Transforming News Organizations for the Digital FutureAgenda | Speakers | Fellows | ResourcesSpeakersJennifer Carroll is Vice President/New Media Content for the Gannett Co., and works with newspapers throughout Gannett in developing strategy, readership and content initiatives in new media. She helped conceive and launch Gannett’s Information Center, a newly-announced model transforming the way newsrooms gather and disseminate news and information across all media platforms. She also works on convergence across Gannett’s Broadcast and Digital divisions. She joined the News Department in 2000 as Director/News Development and was named to her current role in 2006. Previously, she had top editing roles including managing editor of the Lansing (Mich.) State Journal and The Detroit News, and was executive editor of The Burlington (VT.) Free Press. Carroll was a member of the American Press Institute's Newspaper Next task force, researching innovative industry business models, served on the advisory board of API’s Media Center, and just joined the board of iFOCOS, the Institute for the Connected Society. She was named Gannett’s Corporate Staffer of the Year in 2006. B.A. Michigan State University. Email: Jeffrey Cole joined the USC Annenberg School for Communication as Director of the newly formed Center for the Digital Future and as a Research Professor in July 2004. Cole has been at the forefront of media and communication technology policy issues in both the United States and internationally for the past 25 years. Prior to joining USC, Cole was a longtime member of the University of Califorinia at Los Angeles faculty and served as Director of the UCLA Center for Communication Policy, based in the Anderson Graduate School of Management. At UCLA and now at USC Annenberg, Cole founded and directs the World Internet Project, a long-term longitudinal look at the effects of computer and Internet technology on all aspects of society, which is conducted in over 20 countries. Cole has testified before Congress on television issues and has spoken as a keynote and panel member at more than 500 conferences on communications issues. He has worked with both the Clinton and George W. Bush White House on media and telecommunications issues, including detailed briefings on the Center’s work. Cole has lectured extensively in Asia, Africa, Europe, South America and Australia and throughout the U.S. He regularly consults with top government officials and leaders of the telecommunications industries throughout the world on communications issues. Email: Rob Curley is Vice President of Product Development for Washingtonpost.com and Newsweek Interactive. In this role, which Curley assumed in October 2006, he leads a team committed to the development and deployment of new tools for journalists and viewers. Working across all WPNI properties, Curley and his team guide WPNI’s industry-leading innovation in online news and technology. A recognized interactive pioneer, Curley brings a unique perspective and ground-breaking development expertise to WPNI’s online content, tools and strategies that facilitate the direct participation of washingtonpost.com readers. The recipient of numerous journalism and new media honors, Curley received a B.A. degree in integrated studies from Emporia (Kansas) State University. Email: Chad Dickerson is Senior Director of the Yahoo! Developer Network (http://developer.yahoo.com/). In this role, Dickerson oversees the development and promotion of the Yahoo! technology platform for use by third party developers and publishers. He came to Yahoo from InfoWorld Media Group (IDG) where he served as CTO for nearly five years, leading InfoWorld's technology strategy and operations while evangelizing emerging media technologies across InfoWorld and parent company IDG. As a weekly columnist and blogger for InfoWorld magazine, Dickerson built a community of dedicated readers, writing regularly about topics including IT management, emerging technologies, social media, and blogging. Prior to InfoWorld, Dickerson served as CTO of Salon.com and in various development and management positions at CNN, Sports Illustrated, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and the (Raleigh, NC) News & Observer. Dickerson holds a BA in English Literature from Duke University. Email: Ralph Gage is Chief Operating Officer for The World Company, a communications company based in Lawrence, Kansas. Gage has been associated with the company in various roles for more than 30 years. During that time the company has changed from fundamentally being a daily newspaper to an organization whose operations include magazines, cable television, broadcast television, a facilities-based CLEC telephone business, an Internet Service Provider, Web and software development, as well as daily and weekly newspapers. Although most of his career has been spent in company management, Gage, a native of Kansas, is a news-editorial graduate of the University of Kansas and he entered the business as a newspaper reporter and editor. Gage was instrumental in directing The World Companyís venture into “converged” multi-media operations in 2000-2001. Email: Dan Gillmor is founder and director of the Center for Citizen Media, a project to enhance and expand grassroots media and its reach. The center is an affiliate of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University Law School and the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. Gillmor, who spent almost 25 years in the newspaper business as a reporter, editor and columnist, is author of We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People (O'Reilly Media, 2004), a book that explains the rise of citizens' media and why it matters. Gillmor is also on the advisory board of the Knight Digital Media Center. Email: James T. Hamilton is the Charles S. Sydnor Professor of Public Policy, Economics, and Political Science at Duke University. His book All the News That’s Fit to Sell: How the Market Transforms Information into News (Princeton Press, 2004) examines how economic forces affect media content. All the News won the Frank Luther Mott award for the best book in journalism/mass communication research in 2004. Hamilton is also the author of Channeling Violence: The Economic Market for Violent Television Programming, which won the Shorenstein Center’s Goldsmith Book Prize, and a recipient of the David N. Kershaw award for distinguished public policy research. Email: Lauren Hertel is a faculty member at the University of Florida, where she teaches multimedia journalism to electronic broadcast students. As an online editor in California, she developed a model four-month multimedia training program for print journalists and wrote Going Digital: Creating a Blueprint for Your Paper, a ten-step manual for newspapers interested in improving their online operations. Hertel holds graduate degrees in Journalism and City & Regional Planning from the University of California at Berkeley, and conducts convergence training sessions nationally and internationally for organizations including the Associated Press and the U.S. State Department. Email: Joe Howry is the editor and vice president of Ventura County (CA) Star. He became editor in 2004 after serving as the newspaper's managing editor for 11 years. Howry has launched a program to train his entire newsroom in multimedia skills, often taking people out of the newsroom for weeks at a time. Before coming to The Star, Howry served in a variety of reporting and editing positions at newspapers in Oregon, Nevada and Montana. He also worked for several months as an editor at USA Today. Howry is a 1970 graduate of the University of Montana with a bachelor's degree in history and political science. He also did post-graduate work in political philosophy. Email: Mike Jenner is the Executive Editor of The Bakersfield Californian and Director of News/Editorial Vice President. He joined The Californian in 1993 as the managing editor after working four years as an independent newpaper consultant, specializing in issues of design, content and newsroom management. Before launching his consulting practice, Jenner was managing editor of The Hartford (CN.) Courant for 2 ½ years and assistant managing for two years before that. He also worked in a variety of editing positions at The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Columbia (MO) Daily Tribune and the Coffeyville (KS) Journal. Email: Dave Ledford >has served as Vice President/News & Executive Editor of The News Journal in Wilmington, Delaware, since 2004. The News Journal was among the first newspapers nationwide to launch a daily web cast with its own anchor and daily video stories. To fill audience gaps with new ink-on-paper niche products and to meet the migration of readers moving from print to online, the newsroom has restructured several times in the past two years. In early 2006, The News Journal rolled out a 24-7 news plan that resulted in a dramatic increase in unique page views — from 4 million news page views in December 2005, to 7 million page views in November 2006. Ledford also vice president of the Associated Press Managing Editors and will be president during the group’s 2008 conference, which it will hold jointly with the international Society of Newspaper Design in Las Vegas. The News Journal is the eighth newspaper at which Ledford has served, including a stint as deputy editor of the Salt Lake Tribune, executive editor of The Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, S.D., and executive editor of the News-Leader in Springfield, Mo. Email: Tim Porter is Associate Director of Tomorrow’s Workforce, a partnership of major news corporations, more than 50 national journalism professional and mid-career teaching organizations, and Medill School of Journalism which encourages newsroom development. Porter is an editor and writer with an extensive background in daily newspaper and online journalism. In addition to providing journalism, research, consulting and management services to news and other information-intensive organizations, Porter is the author of First Draft, a popular blog devoted to quality journalism. Email: Adam Powell is Director of the Integrated Media Systems Center, the U.S. national Engineering Research Center for multimedia, at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. He also holds appointments as Senior Fellow at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy. Prior to joining the USC faculty in 2003, Powell was General Manager of the PBS television and cable television channels at Howard University; Vice President/Technology and Programs for the Freedom Forum, developing and supervising new media conferences and training programs in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America; an executive producer at Quincy Jones Entertainment; vice president for news and information programming at National Public Radio; and manager and producer at CBS News. He has written extensively about technology, media and international issues for a wide range of publications including the New York Times, Wired magazine and USC's Online Journalism Review. Email: Lee Rainie is the Director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Since December 1999, the Washington D.C. research center has examined how people’s internet use affects their families, communities, health care, education, civic and political life, and work places. The Project has issued more than 120 reports based on its surveys that monitor people’s online activities and the internet’s role in their lives. All of its reports and datasets are available online for free at: http://www.pewinternet.org. Prior to launching the Pew Internet Project, Lee was managing editor of U.S. News & World Report. He is a graduate of Harvard College and has a master’s degree in political science from Long Island University. Email: Jane Ellen Stevens is a freelance multimedia journalist and teaches multimedia reporting at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. She was the co-creator of the Knight Digital Media Center’s Multimedia Boot Camp training program and serves a multimedia consultant to news organizations throughout California and the country. She has worked at the Boston Globe and San Francisco Examiner as a copy editor, assistant foreign/national editor, Sunday magazine writer, and technology reporter and columnist. She founded a syndicated science and technology feature service with 20 newspaper clients worldwide, including the Los Angeles Times, the Dallas Morning News, The Washingon Post and Asahi Shimbun’s AERA Magazine. For four years, she lived and worked in Kenya and Indonesia. She’s written for magazines, including National Geographic, and worked for New York Times Television as a video journalist. She is director of the Violence Reporting Project, which encourages news organization to include a scientific prevention, or public health, approach to crime reporting. She has done multimedia reporting for the New York Times, Discovery Channel, and MSNBC.com. Stevens has a Bachelor’s degree in zoology from the University of Kentucky and a Masters degree in communications from the University of Georgia. Email: Vivian Vahlberg is Director of Digital Media at the Media Management Center (MMC) at Northwestern University, where she is developing new programs, research and publications (both online and print) to help media executives understand, embrace and innovate in the new-media world. Previously, she was the first Director of Journalism Programs at the McCormick Tribune Foundation, where she oversaw investment of more than $70 million in journalism grants in the U.S. and Latin America over a 13-year period. At McCormick, she spearheaded the national newspaper initiative that led to the formation of the Readership Institute (http://www.readership.org/) at MMC and developed many programs to help broadcast and print news executives adapt to and understand the many financial, technological, and demographic changes affecting news media. She has also served as Executive Director of Society of Professional Journalists, president of the National Press Club, adjunct professor of journalism at the Medill School of Journalism, and assistant Washington bureau chief for the Daily Oklahoman. Email: Nedra Weinstein is principal with Arden Consulting, an organization development consulting firm which provides a multitude of services to clients both in the private and public sectors - including strategic planning, team and leadership development, change management and large group meeting facilitation. Weinstein is frequently called upon to coach teams, managers and leaders that are dealing with challenging and contentious organizational issues. Clients include Choice Media, Fleishman-Hillard and WashingtonPost/Newsweek Interactive. Weinstein has also worked as an internal consultant for over 17 years providing consulting services for organizations including the Public Broadcasting Service, The Washington Post, and MCI Communications. Due to her extensive experience working within organizations she is sensitive to the realities of organizational life and the challenge of instituting meaningful, productive and lasting changes. She has been an adjunct faculty member at George Washington University and The American University, holds a M.S. in Organization Development from American University; a M.S. in Administration of Justice from Southern Illinois University and a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of Connecticut. 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: Steve Yelvington is a longtime reporter and editor who made the jump to the online world in 1994. Currently he concentrates on longterm vision, strategy, and innovation for Morris Digital Works. He also is a featured speaker at conferences throughout the United States and in western Europe, Russia and China. Yelvington was founding editor of Star Tribune Online (later rebranded startribune.com) in Minneapolis in 1994 and built it into one of the top-ranked newspaper sites in the world. As executive editor and network content director for Cox Interactive Media, he supervised a nationwide network of city sites. At Morris Communications, he led site design and development operations that yielded more Digital Edge and EPpy awards than those of any other newspaper company. In 2001, Editor and Publisher magazine presented him with the EPpy Award for Individual Achievement. Email: |
Copyright 2006 Knight Digital Media Center
