The Poynter Institute’s first
Writing Fellow.
Jemele Hill, 30, is a general sports columnist for the Orlando
Sentinel, where she has covered the AFC championship, the Super Bowl
and the Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy since joining the paper a year
ago. Before coming to Orlando, Jemele was at the Detroit Free Press for
six years, as the Michigan State beat writer. In addition to covering
MSU for the Freep, Jemele also was sent to six Final Fours, four
college football national championship games, and the 2004 Summer
Olympics in Athens, Greece. She also covered the Detroit Pistons’ NBA
title run in 2004 and the Detroit Red Wings 2002 Stanley Cup. Jemele’s
first job out of college was as a general assignment sports reporter at
the News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., where she won a North
Carolina Press Association award for sports feature writing in 1998.
Jemele graduated from Michigan State. She worked for her school
newspaper, The State News, and had five professional internships.
Originally from Detroit, she has known she has wanted to be a sports
journalist since the 10th grade.
Kenny Irby is an integral figure in visual journalism education.
He’s known for his insightful knowledge of photographic storytelling,
innovative management ideas, and steadfast ethical thinking. He
is the founder of Poynter’s photojournalism program. Kenny
teaches in seminars and consults in areas of photojournalism,
leadership, ethics and diversity. He has traveled to Russia,
South Africa, Singapore, Jamaica and Denmark preaching excellence in
photojournalism. He chaired Unity ’99 Visual Task Force and was
Poynter’s representative to the Best of Photojournalism Committee.
Among his many accomplishments, Kenny contributed as a photo editor to
three Pulitzer Prize-winning projects while at Newsday; was a juror for
the Society for News Design, Annual Pictures of the Year Competition,
White House News Photographers’ Competition and ASNE Community Service
Photojournalism Award; and has received numerous NPPA awards including
the 1999 Joseph Costa Award for outstanding initiative, leadership, and
service in photojournalism, and the 2002 Presidents Award. Before
coming to Poynter, Kenny was photographer and deputy director of
photography, Newsday, Inc., photographer and assistant photo editor,
The Oakland Press.
Mike Lang has been a staff photographer for the Sarasota (Fla.)
Herald-Tribune since 1988. During that time, he’s seen a lot of changes
in the newsroom, but one of the biggest came five years ago when the
Herald-Tribune launched its own 24-hour cable news channel. TV and
print journalists sharing a newsroom — and sharing information — was
a new concept to many. Staff photographers were immediately called upon
to shoot video and contribute content to this new ‘experiment.’ Since
then, most of the photo staff has embraced the multi-media approach
although they are still trying to define their role in this converging
media. Mike is currently the Director of Photography, overseeing a
staff of ten photographers and three imagers in four bureaus.
Larry Larsen is a former technologist and currently is the
Multimedia Editor at The Poynter Institute for Media Studies. He has
co-authored Flash 4 Magic, and contributed to The Flash 4 Bible, The
Flash 5 Bible, New Masters of Flash, and Effective Web Animation.
Larsen is a Macromedia Certified Flash Developer, a former Macromedia
Flash Evangelist, and created content for the Macromedia Flash 4 CD-ROM
as well as all the Flash content for EyeWire’s Flash Foundry. He has
taught Flash design courses offered through ehandson.com and The Urban
Solutions Center, and is a regular guest faculty member at The Poynter
Institute in the subject of emerging technologies. He is currently
working on a system to bring rich media story telling to novice users,
developed several software applications to this end, and has a
technology patent pending. His personal website is www.greenjem.com.
Scott Libin is a faculty member at The Poynter Institute whose
teaching specialties are leadership and ethical decision-making. He
conducts training at television stations and journalism conferences
nationwide in areas including newsgathering, writing, producing and
management. From 1998-2003, Scott was news director of KSTP-TV, the ABC
affiliate in Minneapolis-St. Paul. He joined that station after his
first three years as a Poynter faculty member. He began work at Poynter
in 1995 after nine years at WGHP-TV in the Greensboro/High
Point/Winston-Salem, N.C., market, where he was vice president of news.
Scott began at that station as a reporter, later working as weekend
anchor, managing editor, and news director. Early in his career, Scott
worked in Washington, D.C., first as a congressional press secretary,
then as a national correspondent for an independent television news
bureau serving stations around the country. He holds a master’s degree
in journalism and public affairs from American University in
Washington, D.C., and a bachelor’s degree in English and journalism
from the University of Richmond.
Meg Martin
spent six weeks last June and July at Poynter’s journalism boot camp,
also known, at the time, as the Institute’s Summer Program for Recent
College Graduates. Even after her 27 fellow summer fellows left Poynter
at the end of the program for newsrooms across the country, she was
hooked. She hasn’t left since. She’s now associate editor at Poynter
Online, where she edits, produces and writes for Poynter.org,
after a yearlong stint as Poynter’s Naughton Fellow. As for education,
she graduated from the University of Notre Dame in the spring of 2005,
with a degree in English and a newfound passion for oral history and
narrative storytelling. During college, she was an editor and writer at
the Observer, the school’s daily newspaper, and interned at C-SPAN (during a semester in Washington, D.C.), the Pittsburgh Business Times, WDUQ-FM (in her hometown of Pittsburgh) and Mom’s House of Pittsburgh Inc.
Kelly McBride
is the ethics group leader at The Poynter
Institute, where she teaches journalists from around the world to
strengthen their ethical decision-making skills and to improve their
writing, reporting and editing skills. She has been on the
Poynter faculty since 2002. She conducts workshops in newsrooms
and at journalism conventions across the country. Twice she has
traveled to South Africa to lead advanced reporting and writing
seminars geared toward reporters working in a young democracy. Before
coming to Poynter, Kelly worked as a reporter for 15 years,
spending most of that time at The Spokesman-Review newspaper in
Spokane, Wash. She covered crime and courts for six years and
faith and ethics for eight years. She gained national attention
for a package of stories on gay Christians in 2001 and a series on the
consequences of infertility treatments in 2000 as well as several
stories on the clergy scandals of the Catholic Church. Kelly has
a BJ from the University of Missouri School of Journalism and an MA in
religious studies from Gonzaga University.
Christine McNeal is Deputy Managing Editor at the Milwaukee Journal
Sentinel. She previously worked as a news reporter, copy editor,
entertainment editor, graphics-design editor and assistant managing
editor for the Journal Star in Peoria, Ill. She joined the
Journal Sentinel in October 1997 as its graphics editor. She was
promoted to senior editor/graphics & design in January 1999 to
assistant managing editor in September 2000 and to DME in fall 2003.
Christine is the president of the international Society for News
Design, an organization of 2500 members from 52 countries. She holds a
bachelor’s degree in journalism from Bradley University and has studied
visual communications at the School of the Art Institute of
Chicago. She is working toward her master’s degree in media
management from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Dean Miller is one of those weird executive editors who moved
out of his office and into the newsroom. He did it because he loves to
teach. When he arrives at Poynter in June, he’ll have just returned
from watching a young former staffer (and former Poynter summer fellow)
pick up a $10,000 prize for excellence in journalism. Miller is the
executive editor of the Post Register, an employee-owned 26,000 morning
daily about 90 miles west of Yellowstone National Park. After three
years of circulation growth, he led a radical redesign of the paper in
May. As a reporter, he covered Idaho politics for 10 years, most of
those for The Spokesman-Review of Spokane, Wash. He has freelanced for
The Washington Post, Nuclear Submarine Review, U.S. News & World
Report and other national and regional publications. Miller is the
co-author of a book about mountain lion attacks, has edited four travel
guidebooks and was lead researcher for a book on the RubyRidge case,
which was subsequently made into a television movie. He has appeared on
CNN, National Public Radio, PBS and Monitor Radio as an expert on
western politics and western predator management. Miller was born in
Tennessee, reared in Vermont and educated at Cornell University. He is
married with two kids. The family skis, fishes and travels with every
spare nickel.
Dave Morrison is a Commercial Photographer for the Marketing
Department of the St. Petersburg Times. He sold his first photograph
while still in junior high school. He worked as a photojournalist for
the Times while attending the University of South Florida in Tampa.
Upon graduation from USF, he continued to shoot for the Times until
starting his own commercial photography business
(morrisonphotographics.com) in 1984. He returned to the Times in 1995
to run the Commercial Photo department. Lately, his job is evolving and
expanding. As the internet continues to play a larger part in the
Times‘ future, he has been able to add his love of audio and filmmaking
to his job responsibilities. He now engineers and edits two weekly
podcasts for the Times website. In addition, he is Apple certified on
Final Cut Pro and produces numerous video projects for the Times.
Jim Naughton is a geezer who retired in September 2003 after
seven years as president of The Poynter Institute. Previously, he was
executive editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer. In 18 years at the
newspaper, he also served as national/international news editor, metro
editor, associate managing editor, deputy managing editor and managing
editor. The newspaper was awarded 10 Pulitzer Prizes for journalism
done under his direction. From 1969 to 1977, Jim was a correspondent in
the Washington bureau of The New York Times. He covered urban affairs,
Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, the Nixon White House, the 1972
presidential candidacies of Edmund Muskie and George McGovern,
Congress, the Senate Watergate Hearings, the House of Representatives
Inquiry into the Impeachment of President Nixon, the Ford White House
and the 1976 Republican candidacy of Gerald Ford. This made him, in
effect, the Times’ expert on losers. From 1962 to 1969, he was a
police, rewrite, federal, city hall, politics and state legislative
reporter for The Cleveland Plain Dealer. He worked as a police reporter
for WGAR radio during a four-month newspaper strike. Jim’s love affair
with newsgathering began his junior year in high school at The
Painesville (Ohio) Telegraph; despite working there each summer from
1955 through 1960 as reporter, photographer, editor, editorial writer,
copy editor and proofreader, he professes no culpability in its
untimely death. He was born (in 1938) in Pittsburgh, raised in
Cleveland and was graduated cum laude from the University of Notre Dame
in 1960. He served, with no discernible increase in hostilities, as an
officer of the U.S. Marines from 1960 to 1962. He and Diana
Naughton, parents of four children and two grandsons, now live — get
this — on Coffee Pot Boulevard in St. Petersburg. Jim was the
recipient of a Sigma Delta Chi award for national correspondence in
1973 for writing of the fall of Spiro Agnew and a Press Club of
Cleveland award for politics reporting in 1967 for writing of the rise
of Mayor Carl Stokes. He was a visiting Marsh Professor of Journalism
in 1977 and 1985 at the University of Michigan. He was the only
newspaper editor in America who had a chicken machine in his office,
perhaps because his most notorious moment as a journalist could have
been when he wore a chicken head to a President Ford news conference in
1976.
Jeannie Nissenbaum celebrates her 14th year working at Poynter
this year. She and her husband of 38 years, Dick (Clinical Pharmacy
Director for Wellcare HMO), left the cold and cloudy Wisconsin winters
in 1992 to settle in sunny Florida. While she loves nurturing all her
students and taking care of the details of organizing seminars, Jeannie
confesses she misses the Midwest. A loyal Wisconsin Badger fan, she
graduated with a bachelor’s in social work from UW-Madison. Her older
son, David, followed in the family tradition by graduating from
UW-Madison with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physical therapy and
athletic training. He and his wife, Jill (his former professor!) were
married in 2001, live in suburban Madison and are enjoying their
1-year-old daughter, Sophie! Her younger son, Andy, decided to go east,
and graduated from Wharton at the University of Pennsylvania. He
currently lives in Cucuron, France, with his French wife, Magali, and
their adorable children, three-year old son, Rémy and 18-month-old
Lila. Andy trades options and foreign currency. Jeannie is known around
Poynter as “the party girl,” probably a throwback to her days at UW.
She’s very busy these days at Poynter working with broadcast
journalists and college students! In addition, Jeannie has a second job
at Chico’s clothing store, earning a few extra bucks to be able to
visit her children and grandchildren every two or three months! She’s
bi-partisan in her professional football allegiance, rooting for both
the Buccaneers and the Packers. She loves to cook and entertain, but
her real passion is playing bridge.
James O’Byrne, in 25 years at The Times-Picayune, has done a bit
of everything, from environmental writer to special projects editor to
Sunday editor and, for the past six years, Features editor of the
newspaper. He was among those at the epicenter of the newspaper’s
coverage of Hurricane Katrina. Heading out at the tail end of the
storm, he and a colleague were the first reporters to discover the
devastating effects of the levee breach that would ultimately flood 80
percent of the city, starting with O’Byrne’s Lakeview neighborhood. He
evacuated the newspaper on one of the last trucks out, then supervised
construction of a satellite newsroom in Baton Rouge. He is a writer and
editor on the teams that won Pulitzer Prizes this year for Public
Service and Breaking News reporting. He was also an editor on a team
that won the Public Service Pulitzer in 1997, and was a finalist for a
Pulitzer Prize in explanatory journalism in 1991. A New Orleans
resident for more than 30 years, he currently lives in a rented house
on the suburban high ground with his wife, two sons and two dogs.
Neal Pattison is Journalist in Residence at American University
in Washington, D.C., and a consultant to newspapers and Web operations.
Neal encourages young journalists to think about communication in both
verbal and visual terms. He has been a designer, reporter, editor and
newsroom manager at newspapers with circulations as small as 3,500 and
as large as 350,000. Neal was managing editor of the Albuquerque
Tribune when the newspaper won a Pulitzer Prize for its investigation
of Cold War experiments in which uninformed civilians were injected
with plutonium. More recently, he was assistant managing editor for
visuals and projects at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Neal was a
founding member and later president of what is today the Society for
News Design. He directed staffs in Albuquerque, Seattle and Spokane,
Wash. that won top national and international awards for design and
photography. He has made presentations on design and editing topics
throughout the United States and in Canada, Europe and South America.
Neal is a journalism graduate of Ohio University. He grew up in the
Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C.
Sara Quinn teaches in the areas of design, illustration,
photojournalism and leadership. As director of Poynter’s new EyeTrack
study of newspaper and online news design, Sara recently launched a
test of reading habits in four U.S. cities. The study is designed to
help journalists engage readers and viewers with the best possible
forms for storytelling. Sara encourages visual journalists to
find their voice in the newsroom and to think beyond traditional job
descriptions for ways to contribute their ideas, passions and
abilities. As students fine-tune their skills in design, photography,
graphics and reporting, they’re asked to think about new ideas for
collaboration and ethical decision-making. Prior to Poynter, Sara was
AME for visuals at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, a multi-edition
newspaper which operates a 24-hour cable television station;
presentation director at the Wichita Eagle; and design director,
magazine editor, illustrator and book designer at other posts. She has
received awards from the Society for News Design and various other
organizations. Sara has been Juror for the SND annual competition;
board member of SND and the American Institute of Graphic Arts. Recent
work has taken her into the newsrooms of the Toronto Star, The Miami
Herald, The Columbus Dispatch and The Orlando Sentinel. Sara has a B.A.
in journalism and graphic design from Wichita State University and an
M.A. in illustration from Syracuse University. If you want to get
her talking, ask Sara about her new, little craftsman-style bungalow
(it’s 88 years old!); her two schnauzers, Pete and Boomer; or her
recent getaway to Greece.
Denise Reagan has designed and art directed pages, coordinated
projects, created new content and worked on redesigns at the
News-Sentinel in Fort Wayne, Ind., the Detroit Free Press and the Star
Tribune in Minneapolis. A graduate of the University of Florida’s
journalism school, she approaches design as an extension of
storytelling, one that distills the crafts of reporting, writing,
photography, illustration, graphics and editing into a cohesive unit.
She speaks about typography, photo illustration, idea generation,
creativity and color for the Society for News Design, college students
and other groups. She writes a sassy design advice column called Dear
Update for the SND newsletter (send questions to
denisereagan@mac.com.) In her new role as media planning editor
at the Savannah Morning News, she helps coordinate stories for print,
Web, radio and television. And although some friends think she has
abandoned design for the glamorous world of multiple media, she feels
this move is the culmination of everything she ever learned about
teamwork, conceptualizing, planning and organization through years in
design.
Ron Reason first pursued a journalism career thinking that
reporting was the way to go. He quickly got sidetracked by what was
once called layout, then design, then presentation, and now branding,
convergence and who knows what else. His goal as a news design
consultant: to make publications smarter, better organized, and easier
to use. He focuses on “the whole enchilada,” the combination of images,
text, readability and navigation that every media user first encounters
in order to access the content. Ron has redesigned dozens of newspapers
from Dallas to Dubai. He has conducted training programs for dozens of
others from Indiana to Iceland. For ten years he worked for the St.
Petersburg Times. For five years, he directed the Visual Journalism
program at Poynter including the Summer Visual Journalism Fellowship,
and he remains a frequent Visiting Faculty member. He lives in Chicago,
a great city he is reluctant to leave during the summer (except for his
annual return to work with the college fellows).
Jeff Saffan is a tech wizard who joined The Poynter Institute in
1999. He is the A/V Systems Coordinator and a computer system support
specialist. He was instrumental in the design and installation of
Poynter’s Network Infrastructure, Communications and Presentation
Systems. Jeff offers more than 20 years of professional experience,
including four years at ABC Network TV where he was a Broadcast
Engineer in SMAG (Systems Maintenance and Assembly Group).
His projects included a retrofit of “Good Morning America” studios and
ABC Master Control, installation of “Turning Point” Digital Edit rooms
and field operations for the 1991 and 1992 New York City Marathons.
Jeff specializes in emerging computer technologies and troubleshooting.
“My super power,” he says, “is that I don’t give up.”
Jessica Sandler is a new Poynter Program Assistant and brings to
the Institute more than 20 years of experience in journalism and public
relations. She began her career in broadcasting, working on-air
in Philadelphia before transitioning into corporate communications with
a large retail development group in Princeton, New Jersey. In 1996,
Jessica moved with her family to Tampa and continued to work in retail
marketing; she served as Marketing Director for historic Old Hyde Park
Village for five years. In 2001, Jessica returned to journalism and
served as Associate Editor of Tampa’s city-lifestyle publication—Metro
Magazine—for three years. She contributed dozens of articles to the
magazine and became known for her “Last Word” feature interviews, which
included Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and Buccaneers head coach
John Gruden, among others. Additionally, Jessica serves as an Adjunct
Professor at the University of Tampa. She holds a bachelor’s
degree in journalism from the University of South Carolina.
Chip Scanlan is senior faculty in the Reporting, Writing &
Editing group at The Poynter Institute and director of the National
Writers Workshops. Chip joined the faculty in 1994 from the Knight
Ridder Newspapers Washington Bureau where he was a national
correspondent. From 1994-2000, he directed Poynter’s writing programs
and edited the Best Newspaper Writing series. In two decades of
reporting, he earned 16 awards including a Robert F. Kennedy Award for
international journalism. Chip is a graduate of Fairfield University
and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and spent the
first years of his career at The Milford (Conn.) Citizen, Manchester
(Conn.) Journal-Inquirer and Delaware State News. From 1977-85, he was
a reporter at the Providence Journal-Bulletin, where he helped create
and run the paper’s writing program and edited “How I Wrote the Story,”
a collection of newswriting accounts. From 1985-89, he was a feature
writer at St. Petersburg Times. His articles, essays and short stories
have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, among them The
American Scholar, Redbook, The Washington Post Magazine, The Writer,
The Mississippi Review Web, Fiction Quarterly and The Boston Globe
Magazine, and the online magazine Salon. He is the author of “Reporting
and Writing: Basics for the 21st Century,” (Oxford University Press)
and co-editor of “America’s Best Newspaper Writing: A Collection of
ASNE Prizewinners” (Bedford/St. Martin’s). In 2003, Chip and his wife,
Katharine Fair, wrote “The Holly Wreath Man,” a 25-part
Christmas-themed serialized novel for newspapers that appeared in 27
papers nationwide. Chip and Kathy have three daughters and live on St.
Pete Beach.
Dirk Shadd, 34, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. He graduated with
a Bachelor of Science in Journalism from Ohio University in 1995. Shadd
has interned at the Post-Tribune in Gary, Ind., the State-Journal
Register in Springfield, Ill., and USA TODAY in Arlington, Va. Shadd
worked as a staff photographer for the Philadelphia Inquirer and the
Press-Telegram in Long Beach, Calif. before coming to the St.
Petersburg Times in 1998. In addition to daily assignments and photo
projects, Shadd spends a considerable amount of his time photographing
sports. Shadd worked as the Times‘ hockey photo team leader for the
Tampa Bay Lightning during their NHL championship season, which lead to
a summer filled with travel across the globe documenting the Stanley
Cup celebrations. Shadd’s other interests include swimming, biking,
running, playing PlayStation and traveling. (but not all at the same
time…)
David Shedden is the library director of the Poynter Institue’s
Eugene Patterson Library. He joined the library staff in 1986 and
became director in 2001. David provides reference and in-depth research
services to Poynter’s faculty and seminar participantsSince 1995 he has
maintained the resource center for the Poynter Online Web site. He is the author of the American
Society of Newspaper Editors report, “Preserving a Newspaper’s Past: A
Guide to Developing a Newspaper Oral History Program” and he was a
contributor to the ASNE publication, “The Learning Newsroom.” Recently
he was apppointed to the advisory committee for the University of
Florida’s National Endowment for the Humanities sponsored Digital
Newspaper Project. As part of this assignment, he will be doing
research on the history of Florida newspapers. He holds a B.A degree in
mass communications and an MLS and an M.A. in history from the
University of South Florida.
Robin Sloan works as the futurist at Current TV, a cable and
satellite network based in San Francisco that airs real stories told by
real people. That means he helps figure out where the world of media is
going and what Current can do (or invent) to lead the way. Before
Current, he worked for two years at The Poynter Institute: first as a
reporter for poynter.org, then as a producer for News University.
Before that, in 2002, he graduated from Michigan State University,
where he majored in economics and minored in Nintendo. He blogs with
Matt Thompson at snarkmarket.com.
Bob Steele asks and answers lots of questions on a wide range of
ethics, values and leadership issues. As a Poynter faculty member since
1989, he’s taught hundreds of workshops and thousands of journalists
and media leaders at Poynter seminars. He’s also led sessions for over
85 news organizations across the country including television stations,
newspapers and broadcast and newspaper groups. He’s frequently on the
phone or online advising journalists and media leaders on real-time
ethical dilemmas and leadership challenges. He’s also been on the
receiving end of thousands of interviews by reporters for stories about
journalism ethics issues. In addition to writing for Poynter Online,
Steele has written articles, book chapters, and case studies and
handbooks for RTNDA, ASNE, NPPA, SPJ and other professional
organizations. He spent ten years as a broadcast journalist (reporter,
executive producer and news director) then earned a Ph.D. at the Univ.
of Iowa writing his dissertation on journalism ethics. He also has a
B.A. in economics from DePauw University and an M.S. from Syracuse
University. Steele’s passions include tennis, bookstores, his three
wonderful daughters and two son-in-laws, and his lovely and talented
wife Carol.
Steve Suo, 37, has worked at The Oregonian since 1994. He holds
a bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College and a master’s degree from
Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he
received training in economics, statistics and computer modeling.
His five-part series “Unnecessary Epidemic,” written with Erin Barnett,
was the subject of a Frontline documentary in February and a finalist
for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in national reporting. He also received
IRE’s Phil Meyer Award in 2006 for use of social science techniques in
journalism. Washington Monthly dubbed the meth series “one of the best
pieces of reporting anywhere this year.” The New York Times, in a
review of the Frontline documentary, called Suo’s work “ingenious.”
Beatriz Terrazas graduated from the University of Texas at El Paso
in 1985 with a B.A. degree in journalism. She did missionary work
on the El Paso/Juarez border for two years immediately after
graduation. Her duties included writing and photographing for a
monthly newsletter, translating and interpreting (Spanish/English),
teaching a class of teenage boys, and participating in music
ministry. In 1987, she went to work as a photo intern at the Fort
Worth Star-Telegram through the Capital Cities/ABC Minority Training
Program. She was hired there full-time after the
internship. While at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, her
assignments included the resignation of U.S. House speaker Jim Wright,
Pope John Paul II’s visit to Mexico, the 1992 Republican National
Convention, the opening of a boot camp for first-time offenders at the
Texas Department of Corrections in Huntsville, Tex., and the funeral of
musician Stevie Ray Vaughn. In 1992, she was hired at the Dallas
Morning News as a staff photographer. A few months later she
worked with a team of journalists at the paper on a project called
Violence Against Women: A Question of Human Rights. For the
project, Beatriz documented the abuse of women in Mexico and
Brazil. The project won the 1994 Pulitzer for International
Reporting. Her assignments at the Dallas Morning News have been
varied. She covered Pope John Paul’s visit to Denver in 1993 and
his historic visit to Cuba in 1998. She covered the 1996
Republican National Convention, as well as stories on immigration
issues in the Southwest. She was in Santa Fe when the city opened
the national museum dedicated to artist Georgia O’Keeffe. In
1995, she was part of the Unity ’95 12-member team that received a Ford
Foundation grant to cover the United Nations Conference on Women in
China. She was awarded a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University
in 1998. After the fellowship she retuned to the Dallas Morning
News as a feature writer. In 2000, she won first place for
commentary in the Association of Women Journalists writing contest and
first place in the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors
contest. She has also won first place in the NAHJ journalism
contest for feature writing, and has been a finalist in the Pen Center
USA West contest. Her biggest passions in journalism include good
storytelling, bringing readers stories from undercovered communities,
and exploring the gray areas of human life (where there is no strict
black or white, no strict right or wrong). In her spare time she
reads, writes poetry and short stories, watches movies with her husband
and rescues homeless dogs. She is currently helping edit an
anthology about Latino identity and trying to sell her first (and, from
the looks of things, possibly only) novel.
Juan Thomassie produces interactive graphics for USATODAY.com
and specializes in data-driven presentations for the site. In
1999, he joined USATODAY.com as a senior designer with experience in
breaking news graphics and 3D animation. His primary focus is now
development of interactive data-driven presentations for the site,
which has a unique audience of around 10 million visitors a month. Juan
worked at KRT News In Motion in Washington D.C., producing animated 3D
graphics for television news broadcasts. Before returning to the
East coast, Juan was the Art Director for the Los Angeles Times Orange
County Edition. His print graphics experience includes a stint as
senior artist for the Los Angeles Times, assisting in training and in
the production of the Los Angeles Times’ Editorial Graphics and Design
stylebook. He contributed to the Times’ Pulitzer-prize-winning
coverage of the 1992 L.A. Riots. Juan also worked as an artist
for USA TODAY in Rosslyn, The Times-Picayune in New Orleans and The
State-Times in Baton Rouge. Juan is a graduate of Louisiana State
University and a native of New Orleans. He has been a visiting
faculty member at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies for many
years.
Irwin Thompson writes, “I’ve worked as a photojournalist since
receiving a B.A. in photojournalism in 1984 from the University of
Louisiana in Monroe, La. Upon graduation, I went to work as a staff
photographer for the Monroe News-Star in 1984. In 1987, I
accepted a staff photography position from the New Orleans Times-Picayune where I worked until 1990. Since 1990, I have been at the Dallas Morning News, where currently I’m a senior staff
photographer. I recently was among the News’ team of eight
photojournalists that won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News
Photography for its gripping images showing the pain, chaos and
suffering that ensued after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.
The Katrina assignment underscored the essence of this
livelihood. As a photojournalist, you hide your emotions behind a
camera. But at the end of the day, after you put down your camera,
that’s when it really hits you. Your eyes, and, therefore, your
soul, are the necessary documentation of the visuals — the good and
the bad. I live in the Dallas area with my wife and two
daughters.”
Matt Thompson graduated with honors from Harvard College four
years ago after writing his thesis on the TV show Buffy the Vampire
Slayer. He then spent a year working for the company that brought us
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. After that, he joined the Poynter
Institute as the 2003-04 Naughton Fellow for Online Reporting and
Writing, participating in the summer college program once as a reporter
and a year later as a producer. While at Poynter, Matt and
co-troublemaker Robin Sloan created the journalism horror flick EPIC
2014, snagging mentions on MSNBC, in The New York Times, USA TODAY and
elsewhere. In 2004, Matt joined the Fresno Bee as an online
reporter/producer. He’s currently a deputy editor for interactive media
at the Minneapolis StarTribune, working on young reader initiatives and
reader interactivity.
Tommy Tomlinson has written a local column for the Charlotte
Observer since 1997. He has worked for the Observer for 17 years. Last
year he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in commentary. In 2004,
he won the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ award for profile writing and was featured in that year’s “Best Newspaper
Writing” book. He was also named the best local columnist in America by
The Week magazine. This is his second time teaching at Poynter. A
couple of years ago he spent a week as professional-in-residence at the
University of Georgia, his alma mater. He spoke to 11 classes. Only two
students fell asleep.
Al Tompkins is The Poynter Institute’s group leader for
Broadcasting and Online. More than 10,000 people a day read his online
journalism story idea column “Al’s Morning Meeting” on Poynter.org.
Tompkins is the author of the new book Aim For The Heart: A Guide for
TV Producers and Reporters, which is being used by more than 26
universities as their main broadcast writing textbook. He co-authored
three editions of the Radio and Television News Directors Foundation’s
“Newsroom Ethics” workbook. Tompkins joined Poynter’s faculty from his
job as news director at WSMV-TV in Nashville, Tenn. For 24 years, he
worked as a photojournalist, reporter, producer, anchor, assistant news
director, special projects/investigations director, documentary
producer, and news director. His hour-long documentary, “Saving
Stefani”, was featured as a special Dateline NBC and was awarded the
1999 Clarion Award. The ten-year documentary project tells the story of
a young girl that Tompkins and a medical team found dying in a
Guatemala hospital. He has trained more than 9,000 local television
news producers, reporters, photojournalists and managers in his One-Day
Storytelling Workshops in 30 states. During his two and a half decades
as a journalist, Tompkins has won The National Emmy, The Peabody Award
(group award), the Japan Prize, The American Bar Association’s Silver
Gavel for Court Reporting, seven National Headliner Awards, two Iris
Awards, and the Robert F. Kennedy Award for international reporting.
Anne Van Wagener is adjunct faculty for visual journalism and is
committed to teaching journalists the finer points of color, typography
and design in the news media. Anne provides practical lessons that
teach participants the importance of understanding and interpreting
content in visual storytelling. She emphasizes conceptual, creative
thinking in a collaborative environment. She writes about design,
information graphics, photojournalism, Web design and interactive media
for Poynter Online in a column called The Design Desk. As Poynter’s
design editor, she conceptualizes, designs and produces projects for
Poynter Online and Poynter’s printed publications. A skilled visual
journalist, Anne joined Poynter in 1997. Her previous five years were
spent honing her craft at The Tennessean in Nashville, where she was
the design and graphics editor, design coordinator and a page designer.
She received the Award of Excellence from the Communication Arts
Interactive Design competition in 2002, and designed Poynter Online,
which launched in November of 2002. Anne received her B.F.A. from
Ringling School of Art & Design, Sarasota, Fla. Anne, whose
stylish hand and elegant demeanor have graced our presence and
distinguished Poynter’s design for nearly ten years, will be leaving
the Institute in August to get even better at what she does. Anne is
one of just 20 designers (among more than 200 who applied) accepted for
the Master of Fine Arts program, Class of 2008, at The School of Visual
Arts in Manhattan.
Kristen Walbolt has trimmed excess commas and straightened the
facts at the Ocala Star-Banner, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and the
Los Angeles Times. She also freelanced for a time for Dog Fancy
magazine (seriously, asked her about the Airedale Terrier) and edited a
book by Los Angeles Times sports columnist Bill Plaschke.
Butch Ward writes “On Ascension Thursday, 1952, I was born
‘William’ at Bon Secours Hospital in Baltimore. Within four days, my
father gave me the nickname that nuns, editors and at least six
mortgage companies have since attempted to convince me to abandon.
‘People won’t take you seriously,’ they told me. So I kept the name and
became a journalist. Actually, I first became an altar boy, a
guitar-player, a part-time clothing salesman and the lead (male) in
‘Oklahoma.’ For two weeks one summer, I worked for a buddy whose
business was waterproofing basements. That was good preparation for my
first newspaper job (the part about going out of business). But I’m
jumping ahead again. After graduating from Mount Saint Joseph High
School in Baltimore, I spent four years under the Golden Dome at the
University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind. I graduated with a degree
in English, a finer appreciation for the forward pass and no clear
career track. Journalism and me: a marriage made in heaven. Truth is,
journalism promised me the chance to do what a lot of us in the early
1970s talked about doing: the opportunity to make a difference. So when
The News American in Baltimore offered me a summer internship and then
the opportunity to return full-time on the rewrite desk, I never looked
back. (Now at 52, I feel like Lot’s wife: I don’t dare look back.) In
the best tradition of American newspapers, The News American gave me
endless opportunities (and countless riches) — and over the next eight
years, I took advantage of them all: rewrite, suburban editor, metro
editor, news editor, managing editor. The News American also gave me my
first experience in downsizing a newsroom, and afterward I decided to
seek new opportunities in Philadelphia. The Inquirer hired me in
late 1981, and we agreed that I would report for work on Feb. 1, 1982.
Three days before I arrived, The Philadelphia Bulletin announced it was
folding. (Just a coincidence, I’m sure.) In Philadelphia, the
opportunities continued. For the next five years, I was New
Jersey editor, helping the paper discover the wonderful world of zoning
against well-established local competition. In 1987, I became the
assistant managing editor for the Sunday paper; in 1989, AME in
features; in 1992, metropolitan editor. Then in 1994, I took a detour
and spent a year on a Knight-Ridder reengineering task force before
returning to Philadelphia in 1995 as assistant to the publisher.
Finally, in July 1996, I returned from the dark side to become managing
editor of The Inquirer. I held that job until July 2001 when I accepted
a company-wide buyout. I spent the next three years working with the
media from the other side — as vice president for corporate and public
affairs at Independence Blue Cross. With that experience in hand, I’ve
joined Poynter with the goal of helping journalism become a more
effective tool for our democracy. (No sense aiming low.) Along the way,
I accomplished some really important things: I married Donna Dixon in
1975, and together we’re enjoying our son, Coley, 25, and our daughter,
Caitlin, 19. We belong to a dynamic parish, St. John Chrysostom, in
Wallingford, Pa., and every month I return to Baltimore to play in a
band of rock star wannabees. (We’ve opened for the Village People.)
That’s it. I’m still called Butch and despite that, at least
American Express takes me seriously. And yes, I still believe that I
can make a difference.”
Keith Woods is the dean of the faculty at The Poynter Institute. He
had been the Reporting, Writing & Editing group leader at Poynter.
He is a former sportswriter, news reporter, city editor, editorial
writer and columnist who worked his way through those jobs in 16 years
at the New Orleans Times-Picayune. His professional writing won
statewide and national awards, including the 1994 National Headliner
award he shared with colleagues for the 1993 series “Together Apart/The
Myth of Race.” He joined Poynter in 1995 and for seven years led the
Institute’s teaching on diversity and coverage of race relations as
part of the ethics faculty. In his time at Poynter, he has written
columns and essays on topics ranging from fatherhood to race relations
to the emerging journalism of the South African press. Keith leads
seminars for columnists and editorial writers, college graduates and
journalists who must handle stories about race. He was the editor of
“Best Newspaper Writing,” the annual collection of prize-winning
stories and photojournalism selected by the American Society of
Newspaper Editors. He is a regular speaker at the National Writers
Workshops each spring and consults with newspapers and television
stations on matters of diversity, race relations, writing and editing.
He has written extensively about how news organizations handle race
relations and diversity in the newsroom, boardrooms, newspapers and
broadcasts. He is married to WTVT-TV anchor Denise White. Their blended
family includes five wonderful children ages 3 to 23, a sickly cat and
a neurotic cocker spaniel.
Peter Zuckerman is a reporter in the Los Angeles office of the
Daily Journal, the nation’s oldest and largest legal newspaper, where
he covers entertainment. Before that, he worked as the cops and courts
reporter for the Post Register, a daily in Idaho Falls, Idaho. At Reed
College in Portland, Ore., Zuckerman was editor in chief of the student
newspaper, The Quest, which he and a friend resurrected after it shut
down the year before. After graduating with a biology degree, Zuckerman
interned at the Portland bureau of the Associated Press and became a
fellow at the Poynter Institute. His reporting has won several awards,
including a National Journalism Award for the Post Register and a
Livingston Award. He is 26.
