TV Power Reporting Academy

Al Tompkins has taught television news producers, reporters, photojournalists and managers in his workshops in 49 states, Canada, Egypt, Ecuador, Denmark, Cayman, Iceland and South Africa. He has taught and coached print newsrooms in the U.S. and abroad how to build interactive news websites, how to use video more effectively online and how to manage ethical issues that arise online.

Tompkins is an FAA licensed drone pilot and has organized and lead drone journalism workshops around America that produced more than 325 graduates. He co-authored the drone ethics guide.

Tompkins is the author of the book “Aim For The Heart: Write, Shoot, Report, Produce for TV and Online,” which is being used by more than 125 universities as their main broadcast writing, reporting and ethics textbook.

Ramon Escobar is vice president of talent recruitment and development and the vice president of diversity and inclusion for CNN Worldwide. He is responsible for the recruitment of all on and off-air talent for CNN U.S., CNN International, CNN en Español and HLN. He also advances the internal development of all anchors, correspondents, contributor and producers. Escobar is based out of New York City and has held his position of vice president of talent recruitment and development since 2012. He was named the vice president of diversity and inclusion January 2017.

He came to CNN after several years spent at Telemundo, most recently as executive vice president of network news, overseeing the entire news division including all international news bureaus and the development of on-air talent. While at Telemundo his other roles included senior executive vice president of entertainment and senior vice president of news and creative services.

Brendan Keefe is the Chief Investigator for 11 Alive Atlanta, leading the national-award-winning Reveal investigative team at WXIA.

Keefe’s investigative work has been honored with the Peabody Award, the duPont Columbia Award, three National Murrow Awards, the Investigative Reporters & Editors Award, the Scripps Howard Award, the Hillman Prize, the American Legion Fourth Estate Award, The Gannett Al Neuharth Award for Investigative Reporting, the TEGNA Investigative Pinnacle Award, and a career total of 89 regional Emmys.

He has spent the last three decades reporting for news stations in Georgia, Ohio, Florida, Texas, Michigan, Connecticut, Illinois, and New York City. He has served as a war correspondent embedded with US Army troops in Iraq, covered a dozen hurricanes, and he created the first all-digital tapeless news story in 1996.

Kelly McBride is a writer, teacher and one of the country’s leading voices when it comes to media ethics. She has been on the faculty of The Poynter Institute since 2002 and is its senior vice president. She is also the Craig Newmark Journalism Ethics Chair of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at Poynter. Before joining Poynter, she was a daily newspaper reporter in the Northwest for 15 years. Kelly served as ESPN’s ombudsman in 2012 and 2013. She has been a featured speaker at SXSW, the Online News Association annual conference and the Aspen Festival of Ideas. Her side hustle is the Everyday Ethics podcast.

The world’s largest newsrooms, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, NPR and the BBC, frequently seek her advice for internal decisions and quote her expertise in their stories. She is the co-editor, along with Tom Rosenstiel, of The New Ethics of Journalism: Principles for the 21st Century, which features essays by 14 thought leaders and practitioners, as well as a new code of ethics for journalists and people who care about journalism.

She is a leading expert on covering sexual assault, suicide and mental health issues, plagiarism, and the connection between an ethical press and a strong democracy.

Adam has a mass communication degree from Eastern New Mexico University in Portales, NM. While pursuing his degree, he continued to work as a journalist with both the Amarillo Globe News and Scene 3 News.