PointsSouth Faculty

PROGRAM CO-DIRECTORS

Kelly McBride teaches journalists from around the world how to do their jobs better. She is a faculty member for The Poynter Institute, where she trains reporters, photographers and editors in the skills of ethical decision-making, critical thinking and reporting and writing. She is the Ethics group leader and co-director of Poynter’s annual Summer News Reporting and Writing Program for Recent College Graduates. Since coming to Poynter in 2002, she has researched how newsrooms cover rape, gay and lesbian issues, sex, pop culture and children. Kelly writes an ethics column for Poynter Online and speaks at National Writers Workshops and other journalism conferences around the country. She provides in-house workshops for newsrooms, including The Portland Oregonian, The Commercial-Appeal in Memphis and the Kansas City Star. Prior to coming to Poynter, Kelly was a reporter for 15 years, spending most of that time at The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash., where she covered the police beat for six years and the religion and ethics beat for eight years. She won awards for a series she wrote on gay Christians, a series on the ethics of fertility treatments and a series on faith and medicine. Kelly has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism and master’s degree in religion from Gonzaga University. She is married to Shawn Jacobson, a photojournalist. They have three children. 

Sara Quinn teaches in the areas of visual journalism and leadership at The Poynter Institute. Before joining the faculty in 2003, Sara spent nearly 20 years working in newspaper newsrooms. Trained as a journalist, designer and illustrator, Sara believes in the power of fine photojournalism, great headlines, crystal-clear graphics, beautiful typography, compelling writing, investigative reporting, smart use of color and razor-sharp captions — not necessarily in that order. At Poynter, Sara directs The Institute’s annual Summer Visual Journalism Program for Recent College Graduates. She also leads Poynter’s new Eyetrack study for newspaper design. She writes occasionally for Poynter Online and speaks at design and journalism workshops around the country. She provides in-house workshops for newsrooms and universities, including The Toronto Star, The Columbus Dispatch, The Tampa Tribune, Bowling Green State, Associated Press Managing Editors and more. A former assistant managing editor at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Sara also spent 11 years at her hometown newspaper, The Wichita Eagle. She has edited and designed magazines, books and new media and has taught design at the University of South Florida. She has won numerous awards from the Society for News Design and has been a juror for competitions such as SND, the Best of Cox, Alternative News Weekly, news photographers associations and others. She is a former board member for SND and the American Institute of Graphic Arts. Sara has a B.A. in journalism and graphic design from Wichita State University and a master’s in illustration from Syracuse University. Sara lives in Sarasota, not just because it’s fun to say “Sara from Sarasota,” but also because her commute to Poynter involves a beautiful drive each day over Tampa Bay on the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. She is married to Paul Quinn. They have no kids — just lots of funny, spoiled, little dogs.

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.

Jacqui Banaszynski is the associate managing editor at The Seattle Times in charge of special enterprise projects and staff development. She also is the Knight Chair in Editing at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, where she is developing programs in editing and writing excellence. Banaszynski 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 Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. 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 the work of The Oregonian‘s Tom Hallman Jr., which won a ASNE Distinguished Writing Award in 1997, and “In Her Mother¹s Shoes” by Paula Bock and Betty Udesen of The Seattle Times. Their story, about women and AIDS in Zimbabwe, won the 2003 Ernie Pyle Award and four other national awards for writing, photography and online presentation. Banaszynski is a native of a Wisconsin farm village and a 1974 graduate of Marquette University. She teaches journalism workshops around the world, has taught at The Poynter Institute, API, the University of Kansas and the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, and has served as a Pulitzer juror.

ADDITIONAL FACULTY

Pegie Stark Adam is a faculty affiliate at The Poynter Institute. She served as director of the Institute’s Graphics and Design programs from 1991 to 1995. Previously she spent two years as a journalism professor at the University of Florida, was a graphics editor at The Detroit News, graphics director at the Detroit Free Press, and art editor/designer at the St. Petersburg Times. She is the author of the Poynter Paper, “Color, Contrast and Dimension in News Design,” is co-author with Mario Garcia on “Eyes on the News,” the book reporting the results of the Poynter Eye Trac research, and designer for Garcia’s third edition of “Contemporary Newspaper Design” as well as “Newspaper Evolutions.” Pegie is a design consultant and redesigned The Ottawa Citizen of Ontario, Canada, The Patriot News of Harrisburg, Pa., created Rush Hour, the alternative weekly for The Ottawa Citizen and is currently redesigning The Repositorty of Canton, Ohio, and the Ohio State University Alumni magazine. She has designed corporate communications materials including in-house newsletters for Bank One, Verizon and JPMorgan Chase. She has consulted with news organizations including The Salt Lake Tribune, The Hamilton Spectator, The Toronto Star, The Independent of London, The Ottawa Citizen, The Sowetan, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She is working with Garcia Media as a freelance designer and was part of the team that redesigned of The Staten Island Advance. She also collaborated with Poynter’s Design Editor, Anne Van Wagener, to create the interactive version of “Color, Contrast and Dimension in News Design” for which they received the 2002 International Interactive Design Award from Communication Arts magazine. Pegie has taught drawing, lithography, painting, photography, design and typography, and has owned and operated a print shop. She was a visiting professor in the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University 2002-2003, and is currently an associate professor in the visual communications area of the Dept. of Journalism and Media Studies, University of South Florida St. Petersburg. She is an Affiliate Faculty member at The Poynter Institute where she teaches. She holds a BFA in Fine Arts, printmaking, and an MA and Ph.D. in mass communications from Indiana University.

Becky Bowers 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 the front at the afternoon meeting and overseeing the editing of the A section. She also coordinates one of the newsroom’s in-house seminar programs, Times U, and recently led a session on in-house training at the national conference of the American Copy Editors Society. Her reporting background stretches to high school, when she was executive editor of the school newspaper and also produced a teen segment every two weeks for a local morning TV news show. She got her first pro reporting job at age 18, for the local daily, the Chico (Calif.) Enterprise-Record. She started as a general assignment reporter, moving to weekend police coverage and eventually covered a community college school board and the town of Paradise, Calif., all while studying journalism at California State University, Chico. She joined the Times in June 2002, moving to the A Desk in January 2003. The rest has been a blur of big news stories, from the invasion of Iraq to the explosion of the Columbia to last season’s hurricanes. She founded and chairs the Tampa Bay chapter of the Association of Young Journalists. Her husband, Jeremy, is a prelaw student, computer technician and tech columnist for tbt*, a weekly publication of the Times.

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 month long series in the St. Petersburg Times. In 1997, he wrote “Sadie’s Ring,” published in The Miami Herald, The Charlotte Observer, Minneapolis Star Tribune, 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 month long series in more than two-dozen newspapers.

Aly Colón is Poynter’s Reporting, Writing & Editing group leader and the new “Best Newspaper Writing” Editor. He has been the Ethics group leader and Diversity Program director. He teaches ethical decision-making, how to connect with under-covered communities and how to find, report, write and edit the untold stories. He has written book chapters and articles about ethics and diversity issues and writes regularly for Poynter Online, including the “Talk about Ethics” column. He also edits the “Journalism with a Difference” column. He explores diverse approaches to covering news and presents regularly at the National Writers Workshops. In his consulting work, he teaches about ethics, diversity, writing and leadership. Prior to Poynter, he worked at The Seattle Times as Diversity reporter and coach. As a reporter, he focused on the “intersections” where people of different races, cultures, gender and abilities meet. As coach, he helped reporters and editors address diversity issues. He also was a Seattle Times assistant metro editor for urban affairs, health care, ethics and values, religion, and social issues. He worked at The Herald in Everett, Wash., as an executive editor over both business and features and at The Oakland Press in Pontiac, Mich. Some of Aly’s fellowships include: a Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in business at Columbia University, a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship in ethics, Knight Center for Specialized Journalism fellowships in health care and race, and a Robert Bosch Study Fellowship on European unity and German reunification. He got his B.A. in journalism from Loyola University in New Orleans and his M.A. in journalism from Stanford University. His wife, Sheila, is a marketing research consultant and a journalism educator. His 10-year-old daughter Christina plays the violin. His 3-year-old Standard Poodle, Biscuit, runs outside, sniffs the newspaper, then waits for Aly to pick it up.

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, DeGregory 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. DeGregory 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. 

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. DeVigal 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. DeVigal 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 design and graphics director at the Detroit Free Press and a part-time design consultant. He edits SND’s quarterly Design Journal and was a member of their competition committee for eleven years; he served as the contest coordinator for the 21st edition (published in fall 2000). He’s been a speaker at conferences and workshops around the U.S.; a visiting professor at Syracuse University; and a guest speaker at The Poynter Institute. 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 currently deeply engaged in the Free Press’ (and Knight Ridder’s) installation of a CCi BaseLine system and he now dreams in Danish — of Quark.

Deanne Fitzmaurice, a Pulitzer Prize winner in 2005, has been a staff photographer at the San Francisco Chronicle for 16 years. She has been published in Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, Sports Illustrated, ESPN Magazine, NY Times Magazine and People Magazine. She has won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, National Press Photographers Association, Best of Photojournalism, Pictures of the Year International, California Press Photographers Association, Atlanta Photojournalism Competition, the Mark Twain Award in 2004 and was named the 2002 Photographer of the Year by Bay Area Press Photographers Association. She has participated in Day in the Life book projects and is a graduate of the Academy of Art College in San Francisco with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography.

Kim Folstad is senior features editor at The Tampa Tribune. She has covered everything from the shootings at Columbine High School to the 2000 election debacle in Palm Beach County. She’s worked as a copy editor, page designer, reporter, columnist and editor at papers large and small, and she is a proud alumna of the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

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. French is The Poynter Institute’s first Writing Fellow.

Dr. Mario R. Garcia is  CEO and founder of Garcia Media. Mario has 35 years of design and teaching experience and has redesigned over 450 newspapers worldwide including The Wall Street Journal, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Asian Wall Street Journal, Die Zeit (Germany), El Mercurio (Chile), El Tiempo (Bogota, Colombia), The Miami Herald, The San Jose Mercury News, The Charlotte Observer, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, Dagens Nyheter and Gotesborgs Posten (Sweden) and many others around the world. He is the author of a dozen books including his most recent, “Pure Design.” He has served as professor at Syracuse University (New York) and the University of South Florida; and, since 1984, has been a faculty member at The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, where he founded the graphics department , has conducted EyeTrack research with Dr. Pegie Stark Adam, and is now a member of the Institute’s National Advisory Board. He has won numerous awards from the Society of News Design as well as receiving their first Lifetime Achievement Award for his work as a newspaper designer. Most recently, he has summarized his insights and experiences about the emergence of tabloid formats worldwide in a publication titled “The impact of the Compact,” available through the Garcia Media Web site, www.garcia-media.com.

Jeff Goertzen is a graphic journalist with the St. Petersburg Times. He graduated in 1986 from California State University at Fresno with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and art. Since then, he has worked as a graphic artist at The Orange County Register and the Detroit Free Press. He spent over two years in Spain as a consulting graphics editor for El Mundo in Madrid and then on to El Periodico, Barcelona. In 1992, while at El Periodico, he was the recipient of the SND Gold Award for his coverage of the Barcelona Olympics. He has won over 30 awards for his work. Jeff has done infographics consulting for nearly 40 newspapers and magazines in Europe, Central and South America, and recently in Asia. His work as a freelance graphic artist took him to Israel to gather research on the Middle East conflict for an infographic project for The Dallas Morning News. He is frequently a guest speaker for various organizations including IFRA in Germany and IAPA/SIP for Spanish speaking journalists. Jeff is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese.

David Handschuh has been an award winning staff photographer at the New York Daily News for more than 16 years and has been an adjunct Professor of Photojournalism at New York University since 1995. Mr. Handschuh brings his passion for his craft to the community through his Focus on Mentoring project, which puts digital cameras into the hands of inner city youth and encourages them to look at their world in a new way. David is a Past President of the National Press Photographers Association, a 10,000 member organization of media professionals and is chairperson of the Media and Government Committee.  He is currently education chair for the Northern Short Course, a three day long program for six hundred photographers. David continues his participation in his industry through extensive commitments to organizations that support professionals in the Journalism community. In 1994 Handschuh co-authored the “National Media Guide for Emergency and Disaster Incidents,” which is in its third printing. David continues to work with Public Safety providers and the media on a national level to foster better relations between the two. He recently addressed 6,000 firefighters from around the country at the Fire Department Instructors Conference in Indianapolis, where he presented a multimedia presentation on the 9/11 attack in New York City. David suffered serious injuries and narrowly escaped with his life while covering the attack on the World Trade Center.  During months of recovery, Handschuh implemented several programs to document and address long term physical and mental health issues for journalists that may arise from working at Ground Zero. For that work he was honored as a “Fellow of the Society,” the highest honor bestowed by Sigma Delta Chi, the National Society of Professional Journalists. David has dedicated many years to studying the effects of trauma on journalists who go out and cover tough stories in the course of their daily work. As a Dart Fellow, Handschuh initiated the first-ever study of the effects of covering traumatic situations on his peers. Handschuh established and continues to support Peer Counseling Workshops, where members of the industry are trained to assist fellow journalists.  That work garnered him the Donald Berreth Award from the National Public Health Information Council. David continues to receive recognition from his industry peers for his commitment and has participated in many professional educational opportunities.  Handschuh was the only visual journalist invited to participate as an Ethics Fellow at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. He recently presented several programs and was involved with media training in bio-terrorism. He has been nominated three times for a Pulitzer Prize and has received numerous awards for his Photography from the National Press Photographers Association, Pictures of the Year, New York Press Photographers Association, New York Press Club, Society of the Silurian’s, the Deadline Club, the National Headliners and many others.

Jane Harrigan directs the journalism program at the University of New Hampshire, where she decided to try teaching “for a year” in 1985. Before that, she was an AP reporter and managing editor of the Concord Monitor, where many Poynter summer alums have gotten their first jobs. She is a writing and editing coach for various newspapers and wrote The Editorial Eye, an editing textbook used in many colleges and recently revised by Karen Dunlap of Poynter. She and her husband have traveled to every continent except Antarctica, lived in Japan for a year, and lived in London in 2004. She has taught travel writing in London and Cambridge, England. She wishes she had more time to write and to read something besides e-mail and student papers.

Ed Hashey is a project manager, designer, and illustrator for Garcia Media. Ed is currently working on the redesigns of the Grand Rapids Press and the Portland Press Herald. Most recently, Ed managed the redesigns of The Wall Street Journal, The Miami Herald, The Gulf News, Dubai and the Staten Island Advance. Other Clients include the Wall Street Journal Europe, the Wall Street Journal Asia, The Charlotte Observer, The Las Vegas Review-Journal, The Hamilton Spectator and OpinionJournal.com. Before joining Garcia Media, he was an illustrator and page designer for the Bradenton Herald. Ed is a graduate of the prestigious Ringling School of Art & Design where he was selected as a Presidential Trustee Scholar for Illustration. He holds a BFA in Illustration and Graphic Design and was a 1997 Visual Journalism fellow at the Poynter Institute where he has returned every summer to teach visual journalism.

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; 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.

J. Kyle Keener received a Polaroid Super Shooter in 1972 at the age of 12, and his love of photography was born. An avid basketball player, his first photos mimicked those he saw in magazines like Sports Illustrated. While in college at Central Michigan University, the majority of his photo education came from outside of class. Keener took photos for the yearbook and newspaper, and completed four newspaper internships. He also spent a lot of time in the library studying the work of the masters. Magazines such as Life and Look, among others, helped him to develop an appreciation for various types of photography. After graduating from college, Keener landed a job with the Kansas City Times, thanks to a recommendation from a good friend. He spent two years there before joining the staff of the Philadelphia Inquirer. His nine years with The Inquirer helped him to develop his own style and to define himself as a photographer. In 1995 Keener became a staff photographer for the Detroit Free Press and in 2001 he gained the title of Chief Photographer. The same year he also began publishing his own column entitled “Keenervision.” His portfolio encompasses a wide range of photographs and styles from fashion to features to photo illustrations and more. He has won numerous awards for his work; in fact, he was named National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) Regional Photographer of the year six times. Once familiar with Keener’s photography, it is easy to recognize his singular style. He integrates his artistic flair with a true respect for the subject, which often creates almost surreal looking pictures. Perhaps his most interesting photographs are his photo illustrations where he can control every aspect of the image. Keener views every day as a new challenge and is always striving to see the world in different light. He continues to grow and learn by constantly comparing his work to the best photographers, and he always keeps a camera nearby just in case. J. Kyle Keener sees his job as much more than just taking photographs. For him, photography has become a lifestyle and he embraces his opportunity to capture pieces of life with his camera. He works as a mentor to many aspiring photojournalists regularly teaches location lighting seminars for the NPPA’s Northern Short Course, and lectures and judges at state photojournalism conferences. Beyond his employment at the Detroit Free Press, Keener feels that he must also act as a civil service employee. In his words, “My job is to bring beauty and truth to the public through photography, a role that I take very seriously. There is a powerful emotional connection formed with my subjects when the photographs are published and I get a great deal of satisfaction from having a strong connection to the thousands of readers of this newspaper.”

Mike Lang has been a staff photographer for the Sarasota (FL) 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 it’s 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 was recently promoted to Director of Photography, overseeing a staff of ten photographers and three imagers in four bureaus.

Scott Libin is a faculty member at The Poynter Institute. Scott’s 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.

A graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, Joanne Mamenta spent her journalism career as a reporter, copy editor, features editor and managing editor at newspapers in the Midwest and the South. Today, she lives in Nashville, Tennessee with her family and pursues a freelance writing and consulting career. 

Christine Martin is the vice president for institutional advancement and director of communications for West Virginia University. She is the former dean of the Perley Isaac Reed School of Journalism at West Virginia University (WVU) and is the former co-director of the News Reporting &Writing summer program at The Poynter Institute. Martin was the 1999 Freedom Forum Journalism Professor of the Year, the 1998 CASE/Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teachers, West Virginia Professor of the Year and the winner of the 1997-98 West Virginia University Foundation Award for Outstanding Teaching. Prior to becoming dean, Martin worked at WVU for 10 years as a print journalism professor and the director of the writing program. Before that she worked as a reporter for the Pittsburgh/Greensburg Tribune-Review and reporter, education writer and news editor the Uniontown (Pa.) Herald-Standard. During her years as a reporter, Martin won the National Education Writers Association Award for investigative journalism and an American Cancer Society Award for health reporting. Martin speaks nationally on writing and reporting, and offers workshops to newspaper groups across the region. She has presented seminars and workshops at Poynter, Columbia University, the New York Press Association and the National Writers Workshops. Martin is the recipient of two 1997-98 Freedom Forum Journalism Professors Publishing Grants — one to complete the publication of a collection of biographies and oral histories of 16 women correspondents who covered the Vietnam War, and the other to co-produce a documentary film on the same subject. Martin holds a B.A. in English from California University of Pennsylvania, an M.A. in journalism from the University of Maryland and is currently completing a Ph.D. there in American Studies.

Dean Miller is the managing editor of the Post Register in Idaho Falls, an employee-owned 25,000 morning daily about 90 miles southwest of Yellowstone National Park. During his tenure, the Post Register has grown circulation while also winning such national awards as the 2003 National Headliners (News Series, 3d) 1998 James K. Batten Award for best civic journalism, and regional awards for the five-state northwestern region. As a reporter, he covered Idaho politics for 10 years, most of those for The Spokesman-Review of Spokane, Wa. His freelance credits include The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, Nuclear Submarine Review, U.S. News & World Report and High Country News. Miller is the co-author of “Cat Attacks: True Stories and Hard Lessons from Cougar Country,” (Sasquatch Books, Seattle). He edited the “The Insiders’ Guide to Greater Yellowstone,” (Pequot Books, Westport, Conn.) and the final two volumes in the “Byways” series of SUV guidebooks. Miller was lead researcher for “Every Knee Shall Bow,” Jess Walters’ book on theRuby Ridge case, which was subsequently made into a television movie. At the National Writers Workshops in Nebraska, Oklahoma and Oregon, Miller has been invited to teach a special session on improvement of writing at small newspapers. In 2004, he wrote and produced an interactive public meetings training course for local government officials, which is being taught in multiple sessions paid for the by the Best in the West journalism foundation. 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 a lifelong skier, fly fisherman and whitewater boater.

James M. 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, Naughton 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. Naughton’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.  Naughton 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.

Robert Newman has been the design director of Fortune since September 2003. He was previously the creative director of Real Simple, and the design director of Inside, Vibe, Details, New York, Entertainment Weekly, the Village Voice, Guitar World and the alternative weekly Seattle Sun. He was also the editor of The Rocket, a monthly music magazine in Seattle. He has lectured and given workshops to publications, groups and conferences across the country. He is the past president of the Society of Publication Designers. He lives in Manhattan.

Jeannie Nissenbaum celebrates her 13th year working at Poynter this year. She and her husband of 37 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 that she misses the Midwest. A loyal Wisconsin Badger fan, she graduated with bachelor’s in social work from UW-Madison. Her older son, David, followed in the family tradition by graduating from UW-Madison with a 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 welcomed baby Sophie into their home in April of this year! Her younger son, Andy, decided to go east and graduated from Wharton at the University of Pennsylvania. He currently lives in the Provence region of France with his wife, Magali, and their adorable children, 2-year old son Rémy and 5-month old Lila. Jeannie is known around Poynter as “the party girl,” probably a throwback to her days at UW. She’s bipartisan in her professional football allegiance, rooting for both the Bucs and the Packers. She loves to cook and entertain but her real passion is playing bridge.

Mizanur Rahman is an assistant metro editor at The Dallas Morning News, where he has worked since July 2003. He previously worked as an assistant city editor at The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va. He grew up in Detroit, and graduated from the Journalism Institute for Minorities at Wayne State University in Detroit. He started as a writer for the Michigan Chronicle, a historic black newspaper in Detroit, before working as a reporter at suburban Detroit dailies. He was a 2002 Poynter Ethics fellow.

Claire Regan is associate managing editor of The Staten Island Advance, a Newhouse newspaper in New York City. Claire joined the newspaper in 1980 as a wedding writer and subsequently worked as a feature writer, general assignment reporter, entertainment editor, Lifestyle editor, assistant news editor and design editor. Claire was named associate managing editor in October 2002 after directing a complete redesign of The Advance with Garcia Media in preparation for a Web reduction and new press. The project was successfully completed in under 10 months. She evaluates design and content of The Advance, oversees newsroom hiring and recruitment and supervises the college internship program. In September, Claire was elected to the board of directors of the New York State Associated Press Association. She serves on the executive council of the Deadline Club, the New York City chapter of the Society for Professional Journalists and is an assistant professor of journalism at Wagner College, her alma mater, teaching undergraduate courses in design, copyediting, newswriting, ethics and the history of journalism. She is also faculty adviser to Wagner’s student newspaper, yearbook and literary arts magazine. Claire recently completed a high school journalism initiative sponsored by the American Society of Newspaper Editors and was a featured speaker at the annual Columbia Scholastic Press Association conference for high school students at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. 

Ron Reason has spent 20 years working hard to make newspapers better, as an editor, designer, educator and consultant. In the real world, he spent 10 years at the St. Petersburg Times, in various positions including copy editor, front page news editor, and design director. As an educator, Ron served The Poynter Institute as Director of Visual Journalism and Faculty Member (’95-99), and there he remains a visiting faculty member. At the university level, Ron taught for several years at the Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, and the University of South Florida in Tampa. As an independent consultant, Ron directed major redesigns for papers including The Dallas Morning News, Orlando Sentinel, Lincoln Journal-Star, Boston Herald, and others. He also created custom staff and management training programs for his redesign clients, as well as for the largest newspapers in Singapore, Iceland, Denmark, and Brazil. As a consultant with Garcia Media, Ron has redesigned The Harvard Crimson, Portland Press-Herald, San Francisco Examiner, Crain’s Chicago Business, and the 167-year-old Bristol Phoenix (and four sister weeklies around East Bay, Rhode Island). He also assisted with the 2002 redesign of The Wall Street Journal, where he focused primarily on the development of the new Personal Journal section. Miscellany: Ron is a graduate of the journalism program of Indiana University and the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund editing workshop. He spent two months this winter on a “working sabbatical” in Buenos Aires, but otherwise is based in Chicago.

George Rorick is a former member of the visual journalism faculty at The Poynter Institute. He is dedicated to expanding the boundaries of print, broadcasting, and interactive visual journalism. He focuses on content first and is a strong advocate for new ideas and innovative design. He encourages better use of today’s technology to expand creativity and productivity. George believes in change and cross training, and specializes in improving working relationships and communications between newsrooms and visual journalists. He helped pioneer the use of the Macintosh computer in newsrooms. He introduced the team concept of assigning researchers, graphics editors, and graphics reporters to work in conjunction with the newsroom. George is the winner of numerous awards for graphics and design; 1994 Knight-Ridder entrepreneur of the year award for the direction of the KRT Graphics service, launching “Faces in the News,” the KRT European Graphics Service, and News In Motion. He was a consultant to El Mundo, Spain; director of, KRT Graphics, KRT European Graphics, News In Motion, Washington, D.C.; assistant managing editor-graphics, The Detroit News; graphics director, St. Petersburg Times; part of the design and graphics team for USA TODAY, where he designed the original weather page; art director, The Denver Post and The Lansing State Journal; artist, The Herald Palladium, Benton Harbor, St Joseph, Mich. George is a graduate of Westport Conn., School of Commercial Art, Design, and Illustration.

Adithya Sambamurthy


I was born in Chennai, India, but grew up in Dortmund, Germany, where I graduated from high school. I became serious about a career in photojournalism as a sophomore at the University of Texas, where I worked on the student newspaper for three years, and have since photographed for publications in the United States, Germany and in India. I hope to continue improving as a visual journalist and want to ultimately work on issues concerning the various communities of South Asia, the European Union and the United States.



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.

D. Alice Sky is a Senior Producer, City Group sites, for Knight Ridder Digital. She has primary responsibility for the Kansas.com, AberdeenNews.com, GrandForksHerald.com and Belleville.com Web sites. Kansas.com was recently honored by the Kansas Press Association. Previously, Sky worked for The Wichita (KS) Eagle as a Web site leader, news editor and presentation team designer. Sky is the recipient of the President¹s Award for Excellence in Volunteerism, and the Society of Newspaper Design bronze and silver medals. Designated a Bill Brown Master Editor at Kansas State University, she received her Bachelor of Arts in journalism and mass communications.

Jennette Smith is the program assistant for Visual Journalism at Poynter. She began working at Poynter in August 1990 as a faculty secretary in the Management and Leadership programs. Jennette is a native of Florida who grew up in New Jersey and New York.  She moved to St. Petersburg in 1979 and has held a variety of positions with the City of St. Petersburg, the now defunct Fotomat and the St. Petersburg Times.

Alysia Tate is editor and publisher of The Chicago Reporter, a non-profit, investigative magazine that focuses on race and poverty issues and is published by the Community Renewal Society. Alysia joined The Reporter staff in 1998, after covering regional news trends at the Daily Herald, the third-largest paper in Illinois. She has won numerous awards for her work, including the Clarion Award from the National Association for Women in Communications and the Unity Award in Media from Lincoln University of Missouri. She was named in the 2002 “40 Under 40” listing in Crain’s Chicago Business, and makes frequent appearances on local media and before civic and community-based groups. Born and raised in Denver, Colo., Alysia earned her bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. She is the former vice president-print for the Chicago Association of Black Journalists.

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 Online. Tompkins is the author of “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. Al 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 10-year documentary project tells the story of a young girl whom Al and a medical team found dying in a Guatemala hospital. Al has trained more than 9,000 local television news producers, reporters, photojournalists and managers in 30 states in his One-Day Storytelling Workshops. During his two and a half decades as a journalist, Al 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.

Butch Ward — 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 Headline-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.