Speakers will be added to this page as they are confirmed.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Melissa Bell

Co-founder and Publisher, Vox.com

Twitter: @MelissaBell
Melissa Bell co-founded Vox.com in early 2014 and became the first person at Vox Media to hold both a technology and editorial title as Senior Product Manager and Executive Editor for Vox.com. In 2016, she became Vox Media’s Publisher. Prior to Vox, Bell oversaw digital platforms at the Washington Post. She was also one of The Post’s most-read bloggers and a columnist for the Style section. Before joining The Post, she helped launch Mint, a Wall Street Journal subsidiary in India, where she lived for four years. She hails from San Diego, California and makes a mean banana-and-cheese quesadilla.

 

Lydia Polgreen

Editor-in-Chief, The Huffington Post

Twitter: @lpolgreen
Lydia Polgreen is Editor-in-Chief of The Huffington Post. She was named to that position in December 2016 after spending nearly 15 years at The New York Times, where she led an initiative to expand its audience outside the United States, with an initial focus on Latin America. Previously, Lydia was Deputy International Editor, the South Africa bureau chief, a correspondent for the New Delhi bureau and chief of the West Africa bureau.  

Before joining The Times, Lydia was a reporter in Florida and New York state. She began her career as assistant editor and business manager for The Washington (D.C.) Monthly. …Read More

 

Jim VandeHei

Co-founder and CEO, Axios

Twitter: @JimVandeHei
Jim VandeHei is a co-founder and CEO of Axios, the new media company he launched with Mike Allen and Roy Schwartz. Axios (means “worthy” in Greek) uses “elegant efficiency” and “smart brevity” to deliver top insights and reporting on business, tech, media trends and politics to smart, engaged readers. Jim is a co-founder and former CEO of POLITICO, the digital media company that upended and revolutionized political and policy journalism in Washington and Europe. Jim was the leading strategic mind behind its high-growth, high-impact and highly-scalable business model. Jim was named one of the 100 leading information age thinkers in America by Vanity Fair and was awarded the 2015 Editor of the Year award by the National Press Foundation. Jim covered the presidency and politics for the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post before starting media companies.

 

KEYNOTE PANEL

Nancy Barnes

Editor and Executive VP of the Houston Chronicle

Twitter: @nancycbarnes
Nancy Barnes has been editor and executive vice president of the Houston Chronicle since October, 2013. The Houston Chronicle is among the largest newspapers in Texas with Sunday circulation of about 350,000, a daily circulation of about 200,000, and a large daily digital footprint across two websites, mobile platforms and social media. The Houston Chronicle won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, the 2015 ASNE award for distinguished commentary, was a finalist for the Gerald Loeb award for business beat reporting in 2015 and 2016, and the IRE award for investigations off of breaking news in 2015 and 2016. It recently was awarded a 2017 National Press Foundation award. Prior to joining the Houston Chronicle, Barnes was editor and senior vice president of the Star Tribune Media Co. for six and half years, overseeing news reporting and content across all platforms.  …Read More

 

Neil Chase

Executive Editor, The Mercury News and the East Bay Times

Twitter: @chaseneil
Neil Chase is executive editor of The Mercury News and the East Bay Times, where he leads a team of 200 journalists covering the San Francisco Bay Area. That team recently won the 2016 Scripps Howard Breaking News Award for its coverage of the tragic Ghost Ship fire in Oakland. Neil worked as a journalist (San Francisco Examiner, Arizona Republic, CBS MarketWatch, New York Times) and journalism professor (Northwestern University’s Medill School) before heading over to the “dark side,” where over the past 10 years he helped build new revenue models for publishers and new forms of storytelling for marketers.  He returned to the newsroom last year to help the Bay Area news organizations meet the new challenges of relevance and revenue. He also chairs the Board for Student Publications at his alma mater, The University of Michigan, where he began his journalism career as a reporter and editor-in-chief at The Michigan Daily.

 

Aminda (Mindy) Marqués Gonzalez

Executive Editor and Vice President, Miami Herald

Twitter: @MindyMarques
Aminda (Mindy) Marqués Gonzalez is Executive Editor and Vice President for news at the Miami Herald. Born in New York to Cuban immigrant parents, Marqués began her career as an intern at the Miami Herald and rose through the ranks to become the paper’s first Hispanic editor in 2010. She is only the second woman to hold the post.

Her career has included assignments as a metro reporter, assistant city editor and deputy metro editor, directing the Miami Herald’s local, state and community news operations. She left the paper in 2002 to work as Miami bureau chief for People magazine, overseeing coverage for the southeast U.S., the Caribbean and Latin America.  …Read More

 

Kathleen Kingsbury

Managing Editor for Digital, Boston Globe

Twitter: @katiekings
Kathleen Kingsbury is the managing editor for digital at the Boston Globe. She previously edited the Globe’s Ideas section and its Sunday op-ed pages. She won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished editorial writing and edited the Globe’s 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winning commentary. Before joining the Globe in 2013, she worked as a New York-based staff writer and Hong Kong-based foreign correspondent for Time Magazine. She has also contributed to Reuters, The Daily Beast, CNN and The New York Times.

 

Mike Wilson

Editor, The Dallas Morning News

Twitter: @mWilstory
Mike Wilson has been editor of The Dallas Morning News since February 2015. He started his career at the Miami Herald, then worked for 18 years at the Tampa Bay Times. As a reporter in Tampa Bay, he was on a team that was a finalist for the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. His staff won two Pulitzer prizes during his tenure as an editor. In 2013, he moved to New York to become managing editor of Nate Silver’s data journalism website, FiveThirtyEight. During this time, he also served on ESPN‘s editorial board. He is the author of two books, Right on the Edge of Crazy and The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison. He and his wife, Alisa, live in Dallas and have three grown children.

 

Stan Wischnowski

Executive Editor and Sr. VP, Philadelphia Media Network

Twitter: @swischnowski
Stan Wischnowski, Philadelphia Media Network’s Executive Editor and Senior Vice President, has led a complete reorganization of Pennsylvania’s largest news organization, which includes The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News and Philly.com. The reorganization has involved the merging of the three staffs, a restructuring of newsroom beats, a digital skills development program for its 250-plus journalists, and a redesign of the mobile and desktop elements of Philly.com. Stan served as The Inquirer’s Editor-in-Chief and Executive Editor from 2010 to 2015. Under his leadership, the Inquirer won the 2014 Pulitzer for Criticism and the 2012 Gold Medal for Public Service. Prior to arriving in Philadelphia in 2000, he was an editor at the Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle and The Detroit News.

 

PANEL SPEAKERS

Julia Bain

Strategic Partner Development, Journalist, Facebook

Julia Bain is on Facebook’s Journalism Partnerships Team, where she works with journalists across digital, print, broadcast and local markets. She focuses on how Facebook can be a more effective platform for journalists to find and tell stories. Prior to working at Facebook, Julia worked as a senior producer and producer at ABC’s World News with David Muir. While at ABC, she managed the first network newscast designed exclusively for Facebook, and produced award winning breaking news coverage. She is a graduate of Georgetown University and currently lives in New York City.

 

Joshua Benton

Director, Nieman Lab at Harvard

Twitter: @jbenton
Joshua Benton is director of the Nieman Journalism Lab. Before spending a year at Harvard as a 2008 Nieman Fellow, he spent 10 years in newspapers, most recently at The Dallas Morning News. His reports on cheating on standardized tests in the Texas public schools led to the permanent shutdown of a school district and won the Philip Meyer Journalism Award from Investigative Reporters and Editors. He has reported from 10 countries, been a Pew Fellow in International Journalism, and a three-time finalist for the Livingston Award for International Reporting. Before Dallas, Benton was a reporter and rock critic for The Toledo Blade. He is a big nerd who started blogging when Bill Clinton was still president.

 

Jay Bernhardt

Dean, Moody College of Communication at UT Austin

Twitter: @jaybernhardt
Dr. Jay Bernhardt is the 6th Dean of the Moody College of Communication at The University of Texas at Austin, one of the largest and highest ranked colleges of communication in the country. Dr. Bernhardt also serves as the Founding Director of the Center for Health Communication and holds the Walter Cronkite Regents Chair and the DeWitt Carter Reddick Regents Chair in Communication. He also is Adjunct Professor at The University of Texas School of Public Health. Before UT, Dr. Bernhardt served as Chair, Professor, and Center Director at the University of Florida in Gainesville, and previously served on the faculty of Emory University in Atlanta and the University of Georgia in Athens. From 2005 to 2010, Dr. Bernhardt led communication and marketing at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, managing a staff of more than 500 and a budget of more than $100 million. …Read More

 

Jim Brady

Founder and CEO, Spirited Media (BillyPenn.com & TheIncline.com)

Twitter: @jimbrady
Jim Brady is the CEO of Spirited Media, which operates Billy Penn in Philadelphia and The Incline in Pittsburgh. Before entering the pure startup world, Jim served as Executive Editor of washingtonpost.com, Editor-in-Chief of Digital First Media, General Manager of TBD and as head of News and Sports for America Online. Jim also currently serves as the public editor of ESPN.

During Jim’s tenure at washingtonpost.com, the site won a national Emmy award for its Hurricane Katrina coverage, a Peabody Award for its “Being a Black Man” series, an Editor & Publisher award for Best Overall Newspaper-Affiliated Web Site, two Digital Edge awards for Best Overall News Site, a Knight-Batten Award for Innovations in Journalism, two Scripps Howard Foundation National Journalism Awards, four Edward R. Murrow Awards for Best Non-Broadcast Affiliated Web Site, and more than 100 White House News Photographers video awards.  …Read More

 

R.B. Brenner

Director, School of Journalism at UT Austin

Twitter: @rbbrenner
R.B. Brenner is the director of the School of Journalism and the G B Dealey Regents Professor in Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. Previously, he was the deputy director of Stanford University’s journalism program and taught courses on public issues reporting, digital journalism and narrative writing. He joined the faculty at Stanford in September 2010 after leaving The Washington Post, where his roles included metropolitan editor, Sunday editor and deputy universal news editor. He was one of the primary editors of the newspaper’s coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings, which was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, and played a leadership role in merging the digital and print newsrooms.  

 

Carlos Fernando Chamorro

Founder and editor, Confidencial, Nicaragua

Twitter: @cefeche
Carlos Fernando Chamorro, founded (and is currently the editor of) Confidencial, a weekly publication in Nicaragua that combines investigative journalism and analyses of current affairs. The U.S. magazine The Nation called it “the most respected muckraking operation in the country.”

Chamorro also directs and hosts a popular Sunday night television program called Esta Semana (This Week), featuring investigative reports, feature stories and interviews with political leaders. Chamorro also has a radio show called Onda Local (Local Wave) and is president of the Centro de Investigaciones de la Comunicación (CINCO, the Center of Investigations of Communication), a nonprofit research and polling firm in Nicaragua. …Read More

 

McKay Coppins

Staff writer, The Atlantic

Twitter: @mckaycoppins
McKay Coppins is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covers national politics. He was previously a reporter for BuzzFeed News, where he covered two presidential campaigns, and Newsweek, where he co-authored a cover story on Mitt Romney and Mormonism.

 

 

Sopan Deb

Culture writer, The New York Times

Twitter: @SopanDeb
Sopan Deb is a culture writer for the New York Times. Before that, he was embedded in Donald Trump’s campaign from start to finish with CBS News. He’s a Murrow Award-winning and Emmy-nominated reporter whose work has been seen on NBC, Al Jazeera America, as well as the Boston Globe.

 

Stevan Dojčinović

Editor-in-chief, KRIK

Twitter: @StevanOCCRP
Stevan Dojčinović is an investigative reporter based in Belgrade. He works for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). From 2012 to 2015, Stevan was the editor-in-chief of the Center for Investigative Reporting in Serbia (CINS). He has specialized in investigating organized crime, corruption, privatization deals, money laundering, private security agencies and the gambling industry. Stevan is the author of the book Šarić − Kako je balkanski kokainski kartel osvojio Evropu about the role of the Balkan mafia in international cocaine smuggling. He also teaches journalists how to collect and analyze business data and property records. As part of the OCCRP investigative team, Stevan won European Press Prize and Global Shining Light Award in 2015. He was the runner up for the 2015 Duško Jovanović award for the contribution and development of investigative journalism, and won the 2013 Jug Grizelj award for achievement in investigative journalism, the 2011 Daniel Pearl Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting and three times the Serbian National Award for investigative reporting, in 2016, 2012 and 2011.

 

Ethar El-Katatney

Executive producer, AJ+

Twitter: @etharkamal
Ethar El-Katatney is the executive producer for AJ+, a global online news community for the connected generation . She is an international-award-winning multimedia journalist and published author. El-Katatney was the first Arab and Egyptian to win a CNN MultiChoice African Journalist of the Year Award and has since published a book: Forty Days and Forty Nights – in Yemen: A Journey to Tarim, the City of Light . She’s worked at Egypt Today, was a researcher-reporter for the quarterly journal The Cairo Review of Global Affairs, and has contributed to Muslimah Media Watch.

 

Peter Elkins-Williams

Strategic Partner Development, News

Peter Elkins-Williams leads Facebook’s partnerships with newspapers in the United States, working with leading publishers to help them to grow their audience, monetize their content, and test new formats and products across Facebook’s suite of offerings. Peter also helped to launch Instant Articles, negotiating and executing the global beta agreements, and leading partnerships efforts to improve the monetization options for publishers. Prior to Facebook, Peter led Business and Corporate Development for Atlantic Media, parent company of The Atlantic, Quartz, and the National Journal Group. At Atlantic Media, Peter was responsible for incubating and launching growth strategies and new initiatives across editorial, technology, and revenue groups of the corporate team and individual publications. This includes architecting The Atlantic’s first long term social strategy and first digital paid content products, securing syndication and ad technology partnerships for the launch of Quartz, and developing business and traffic models for new brands and sites. Peter received a JD/MBA from New York University and a BA from Duke University. He lives in New York City.

 

Micah Gelman

Director of Video, The Washington Post

Twitter: @mbgelman
Micah Gelman is the Director of Video and Senior Editor at The Washington Post. Micah manages The Post’s video business operation while also overseeing the editorial production and distribution of original videos, as well as the editing and curating of partner videos.

 

 

Tom Grundy

Editor-in-Chief, Hong Kong Free Press

Twitter: @tomgrundy
Tom Grundy is the Editor-in-Chief and co-director of Hong Kong Free Press, a non-profit, independent news source for the city. It was founded in 2015 as a direct response to the press freedom issues facing the city and has become the city’s number two English news source by social reach. HKFP was Hong Kong’s fastest-funded, largest crowdfunding campaign at the time of its launch, raising over US $150,000 in its first year from over 1,000 readers.

Based in Hong Kong for eleven years, Tom is a British multimedia journalist. He has a BA in Communications & New Media from Leeds University and an MA in Journalism at the University of Hong Kong.  …Read More

 

Robert Hernandez

Associate professor of professional practice

Twitter: @webjournalist
Robert Hernandez, a.k.a Web Journalist, has made a name for himself as a journalist of the Web, not just on the Web. His primary focus is exploring and developing the intersection of technology and journalism – to empower people, inform reporting and storytelling, engage community, improve distribution and, whenever possible, enhance revenue. He is an associate professor of professional practice at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, but he’s not an academic…he’s more of a “hackademic” and specializes in “MacGyvering” Web journalism solutions. He connects dots and people. He has worked for seattletimes.com, SFGate.com, sfexaminer.com, La Prensa Gráfica, among others. Hernandez is also the co-founder of #wjchat and creator of Learn Code for Journalism with Me project. He was a national board member of the Online News Association, and is a lifetime member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

 

Angie Holan

Editor, PolitiFact

Twitter: @AngieHolan
Angie Drobnic Holan is the editor of PolitiFact. She previously was deputy editor, and before that a reporter for PolitiFact, helping launch the site in 2007. She was a member of the PolitiFact team that won the Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the 2008 election. She has been with the Tampa Bay Times since 2005 and previously worked at newspapers in Florida, Alabama, Louisiana and New Mexico.

She holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University and a master’s of library science from the University of South Florida. Her undergraduate degree is from the Plan II liberal arts program at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a native of Louisiana and attended the Louisiana School for Math, Science and the Arts.

 

Jeff Jarvis

Professor and Director of Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism, CUNY

Twitter: @jeffjarvis
Jeff Jarvis is the author of Geeks Bearing Gifts: Imagining New Futures for News (CUNY Journalism Press, 2014), Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live (Simon & Schuster, 2011), What Would Google Do? (HarperCollins 2009), and the Kindle Single Gutenberg the Geek. He blogs about media and news at Buzzmachine.com and cohosts the podcast This Week in Google. He is professor and director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism. He advises media companies, startups, and foundations and is a public speaker. Until 2005, he was president and creative director of Advance.net, the online arm of Advance Publications. Prior to that, Jeff was creator and founding editor of Entertainment Weekly; Sunday editor and associate publisher of the New York Daily News; TV critic for TV Guide and People; a columnist on the San Francisco Examiner; and assistant city editor and reporter for the Chicago Tribune.

 

Clara Jeffery

Editor-in-Chief, Mother Jones

Twitter: @ClaraJeffery
Clara Jeffery is the editor-in-chief of Mother Jones. During her tenure at Mother Jones, she has received the PEN/Nora Magid Award for excellence in magazine editing, and has won National Magazine Awards for general excellence. Before joining Mother Jones, Jeffery was a senior editor for Harper’s Magazine.

 

John Keefe

Bot Developer & Product Manager, Quartz Bot Studio

Twitter: @jkeefe
John Keefe is a journalist, tinkerer and coder based in New York City. He works at Quartz as a developer in the Quartz Bot Studio and product manager of Quartz’s breakthrough apps. Keefe also teaches a class on rapid prototyping for new ideas in journalism technology at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. He was previously Senior Editor for Data News at public radio station WNYC, leading a team of journalists who specialize in data reporting, visualizations and investigations. Keefe is the author of Family Projects for Smart Objects: Tabletop Projects That Respond to Your World from Maker Media, which grew from his effort to make something new every week for a year. Keefe has taught journalism classes and led maker workshops at Columbia University, the New School University and the City University of New York, and was the Innovator in Residence at West Virginia University’s Reed College of Media in 2015. Keefe blogs at johnkeefe.net and tweets as @jkeefe.

 

Ivan Kolpakov

Deputy editor-in-chief, Meduza.io

Twitter: @kolpakov
Ivan Kolpakov is deputy editor-in-chief at Meduza.io, a Russian media outlet based in Riga, Latvia. He started working as a journalist in 2001 in Perm (an industrial city in the center of Russia) where he contributed to local political and business newspapers. In 2010, he launched his own project; Salt, a political and satirical magazine, also based in Perm. It closed down less than two years later because of problems with investors and officials. In 2012, Ivan moved to Moscow and became the head of the special reporters department at Lenta.ru, at that time Russia’s most popular online publication. He left Lenta.ru with the rest of the team following the firing of its editor-in-chief Galina Timchenko. Together with Timchenko he founded Meduza, which has been called Russia’s free press in exile. The project was an instant success. In the eyes of many Russian readers, Meduza has become one of the most popular and reliable media outlets available in Russian.

 

Matt Lewis

Senior Columnist, The Daily Beast

Twitter: @mattklewis
Matt Lewis is a senior columnist at The Daily Beast, a CNN political commentator, and the author of  Too Dumb to Fail: How the GOP Betrayed the Reagan Revolution to Win Elections (And How It Can Reclaim Its Conservative Roots).

Matt’s work has appeared in outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, GQ, The Washington Post, The Week, Roll Call, Politico, The Telegraph, The Independent, and The Guardian — and he has been quoted or cited by major media outlets including New York Magazine, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Associated Press.  …Read More

 

Kathleen McElroy

Associate Director, School of Journalism, University of Texas at Austin

Twitter: @kathleeno
Kathleen McElroy is associate director and a senior lecturer in the School of Journalism at University of Texas at Austin. She was a Harrington Doctoral Fellow at the University of Texas and received her doctorate in journalism in 2014. Her research has focused on the intersection of race and news media, including sports journalism as a cultural lens on race.

She previously spent 20 years as an editor at The New York Times, where she served as an Associate Managing Editor, Deputy Editor of the Continuous News Desk, Deputy Sports Editor and Dining Editor. She also worked at The National, Newsday and the Austin American-Statesman.…Read More

 

Malou Mangahas

Co-founder and Executive Director, Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism

Malou Mangahas is a co-founder and current executive director of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, and host of the public-affairs program Investigative Documentaries on GMA Network. She is a former campus journalist and editor of the Philippine Collegian and served as the first woman chairperson of the University of the Philippines’ Student Council while working on a journalism degree, graduating cum laude. (She finished her thesis on a portable typewriter while on the run, but was eventually arrested and detained as a political detainee in 1980). She is a fellow of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

Malou has worked for various media agencies based in Manila and overseas.  …Read More

 

Alexios Mantzarlis

Director, International Fact-Checking Network at Poynter

Twitter: @Mantzarlis
Alexios Mantzarlis joined Poynter to lead the International Fact-Checking Network in September 2015. In this capacity, he writes about and advocates for fact-checking. He also trains and convenes fact-checkers globally. Mantzarlis previously served as Managing Editor of Pagella Politica and FactCheckEU, respectively Italy’s main political fact-checking website and the EU’s first multilingual crowd-checking project. He has presented fact-checking segments on Italian TV and led seminars on fact-checking around the world. Before becoming a fact-checker, he worked for the United Nations and the Italian Institute for International Political Studies.

 

Joey Marburger

Director of Product, The Washington Post

Twitter: @josephjames
Joey Marburger was labeled as The Washington Post’s punk rock star by Digiday for the work he’s accomplished as Director of Product. During his time at The Post, there has been immense growth which Columbia Journalism Review called a ‘revolution’.

Marburger leads a team of product designers in the newsroom overseeing the development and design of digital products such as washingtonpost.com, Android and iOS apps, distributed news, and a variety of other platforms. He has been at The Post for more than six years, moving from Mobile Design Director to Director of Digital Products and Design to his current role. He has also worked at Gannett and the Indianapolis Star.  …Read More

 

Luz Mely Reyes

Co-founder and general director, Efecto Cocuyo

Twitter: @LuzMelyReyes
Luz Mely Reyes is a Venezuelan journalist, entrepreneur, writer and political analyst. She is co-founder and general director of Efecto Cocuyo, an independent digital site based in Caracas. She has specialized on in-depth journalism, investigative reporting and political reporting, with a focus on election coverage. She also has experience with merging newsrooms, multimedia organizations and print media. Previously, she spent 12 years close to decision makers at Cadena Capriles and Diario 2001, the most important media groups in Venezuela. For 10 of those years, she was a political editor, head of the investigative unit at Últimas Noticias, and editor of the best-selling Sunday newspaper edition in her country. In 2012, she became the first female editor-in-chief of a national newspaper at Diario 2001, owned by Bloque De Armas, the most complex media group in Venezuela, with hundreds of publications and widespread product distribution. …Read More

 

Eric Nuzum

Senior VP of Original Content Development, Audible

Twitter: @ericnuzum
Eric Nuzum loves hearing stories and telling stories. He is the Senior Vice President of Original Content Development at Audible, where he is building the next generation of premium spoken word listening.

Before coming to Audible, Eric was the Vice President for Programming at NPR. While there, he created a number of well-known shows, like Invisibilia, TED Radio Hour, and Ask Me Another. Eric also managed NPR’s relationships with a lot of beloved public radio programs, like Car Talk, Fresh Air and Radiolab.

Outside of building great audio experiences, Eric has written three books.   …Read More

 

Martín Pallares

Journalist and co-founder, 4pelagatos

Twitter: @Martinminguchi
Martín Pallares was dismissed from El Comercio in August 2015 for expressing his opinions about the government of Rafael Correa in social networks, Martín Pallares joined two other journalists who were also unemployed and unlikely to be employed because they were critical of the government: José Hernández and Roberto Aguilar. The three then assembled 4Pelagatos which in a short time became the most successful and influential analytical journalism site in Ecuador. Martín Pallares, along with Hernández and Aguilar, were already the most read bloggers in Ecuador when they started to publish 4Pelagatos in January 2016, a publication whose success is basically due to publishing what other media do not dare to publish for fear of the government of Rafael Correa.

Martín Pallares has been working in political journalism since the 1990s and became one of the journalists most targeted by the president and the government during the presidency of Rafael Correa.…Read More

 

Andrew Phelps

Product director, The New York Times

Twitter: @andrewphelps
Andrew Phelps has made a career of agitating for change in media. At The New York Times, he was a co-author of the “Innovation Report,” a searing self-examination of the newsroom that led to major investments in strategy, data and audience development. Harvard’s Nieman Lab called the report “one of the key documents of this media age.” It has been downloaded more than a million times.

Phelps helped build a mobile-first culture while most people were still fixated on the desktop, and secured significant investments in mobile hiring. He led a cross-functional team to relaunch their mobile home page (40 million MAUs) in just six months. He launched a news app for Apple Watch called “One-Sentence Stories” that was celebrated by customers and featured on the front of the App Store on Day 1.  …Read More

 

Aron Pilhofer

James B. Steele Chair in Journalism Innovation, Temple University

Twitter: @pilhofer
Aron Pilhofer is the James B. Steele Chair in Journalism Innovation at Temple University. In addition to teaching, his work is focused on new business models, digital transformation and innovation in news. Before joining Temple, Pilhofer was Executive Editor, Digital, and interim Chief Digital Officer at the Guardian in London. There, he led the Guardian’s product and technology teams as well as heading visual journalism – including pictures, graphics, interactive and data journalism. Before coming to the Guardian, Aron was Associate Managing Editor for Digital Strategy and Editor of Interactive News at The New York Times. He also was a reporter at Gannett newspapers in New Jersey and Delaware, headed data journalism at the Center for Public Integrity in Washington and on the training staff of Investigative Reporters and Editors. Outside the newsroom, Aron co-founded two news-related startups: DocumentCloud.org and Hacks & Hackers.

 

Shaheryar Popalzai

ICFJ Knight Fellow

Twitter: @spopalzai
Shaheryar Popalzai is an ICFJ Knight Fellow based in Pakistan. His major focus has been newsroom innovation with multiple news organizations. Popalzai has worked with three major news organizations in the country to help them get started with 360° storytelling, resulting in a number of projects ranging from standalone videos to more in-depth 360° projects on different issues.

He has also worked with the production and reporting teams of one of Pakistan’s biggest media groups on Facebook Live deployment and strategy.  …Read More

 

Jennifer Preston

Vice President of Journalism, Knight Foundation

Jennifer Preston joined Knight Foundation in October 2014.
Previously, Preston was an award-winning journalist for The New York Times for almost 19 years, with broad experience as a digital journalist, reporter and senior editor. In 2009 she became the company’s first social media editor. In 2011 she returned to a reporting role where she focused on the impact of social media in politics, government, business and real life. Her most recent work as an editor focused on extending digital media and social media storytelling and curation across the newsroom.

 

Nicholas Quah

Founder, Hot Pod

Twitter: @nwquah
Nicholas Quah is the founder of Hot Pod, a weekly newsletter about podcasts that syndicated on Nieman Lab. His work largely focuses on the professionalization of the podcast and on-demand audio industry as well as its potential for public radio and non-audio native media companies. Quah is also a consultant for the Democracy Fund and will be a Visiting Knight Nieman Fellow this summer. Previously, he led audience development efforts at Panoply.

He has an undergraduate degree from Wesleyan University, and a master’s degree from the University of Chicago. He was born and raised in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and worries about immigration.

 

Juan Luis Sánchez

Vice Editor-in-Chief and Co-founder, eldiario.es

Twitter: @juanlusanchez
Juan Luis Sánchez is Vice Editor-in-Chief and co-founder at eldiario.es, a digital news site that has become a major reference for political debate in Spain with an innovative funding model based on membership. Mainly focused in product development and editorial strategies, Sánchez has a background as a reporter on migration, social change and new politics. He is a commentator on Spanish TV and the The New York Times en español. Sánchez teaches innovation in journalism as a guest in different Spanish universities.

 

W. Gardner Selby

Editor, PolitiFact Texas, Austin American-Statesman

Twitter: @PolitiFactTexas
W. Gardner Selby, incidentally born in London, edits the fact-checking PolitiFact Texas project teaming reporters and editors from the Austin American-Statesman, Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News. For more than 30 years, he’s mostly worked for newspapers in Texas, Wisconsin, Kansas and Washington, D.C., covering beats ranging from dairy farming to higher education to city government to state politics and government. After debuting as the American-Statesman’s chief political writer, he helped the newspaper launch the first state-level version of PolitiFact in 2010. Segments about the fact checks air on Austin’s KUT FM, Spectrum News’s Capital Tonight and on the groundbreaking statewide public radio program, the Texas Standard. He fervently hopes you follow @PolitiFactTexas on Twitter, where fact checks burst first.

 

Andrea Silenzi

Host/Producer, Why Oh Why at Panoply

Twitter: @andreasilenzi
Andrea Silenzi is an accomplished radio producer known for her innovative and personal brand of storytelling. Her show, Why Oh Why was called a “celebration of human awkwardness” by NPR and named a best new podcast of 2016 by the New York Times, Huffington Post and iTunes. Previously, Andrea was the founding producer of Slate’s The Gist with Mike Pesca, and a culture producer for WNYC. Her work has aired on Serendipity, The Organist from Believer Magazine, BBC4, StoryCorps, PRI’s Studio 360, WNYC News, and Re:Sound. She holds the world record for most guests booked for an hour-long radio show, and that’s 67.

 

Brandon Silverman

CEO of CrowdTangle

Twitter: @brandon33175
Brandon Silverman is the CEO and co-founder of CrowdTangle, a leading social analytics and discovery platform that was acquired by Facebook in late 2016. CrowdTangle is used everyday by hundreds of publishers around the world from the New York Times to the BBC to BuzzFeed. Prior to CrowdTangle, Brandon helped start a nonprofit that trained civic & nonprofit leaders on how to use emerging digital tools to advocate for their issues. He is a graduate of Swarthmore College and currently lives in Oakland with his wife, 2-year old son and golden retriever.

 

Craig Silverman

Media Editor, BuzzFeed News

Twitter: @CraigSilverman
Craig Silverman is the Media Editor of BuzzFeed News and leads a global beat covering platforms, online misinformation and fake news.  He previously was the founding editor of BuzzFeed Canada, and was also the founder of Emergent.info, a rumor tracking project that was developed as part a fellowship with the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. In 2010, Craig was part of the team that launched OpenFile, an online news startup the delivered community-driven reporting in six Canadian cities. He is a the former managing editor of PBS MediaShift and has been a columnist for The Globe And Mail, Toronto Star, and Columbia Journalism Review. From 2004 to 2015 he wrote Regret The Error, a blog about media accuracy and corrections, which became part of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. His journalism and books have been honored by the Mirror Awards, U.S. National Press Club, National Magazine Awards, Canadian Online Publishing Awards, and Crime Writers of Canada.

 

Evan Smith

CEO and co-founder, The Texas Tribune

Twitter: @evanasmith
Evan Smith is the CEO and co-founder of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan digital news organization recently called “one of the nonprofit news sector’s runaway success stories.” The Tribune’s deep coverage of Texas politics and public policy can be found at its website, texastribune.org, in newspapers and on TV and radio stations across the state, and in the print and online editions of the Washington Post. Since its launch in 2009, the Tribune has won international acclaim and numerous honors, including nine Edward R. Murrow Awards from the Radio Television Digital News Association. Before co-founding the Tribune, Evan spent nearly 18 years at Texas Monthly, including eight years as editor and a year as president and editor-in-chief. On his watch, Texas Monthly twice won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence.  …Read More

 

Travis Swicegood

Director of Engineering, Condé Nast Co/Lab

Twitter: @tswicegood
Travis Swicegood is the director of engineering at Condé Nast Co/Lab. He helped launch their first technology office outside of Manhattan in 2016 and is currently heading up the revenue teams. His first foray into media was with the Texas Tribune where he wore many hats – some official – including director of technology and their first news apps editor.

He’s been in the technology industry for the last 18 years. He calls Austin home, where he lives with his wife and their new daughter. He’s written two books on Git and spoken a dozens of conferences around the globe, including a 2009 presentation about bots in Germany.

Be sure to ask him for recommendations for dinner or drinks if you care to venture out and experience Austin while in town.

 

Sanette Tanaka

Product Designer, Vox Media

Twitter: @ssktanaka
Sanette Tanaka is a product designer at Vox Media. Currently, she’s working on the publishing platform and content management system that powers the websites of their editorial brands. Before that, she led design on Vox’s first experimental product team, where they worked with emerging platforms, technologies, and interaction patterns. She has designed (and coded) apps, websites, games and voice products.

Before she designed, she reported. Most recently, she was a real-estate reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and continues to write on a freelance basis. She believes her journalism background has been instrumental in shaping her investigative, user-centered approach to design.  …Read More

 

Krissah Thompson

Staff writer, Washington Post

Twitter: @Krissah30
Krissah Thompson began writing for The Washington Post in 2001. She has been a business reporter, covered presidential campaigns and written about civil rights and race. More recently, she has covered the first lady’s office, politics and culture. She lives in Vienna, Virginia with her husband and two children.

 

Lisa Tobin

Executive Producer, NYT Audio

Twitter: @lisannette
Lisa Tobin was hired to co-lead The New York Times new audio team in summer 2016. In February, she launched The Daily, a news show hosted by Michael Barbaro and powered by New York Times journalists, which has an audience of millions and has sat at the top of the iTunes charts since its debut. Prior to The Times, Tobin was the managing editor for program development at WBUR. There she developed and produced hit shows like Modern Love and Dear Sugar.

 

Marco Túlio Pires

News Lab Lead, Brazil & LatAm

Twitter: @mtrpires
Marco Túlio Pires is the News Lab Lead for Brazil & Latin America at the Google News Lab. Before joining Google in 2017, Marco was School of Data’s program manager, a global network of organizations and trainers that help journalists and NGOs how to use data with maximum impact.

Marco cofounded in 2015 the first data journalism agency in Brazil, journalismo++, part of the international j++ network of data-driven agencies.

He also worked as a production coordinator at TV Globo, as a science news reporter at VEJA, and as an innovation, transparency and technology officer at the Social Development Office in the government of São Paulo. …Read More

 

Patricia de la Rosa Urraza

Media Training Specialist, Google News Lab

Patricia de la Rosa Urraza is a Media Training Specialist for Google News Lab from Mexico to Colombia.
Before joining Google, Patricia worked as a translator and editor for the Associated Press and translated for their Mexican edition’s various lifestyle magazines.
With a Masters Degree in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the Catholic University of Leuven, Patricia worked over a decade implementing the Neighborhood Organizational Model in several working class communities all over Mexico – earning the title of Best Practice from the Dubai International Award for Best Practices and becoming one of the 50 organizations to be a part of the 6th edition in the Catalogue of Best Practices of Ibero America and the Caribbean.

Today Patricia teaches journalists how to use the Google tools for news and research.

 

(Sanchez) Wang Jiapeng

Senior Operations Director, Caixin.com

(Sanchez) Wang Jiapeng is Senior Operation Director of Caixin.com, the online division of Caixin Media, one of China’s prominent financial news organization. He is also a member of Caixin Media’s Editorial Board.
As a founding member of Caixin.com, Wang has taken up many roles in the newsroom since 2009, as regional correspondent, video producer, and chief editor of international news.
Wang holds a Master of Journalism degree from The University of Hong Kong, and a Bachelors degree from China’s Fudan University, with a major in Environmental Science.

 

Janine Warner

ICFJ International Knight Fellow, ICFJ and Sembramedia

Twitter: @janinewarner
Janine Warner is an author and consultant specializing in media, digital design, and online learning. She is also the founder and executive director of SembraMedia.org, an online community and startup directory for Spanish-language digital media entrepreneurs. Janine began her career as a reporter and editor in Northern California. In 1998, her experience on the internet, combined with her fluency in Spanish, took her to The Miami Herald, as the Online Managing Editor. A year later, she was promoted to Director of New Media. She left The Herald to serve as Director of Latin American Operations for CNET Networks. Janine has written or coauthored more than 25 books, including Web Sites For Dummies, Social Media Design for Dummies, and Global Mobile. She’s also created more than 200 hours of training videos for Lynda.com, CreativeLive, and other leading online training companies.  …Read More

 

Nicholas Whitaker

Training and Development Manager, Google News Lab

Twitter: @nickdigital
Nicholas Whitaker is media outreach manager for Google News Lab. Before joining Google in 2010, Nicholas spent the prior decade producing, directing, editing, and shooting videos and still images for news, commercial, entertainment and advocacy media.

Nicholas was also a professor at Eugene Lang College – The New School for Liberal Arts, and Marymount Manhattan College, teaching courses in video production, new media and media theory.

Nicholas earned his Bachelor of Arts in communications from The New School University with a focus in documentary filmmaking and media theory, and his Masters Degree from New York University where he specialized in political communication and new media.

Today he teaches journalists around the world how to use Google’s tools for news.

 

Tony Li Zixin

Founder, China30s.com

Li Zixin has 15 years of experience in journalism. He was chief writer for the Bund Magazine, covering international political events, such as the presidential elections in U.S., Russia and France. He is the founder of China30s.com, a publishing and training platform to cultivate non-fiction writing and citizen journalism in China.

Zixin holds a BA in Journalism from Renmin University, China and an MSc in International Public Policy from University College London, with a scholarship from the World Bank. He has published a series of books. including one on disaster reporting and one on the UK political system.

 

Laura Zommer

Executive Director, Chequeado

Twitter: @lauzommer
Laura Zommer is Executive and Editor-in-Chief at Chequeado, the first initiative of fact-checking and verification of public discourse in Latin America. She is Professor of Right to Information at the University of Buenos Aires and writes in the daily La Nación, where she has covered and conducted research on cases related to corruption, civil rights and justice for almost two decades. Laura has a Bachelor’s Degree in Communication Science from University of Buenos Aires and she’s also a lawyer and access to information and transparency activist. She worked at the most important think-tank in Argentina, CIPPEC, as Director of Communications (2004-2012) and at the Secretary of Internal Security of the Ministry of Justice as Chief of Cabinet (2003-2004). For her work as a journalist, she has received more than half a dozen awards: among them, in 2015, the Gabriel García Márquez Award from Fundación Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericana (FNPI) in the Innovation category for Chequeado and the expansion of fact-checking in the region.

 

Researchers

Karin Assmann

PhD Student, University of Maryland

Twitter: @kbassmann
Karin Assmann has covered the U.S. for the German news magazine Spiegel TV for most of her career. She has also worked as a freelancer for newspaper, radio and television outlets and has written and produced content for Der Spiegel and Spiegel Online. As a PhD student at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism she has been working on newsroom practices surrounding audience engagement.  Karin is originally from Germany and continues to work for Spiegel TV out of Washington, producing and reporting short form documentaries and magazine stories.

 

Maria Clara Aquino Bittencourt

Professor and Researcher, Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos/UNISINOS

Twitter: @mcaquino
Maria Clara Aquino Bittencourt is a professor and researcher in the Post-Graduate Program of Communication Sciences at Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos/UNISINOS in Brazil. She is Post-Doctor at the same program. PhD and Master of Communication and Information at Post-Graduate Program in Communication and Information at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul/UFRGS. Graduated in Social Communication, Journalism qualification at Universidade Católica de Pelotas/UCPEL. Researches about digital journalism on the following topics: media convergence, information spreading, movements and social mobilization, hypertext and folksonomy. Member of Laboratório de Investigação do Ciberacontecimento (LIC) and Grupo de Estudos em Jornalismo (GPJor). Co-founder of Aaron – http://thinkaaron.xyz.

 

James Breiner

Professor, University of Navarra

Twitter: @jamesbreiner
James Breiner is a bilingual consultant (English-Spanish) on digital journalism and newsroom leadership with three decades of experience on the editorial and business sides of newspapers. His specialty is entrepreneurial journalism, or new financial models for digital media. He is visiting professor in the Faculty of Communication at the University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain, where he teaches Media Economics, Multimedia Communication, and Digital Journalism. He launched and directed the Center for Digital Journalism at the University of Guadalajara, Mexico. He was one of the co-creators of two online courses on entrepreneurial journalism, in Spanish, for the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas. He has also done consulting work for the Poynter Institute, Fundación Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano, International Center for Journalists, Crain Communications, and American City Business Journals. Articles from his website, Newsentrepreneurs.com, have been republished in seven languages by IJNet, as well as being shared by Mediashift, the Global Investigative Journalism Network, and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

 

Terry Britt

Doctoral Student, University of Missouri

Twitter: @terry_britt
Terry Britt is a second-year doctoral student in the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri. He is a designated teaching fellow in the doctoral program at Missouri and has instructed students in both news reporting and journalism principles courses. He graduated from the University of Texas School of Journalism with a Master of Arts degree in the program’s Media Research and Theory track in 2015. His research interests include media’s associations with individual and collective memory, media psychophysiology, and social identity through media consumption.  His research paper “Back and forth in time: Online news archives and presence as transportation” was published in #ISOJ, Vol. 5, Issue 1, and presented at the 2015 International Symposium on Online Journalism. Prior to graduate school, Britt spent nearly 30 years in the newspaper industry in a variety of jobs for weeklies and small dailies throughout Texas, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi.…Read More

 

Marcus J. Funk, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Sam Houston State University

Twitter: @DrFunk42
Marcus Funk studies the evolution of community in the digital age. His scholarship considers how digital media imagine and construct community, how localness shapes editorial content and why traditional community newspapers offer a strong theoretical model for the future of American journalism. He is an assistant professor of mass communication at Sam Houston State University.

In the past, he’s covered the notorious Texas Lege for The Dallas Morning News and Community Impact Newspaper. He was editor of The Elgin Courier and a reporter for The Terrell Tribune, The Rockwall County News and The Kerrville Daily Times. He earned his Ph.D. in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin in 2013 and his bachelor’s degree in communication from Trinity University in 2007. He is fond of horror films and Texas barbeque.

 

Cindy Royal

Professor, Texas State University

Twitter: @cindyroyal
Cindy Royal is a professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Texas State University teaching digital and data-driven media skills and concepts. She completed Ph.D. studies in Journalism and Mass Communication at The University of Texas at Austin in May 2005. At UT, Royal focused on the effects of the Internet on communication and culture. Prior to doctoral studies, she had a career in Marketing at Compaq Computer and NCR Corporation. She has a Master of Business Administration from the University of Richmond and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

In 2016, Royal founded the Media Innovation Lab and launched a new undergraduate major in Digital Media Innovation at Texas State. In 2013, she received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching at Texas State University and the AEJMC/Scripps Howard Journalism and Mass Communication Teacher of the Year award. During the 2013-2014 academic year, she was in residence at Stanford University in the Knight Journalism Fellowship program, where she worked on a platform to teach journalists how to code, called CodeActually.com. Additional detail regarding her research, education and experience can be found at cindyroyal.com.

 

Amy Schmitz Weiss

Associate Professor, San Diego State University

Twitter: @digitalamysw
Amy Schmitz Weiss is an associate professor in the School of Journalism and Media Studies at San Diego State University. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 2008. She is the recipient of the 2014-2015 ONA Hack the Curriculum Grant that explored the use of sensor technology for environmental news coverage in her journalism class. She is also a 2011 Dart Academic Fellow. Amy is the 2011-2012 recipient of the AEJMC Bridge Grant with funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation that led to the creation of a mobile news app, AzteCast, for the San Diego State University campus population. Amy teaches journalism courses in basic writing and editing, multimedia, web design, data journalism and mobile. She also is a former journalist who has been involved in new media for more than a decade. She has worked in business development, marketing analysis and account management for several Chicago internet media firms.…Read More

 

Natalie (Talia) Jomini Stroud

Director, Engaging News Project

Twitter: @TaliaStroud
Talia Stroud (PhD, University of Pennsylvania) is the Director of the Engaging News Project at the Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life and Associate Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her book, Niche News (Oxford, 2011), examines likeminded political media use and inspired this project. The book received the 2012 Outstanding Book Award from the International Communication Association. Stroud previously worked at the Annenberg Public Policy Center; the name of this project is a H/T to Kathleen Hall Jamieson’s “E4″ work with local news in the 2002 midterms.

 

John Wihbey

Assistant Professor, Northeastern University

Twitter: @wihbey
John Wihbey is an assistant professor of journalism and new media at Northeastern University School of Journalism, where he teaches in the Media Innovation program. Previously, he oversaw the Journalist’s Resource project at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy and served for four years as a lecturer in journalism at Boston University. A former radio producer and newspaper reporter, he has written for a range of publications, including Nieman Journalism Lab, Yale Climate Connections, The Boston Globe, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Pacific Standard, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

 

Pei Zheng

Assistant Professor, Ithaca College

Twitter: @cindy1067
Pei Zheng teaches multimedia journalism at Roy H. Park School of Communication in Ithaca College, New York. Her research focuses on the intersection of new media technology, political communication and media effect, and she adopts quantitative methods such as network and computational analysis to study them. Her articles have been published in highly recognized academic journals including Journal of Communication, International Journal of Press/Politics, Information, Communication & Society, and Asian Journal of Communication. Her studies have also been presented at various conferences including annual conferences of International Communication Association, National Communication Association, American Political Science Association, and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.