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.

Jim Stem Photography Staten Island Advance AME Claire Regan and 2005 summer participant John Sutter discuss story ideas.

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.

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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.