Journalism in a 24/7 World: Decision-making for the Online EditorAgenda | Speakers | Fellows | ResourcesSpeakersWilliam Bradley is an award-winning columnist, former political advisor, and sometime Hollywood consultant/producer. He owns and produces New West Notes—ww.newwestnotes.com—a multi-media, interactive Web site that is the California leader in real-time political analysis and featured blog on the global network Pajamas Media. He is also a longtime senior political writer for the LA Weekly, the nation's largest metropolitan weekly newspaper, and a national political analyst on XM Satellite Radio. Bradley is aformer senior advisor and operative in dozens of Democratic campaigns ranging from the city council to the White House. He directed successful campaigns for Senator Gary Hart in three states that will be among the earliest in the coming presidential primary season: Iowa, Nevada, and California. He also moonlights on occasion in the entertainment industry andhas beena creative consultant and producer on a number of movies and TV series. Described by the New Republic as "the premier California political analyst" and called bySlate “the guy who was right from the start on the California recall,” Bradley, aco-founder of the California state capital’s weekly newspaper, the Sacramento News & Review, has written for many state, national, and international publications, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Sacramento Bee, New Republic, American Prospect, The Nation, California Business, Salon, International Herald Tribune, The Economist, Le Monde, Excelsior, South China Morning Post, Chuokoron, and Newsweek Japan. A University of California at Berkeley graduate who served in the U.S. Navy, Bradley is a member of the Screen Actors Guild and the American Legion. Email: Neil Budde joined Yahoo! News in November 2004 as general manager and helped build it into the most visited online news site in the world. In January 2007, he was promoted to editor in chief over Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Sports and Yahoo! Finance, and now focuses on the content and editorial operations of these three U.S. news sites. In 2005, Budde’s team launched Yahoo!’s first foray into original multimedia news coverage with Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone, for which Kevin Sites received the 2006 Daniel Pearl Awards for Courage and Integrity in Journalism and a National Headliner Award. Before joining Yahoo!, Budde was the founding editor and publisher of the Wall Street Journal Online. His career began with a decade of experience as an editor and reporter at the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch, the (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal and USA Today. Budde earned a Bachelor of Arts in journalism from Western Kentucky University and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Louisville. A member of the board of directors of the Online News Association, he is its treasurer in 2007-08. Budde also serves on the board of the California First Amendment Coalition. Email: Neil Chase heads the team responsible for recruiting and working with Federated Media's authors. He joined FM in Spring 2007 after serving as the editor of continuous news at the New York Times and, before that, managing editor at CBS MarketWatch. Chase spent five years as a professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, where he launched the new-media journalism program and was the school’s director of technology. Before joining the Northwestern faculty, he worked as an editor at the San Francisco Examiner and the Arizona Republic, and consulted for a number of publications and companies. Email: Marc Cooper is associate director of USC Annenberg's Institute for Justice and Journalism, is an award-winning author and reporter who has covered politics and culture from across the country and around the world for the last three decades. His articles, essays and interviews have appeared in dozens of publications, ranging from The Atlantic and Rolling Stone to The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post. He's the author of three books, including The L.A. Times best-seller, Pinochet and Me. Cooper's broadcast experience includes reporting and producing documentaries for PBS' Frontline, CBS News and The Christian Science Monitor Reports. A full-time member of the USC Annenberg journalism faculty, Cooper is also a weekly columnist for L.A. Weekly, a contributing editor of The Nation magazine and serves as senior editor of one of the most-trafficked online news sites, The Huffington Post. Email: Michael Davidson is founder and CEO of Seattle-based Newsvine.com. As one of the world's leading social news sites, Newsvine blends the best in mainstream news coverage with the contributions of more than 100,000 independent minds across the globe. Updated continuously, but never edited, Newsvine.com is an instant reflection of what the world is talking about at any given moment. Before co-founding Newsvine, Davidson worked as art director and manager of media product development at both ESPN and the Walt Disney Internet Group. He studied business at the University of Washington and Oxford. Jim Detjen is director of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at Michigan State University (MSU). He joined the MSU faculty in January 1995 as the Knight Chair in Journalism, the nation's only endowed chair in environmental reporting. The founding president of the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ), Detjen also helped found the International Federation of Environmental Journalists (IFEJ) and served as IFEJ president from 1994 to 2000. Prior to joining MSU's faculty, Detjen spent 21 years as a professional newspaper reporter and editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Louisville Courier-Journal and other publications. He has won more than 50 awards for his reporting and contributions to environmental journalism. Among them are the George Polk Award, the National Headliner Award for investigative reporting, the Thomas Stokes Award for natural resources reporting (twice) and the Edward Meeman Award for environmental reporting (five times). Detjen is three-time finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. In 1999, he was named the outstanding teacher and faculty member by students in MSU’s journalism school. In 2002, Detjen taught journalism courses at Nankai University in Tianjin, China as part of a Fulbright Scholarship and has conducted journalism training workshops in 14 other countries in addition to the United States.In 2006 he was given the Ralph Smuckler Award, MSU's highest international award, for his contributions to scholarship, teaching and outreach around the world. He is a contributor to or author of four books on environmental and science journalism topics. In 1997 The Earth Times named Detjen as one of the 100 most influential people on environmental and sustainable development issues in the world. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. and a master’s degree in journalism with honors from Columbia University. Email: Amy Gahran is a journalist, media consultant, and entrepreneur based in Boulder, CO. Mostly she helps news organizations and media pros wrap their brains around online media — how it really works, and how to use it well. She edits the Poynter Institute's group Web log E-Media Tidbits, is co-founder of the pro/community journalism project Boulder Carbon Tax Tracker, and blogs at Contentious.com. She covers ahead-of-the curve environmental issues and provides technology consulting for the Society of Environmental Journalists, helped develop the citizen media database for the Knight Citizen News Network, and continues to do freelance journalism on energy, environment, business, media, and technology issues. Email: Bill Gannon is director of online operations at Lucasfilm Ltd. with strategic and operational leadership responsibilities for online activities at the company. He was formerly senior editorial director and managing editor of Yahoo! Inc. where he had editorial strategy and leadership responsibilities in product development, content programming, front page news, and a range of policy issues. Gannon led Yahoo’s Front Page News programming for 3.5 years including coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Southeast Asian Tsunami, and Hurricane Katrina where his team raised more than $60 million in relief aid from Yahoo! users. Among the new products he created at Yahoo! are the Yahoo! Buzz Log, the Yahoo! Netrospective, and the Yahoo! Time Capsule. Prior to joining Yahoo!, Gannon was editorial director and managing editor of Financial Engines Inc., a high-tech financial services start-up where he received a co-inventor patent for his Internet product development work with a team of colleagues and company founder and Nobel laureate (Economics) William Sharpe. Earlier, he covered national politics, terrorism, investigative reporting, and conflict beat reporting including conflict coverage in Africa and the Middle East as a national correspondent for Newhouse Newspapers Inc. A former John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford University, Gannon has received such journalism honors as National Headliner Award, CIT Investigative Award, four New York Society of Professional Journalists Deadline Club awards, New Jersey Press Association Journalist of the Year, and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist with a team of reporters from the (Newark, N.J.) Star-Ledger in 2001. He currently teaches online journalism at the University of California-Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. Gannon was co-chairman of the Knight Digital Media Center’s National Advisory Board and also serves on the Board of Advisors to New Voices, a community news incubator project sponsored by J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism. Email: Mitch Gelman has been the senior vice president and senior executive producer of CNN.com since January 2001. He oversees editorial operations for CNN.com, including coverage, production, programming and presentation of news and information. Gelman guided the recent relaunch of CNN.com, an evolution in online news that aims to be in an intuitive, enjoyable Web service integrating video, photos, text, audio and interactive graphics to create a fresh, unique storytelling experience. Based in CNN’s Atlanta headquarters, he reports to David Payne, senior vice president and general manager of CNN.com. Since 2001, CNN.com has been recognized for coverage of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, changes in the American cultural and political landscape, and Hurricane Katrina, with citations from the National Press Foundation, the Online News Association, and Radio-Television News Directors Association’s Edward R. Murrow Award. Previously, Gelman was executive editor of CNNSI.com. Before joining CNN in 1998, he was projects editor for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and from 1995 to 1997, he worked at Starwave Corp as editor-in-chief of ESPNET Sports Zone. Gelman reported on law enforcement, politics and immigration for New York Newsday from 1987 to 1995. He shared in a Pulitzer Prize awarded to the New York Newsday staff for spot news reporting in 1992. Gelman also worked for TIME magazine in London and New York. He has written one non-fiction book and seven books on sports for children. Gelman earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley and studied at the National University of Singapore. Email: Bill Mitchell is a veteran journalist who has been working online for 15 years, the past eight as editor of Poynter Online. Before joining the Poynter Institute in 1999, he was editor of Universal New Media for three years and director of electronic publishing at the San Jose Mercury News from 1992 through 1995. Mitchell previously worked asa reporter, editor, Washington correspondent, and European correspondent for the Detroit Free Press and Knight Ridder, and a bureau chief for TIME. He served as a Pulitzer juror in 2002 and 2003. Mitchell holds a Bachelor of Arts from University of Notre Dame. Email: Amy Mitchell is deputy director for the Project for Excellence in Journalism. Her primary focus is designing, managing and writing the Project’s in-depth research reports. This includes the “Annual Report on the State of the News Media” and other more specific studies such as coverage of various election cycles. As deputy director, she also works with the director on all aspects of PEJ management. Mitchell has been with the Project since its inception in 1997. Prior to this occupation, she was a congressional research associate at the American Enterprise Institute where she researched public policy and the relationship of the press, the public and government. She has authored and co-authored several works including, “Thinking Clearly: Case Studies in Journalistic Decision Making,” a case study curriculum for journalism teaching. Mitchell is a graduate of Georgetown University. Originally from the mid-West, Ms. Mitchell now lives in Silver Spring, MD with her husband and three children. Email: Michelle Nicolosi is an assistant managing editor at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer where she manages all aspects of seattlepi.com. Before her current position, she was an investigative reporter for the newspaper. Nicolosi is co-chair of Hearst Newspapers Social Media Taskforce that developed Hearst newspapers’ social media guidelines. During a stint at the USC Annenberg School for Communication, Nicolosi not only taught journalism and helped revise the school’s online journalism curriculum, but also was founding editor of Japan Media Review and editor of Online Journalism Review. Throughout the 1990s, she worked at the Orange County Register, where she was a lead reporter on the Pulitzer Prize-winning and investigation of a California fertility clinic. Nicolosi has freelanced for the Washington Post, Boston Globe, Salon, Los Angeles Times and (New Orleans) Times-Picayune. She is a graduate of the University of New Orleans with a Bachelor of Arts in communication and was previously enrolled in USC’s Master of Professional Writing Program. Email: Rachel Nixon is an experienced online journalism professional based in Vancouver, Canada. Until recently deputy world editor of the internationally acclaimed BBCNews.com, based in London, UK, she was tasked with bringing the BBC's TV, radio and online news operations together to deliver big stories across multiple and emerging platforms. In her nine years as a member of the Web site team, Nixon successfully managed its coverage of key global stories such as the war in Iraq, the US presidential elections of 2004 and the mid-term elections of 2006. She also reported from Bali on the aftermath of the 2002 bombing and spent two years as the site's home page editor. In February 2007, Nixon was named BBC World Service Editor of the Year for her pioneering work on multi-platform projects. She has also worked as a television producer for BBC Four News. Nixon holds a first-class BA degree in modern languages from the University of Oxford. Email: Michael Pond is a media analyst at Nielsen//NetRatings. He works with media clients to implement custom research projects and provide insight to the results. Prior to Nielsen//NetRatings, he held media planning positions on both the client and advertising agency sides creating media solutions for advertising campaigns. He holds a B.A. in communications from California State University, Fullerton. Email:
Email: Don Sena is a 10-year veteran of MSN, and the managing editor of the MSN portal. He directs a team that coordinates content and business initiatives, and writes, edits and builds the MSN.com network entry points, including the MSN home page. In addition, Sena’s team manages and assembles many large network packaging projects, such as election guides, holiday guides, and the like. Before joining the MSN portal team, he was a senior channel manager at MSN, developing and running numerous content properties, such as MSN Health, MSN City Guides, MSN Careers and MSN Entertainment. Prior to his career at MSN, Sena spent almost 10 years as a newspaper journalist, including working as a reporter and editor at the Chicago Tribune and then at the Washington Post. At those papers, he covered a myriad of topics, including national news, business, politics, local news and sports. Sena is the recipient of numerous journalism awards, including first place awards for spot news from Society of Professional Journalists and from the Society of Newspaper Design. Email: Don Sipple is one of the premier Republican media consultants in America. He has worked closely with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, crafting much of the movie star's message in the 2003 recall campaign, former California Governor and Senator Pete Wilson, as well as President George W. Bush and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush.Sipple has produced the TV advertising for a host of ballot initiatives and works closely with leading corporations.He lives and works in Santa Barbara, California. Email: Garry South is one of the premier Democratic political consultants in America. A former chief advisor to the then governor of Ohio, Richard Celeste, South was the architect of Gray Davis's two winning campaigns for governor of California. A former senior advisor to then Vice President Al Gore and Senator Joe Lieberman, South has experience in scores of campaigns and has played principal roles advising a host of ballot initiatives and corporate clients. He lives and works in Santa Monica, California. Email: Eric Ulken is editor for interactive technology at latimes.com. He is responsible for developing new ways of collecting, organizing and presenting news and information through the use of database and mapping tools, as well as other technologies. Ulken was previously the site's managing editor for news, moving up from night managing editor, night news editor and weekend news editor in less than four years at the Times. He has worked for newspaper Web sites his entire career including the (Jackson, Miss.) Clarion-Ledger, NOLA.com (New Orleans Times-Picayune site) and the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch. The New Orleans native attended the University of Missouri School of Journalism on a national merit scholarship, earning a Bachelor of Journalism. Ulken holds a Master of Arts in communication from the USC Annenberg School for Communication. Email: Ashley Wells is MSNBC.com's creative director, leading the site's design, interactive and concepts teams. He has specialized in made-for-the-web news presentations that encourage viewer participation with roles ranging from producer, designer and video editor to developer, project manager and general agitator. Ashley is willing to do just about anything to experiment with new technologies for storytelling, like wearing this 360-degree video helmet cam—in public. See it and more of his team's work in action at http://risingfromruin.msnbc.com. Before joining MSNBC, Ashley worked at KCAL-TV in Los Angeles. He is a Pepperdine graduate and misses Malibu’s surf. Email: Kinsey Wilson is executive editor of USA TODAY and USATODAY.com, with shared responsibility for strategic planning and day to-to-day editorial management of one of the nation’s most widely read news publications. A veteran reporter and editor, he has played a leadership role in digital media for more than a decade. Wilson was named to his current position in December 2005 upon the merger of USA TODAY’s print and online newsrooms. Prior to the merger, he was vice president and editor-in-chief of USATODAY.com, overseeing the editorial operations and strategic development of a news and information website that reaches more than 1.5 million readers a day. Wilson began his journalism career at City News Bureau of Chicago and from 1988-1995 was a reporter at Newsday. For the last 12 years he has been involved in online journalism, first at Congressional Quarterly, where he helped spearhead that company’s digital publishing strategy, and since April 2000 at USA TODAY. Wilson is president of the Online News Association, chairs the national advisory board of the Poynter Institute and serves on the advisory board of the school of journalism at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago. Email: David Wittenstein joined Dow Lohnes in 1981 and serves as the head of the law firm's Media and Information Technologies practice. He specializes in intellectual property, content and related issues for the media, telecommunications and technology industries. He has participated in several copyright cases of first impression, as well as in other intellectual property litigation. Wittenstein has negotiated numerous content licensing, acquisition and distribution agreements across all media and regularly counsels clients on the full range of copyright and trademark issues, ranging from fair use analyses to re-use of traditional media content in online ventures. In recent years, he has focused increasingly on issues relating to the Internet and new media. Wittenstein is a former adjunct professor at Howard Law School for several years, where he taught the school's copyright law course. Wittenstein has published articles on programming and has given numerous speeches and seminars on media and intellectual property subjects. He graduated from Haverford College, magna cum laude, and from Duke University Law School, where he served as an editor of the Duke Law Journal. Email: |
Vikki Porter is director of the Knight Digital Media Center and supervises Professional Development Programs for New Media journalists at USC Annenberg School for Communication in Los Angeles. She was the founding director of the Western Knight Center for Specialized Journalism at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. During her 30-year journalism career, Porter worked in five Western states, started a newspaper, served as top editor for three community newspapers, and shared a 1986 Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal as part of a five-person team while city editor of The Denver Post. Most recently, she was executive editor of The Desert Sun newspaper in Palm Springs, CA. Porter was a Knight Professional-in-Residence at the William Allen White School of Journalism at the University of Kansas in 1987-88 and a Knight Journalism Fellow in Studies of Law at Yale Law School in 1988-89, where she earned her Masters in Studies of Law. She is active in the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the Associated Press Managing Editors, and has been invited to participate in conferences hosted by the Pew Foundation for Public Journalism, the Freedom Forum, Harwood and Associates and the American Press Institute. 
Copyright 2006 Knight Digital Media Center
