Conference speakers
Anne Adams
Panel: Environmentally conscious with a news conscience
Anne Adams will represent the Highland Recorder.
Duncan Adams
Panel: Everyday business: telling the globalization story locally
Duncan Adams is a reporter for the Roanoke Times.
Harlan Beckley
Panel moderator: The other America: How do we cover poverty?
Founder and director of W&L's Shepherd Program for the Interdisciplinary Study of Poverty, Dr. Harlan Beckley received a B.S. in Economics from the University of Illinois and a Doctoral Degree in Christian Theological Ethics from Vanderbilt University. Beckley has taught in the Religion department at Washington and Lee University since 1974. In 1997, Beckley helped to create and became the first Director of the Shepherd Program. In 1999, Beckley was named the Fletcher Otey Thomas Professor of Religion and in 2002 he received the state of Virginia's highest award for excellence in education, the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia's Outstanding Faculty Award. Beckley also served as Vice President and President of the Society of Christian Ethics from 1999-2001 and as Acting President of Washington and Lee University in 2005-06.
Image and biography courtesy W&L Shepherd Poverty Program.
Juliet Bickford
Panel: From the eye of the storm: Reporting a crisis
Mark of excellence award luncheon emcee
Juliet Bickford is the morning anchor at WTKR (a CBS affiliate) Norfolk, Va. For the past five years, Bickford worked as the morning and noon news anchor and reporter for WSLS10 (NBC) in Roanoke, Va. During her time at WSLS, she reported on the shootings at Virginia Tech. Prior to that, she was a weekend anchor/reporter for KACB in San Angelo, Texas. In 2000, she graduated from Washington and Lee University and won the university's Todd Smith Fellowship in International Reporting. As part of the fellowship, she traveled to Sydney for the Summer Olympic Games, where she spent about five weeks reporting for radio and the Tampa Tribune.
Image courtesy Juliet Bickford.
Bill Choyke
Panel: Everyday business: telling the globalization story locally
Panel Moderator: Out of College, Into the Job Market
Bill Choyke has served as business editor of The Virginian-Pilot in
Norfolk since March 2003. He began his professional career at his
hometown newspaper in Waukegan, Ill., and worked for 14 years in
Washington, D.C., providing coverage for a number of Texas newspapers,
including The Dallas Morning News from 1981 to 1989. He was awarded a
Batten Fellowship at The Darden Graduate School of Business
Administration in 1989 and received his MBA in 1991. Choyke also worked
for Gannett Co. for nearly 10 years.
Image and biography courtesy Bill Choyke.
Doug Cumming
Panel moderator: At its roots: why community journalism is thriving
Doug Cumming has been a reporter and editor at newspapers and magazines in Atlanta, Raleigh and Providence. A recipient of a George Polk Award and a Nieman Fellowship, he has just completed a book on the history of the Southern press for Northwestern University Press. He has taught journalism at W&L since 2003. Cumming is also the faculty advisor for the W&L SPJ student chapter.
Image courtesy W&L Department of Journalism and Mass Communications. Biography courtesy Doug Cumming.
Walter Cumming
Presentation: Visual Journalism: the enhancement (or heart) of a story
Walter Cumming is an illustrator-artist at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. A Georgia native, Cumming has received numerous first place awards in art and illustration, including some from Cox Newspapers, the Associated Press and Georgia Press Association.
Biographical information and image courtesy Walter Cumming.
Sam Dean
Presentation: Visual Journalism: the enhancement (or heart) of a story
Sam Dean is an award-winning photographer for the Roanoke Times.
Greg Esposito
Panel: From the eye of the storm: Reporting a crisis
As a reporter for the Roanoke Times, Greg Esposito covered the Virginia Tech shootings. He is also a graduate of Washington and Lee University.
Kelly Evans
Panel: Out of college, into the job market
Kelly Evans graduated from Washington and Lee University in 2007. She now works as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal.
Paul Freedman
Panel: Election coverage: What's fair? What's fair game?
Paul Freedman (Ph.D. University of Michigan) is an associate professor at University of Virginia in the field of American Politics (Public Opinion, Media and Politics, Research Methods). Freedman is the 2003 recipient of the University of Virginia Alumni Board of Trustees Teaching Award. Freedman's current research projects focus on campaign advertising, issue framing, and the politics of abortion. His work has appeared in Public Opinion Quarterly, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, Political Communication, Campaigns and Elections and Slate. He recently completed a book about television campaign advertising and American democracy. Freedman served as research director for the Project on Campaign Conduct at the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership. Since 2000, he has been an election analyst for ABC News in New York.
Image courtesy Paul Freeman.
Amy Goodman
Keynote speaker
Amy Goodman is the award-winning host and executive producer of Democracy Now! and co-authored the book Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times with her brother, journalist Dave Goodman. The book is due out in April of this year. They are also the authors of two New York TImes bestsellers: Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People Who Fight Back (2006) and The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them (2004). Goodman has been recognized for her reporting by the Associated Press, United Press International, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Project Censored, among others. Democracy Now! describes itself as "a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program airing on over 650 TV and radio stations in North America." Time Magazine has recognized Democracy Now! alongside NBC's "Meet the Press" as a "Pick of the Podcasts."
Image courtesy Democracy Now.
Doug Harwood
Panel: At its roots: why community journalism is thriving
Doug Harwood is the editor and publisher of the local monthly alternative paper, the Rockbridge Advocate, which prides itself as being "independent as a hog on ice." For the past few decades, Harwood has hosted the "Anti-Headache Machine," an eclectic mix of music from mostly vinyl records, on Saturday nights on WLUR-FM. Harwood is also a graduate of Washington and Lee University.
Image courtesy the Rockbridge Advocate.
Christina Kolock
Panel: Out of college, into the job market
Christina Kolock is a 2005 graduate of W&L who now works as a producer for local programming at WTVR - CBS6 in Richmond, Va.
Kate Long
Workshop: Turning news into great stories
panel:The other America: How do we cover poverty?
Kate Long has worked as a media writing coach for 22 years in many parts of the United States and Canada. Her fiction, songwriting, video editing, radio production and newspaper stories have won national awards. She frequently produces programs for West Virginia Public Radio and Television and teaches writing workshops for teenagers, songwriters and other groups. Currently, she is a media writing coach with the Charleston (W. Va.) Gazette.
Image and biographical information courtesy Kate Long.
Wilson Lowrey
Panel: At its roots: why community journalism is thriving
University of Alabama jounralism professor Wilson Lowrey will represent the Knight Fellows in Community Journalism. Lowrey has published numerous refereed papers and articles on journalism. Before becoming a professor, he worked for various newspapers as a desk manager, page designer and editorial cartoonist.
Kathy Lu
Panel: Out of college, into the job market
W&L graduate Kathy Lu is the features editor at the Roanoke Times.
Pam Luecke
Panel moderator: everyday business: telling the globalization story locally
Pam Luecke is the Donald W. Reynolds Professor of Business Journalism at W&L. Prior to becoming a professor, Luecke worked at the Lexington Herald-Leader, where she was an editor, vice president, senior vice president and editorial page editor (though not necessarily in that order). At the Hartford Courant, Luecke was the supervising editor of the team that won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism, and she was one of the supervising editors for the Courier-Journal team that won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting. At W&L, Luecke teaches courses in business journalism and copy editing.
Image courtesy W&L Department of Journalism and Mass Communications.
Melissa Manware
Panel: From the eye of the storm: Reporting a crisis
Melissa Manware, formerly a police reporter at the Charlotte Observer and now with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, will represent the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma in the crisis reporting panel.
Albert L. May
Panel moderator: Election coverage: what's fair? What's fair game?
Al May is an Associate Professor of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University, who specializes in news coverage of the government on the state, local and national levels. Before joining the faculty, May was the government and public affairs editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, overseeing state and local government and political coverage. He also was as a national political reporter and the state capitol bureau chief.
Biographical information and image courtesy Al May.
Dugald McConnell
Workshop: Multimedia embedded reporting
Panel: Election coverage: What's fair? What's fair game?
Dugald McConnell was the embedded producer with the Edwards campaign for CNN in 2008 and for NBC in 2004, reporting online and on air. He is a producer in CNN's Washington bureau, and has also worked as a producer at Fox News Channel and MSNBC. He completed a masters at the Kennedy School of Government with a focus on politics and the press.
Image and biography courtesy Dugald McConnell.
Brian Richardson
Panel Moderator: Environmentally conscious with a news conscience
Brian Richardson is the chair of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communications at W&L -- the same department that gave him his B.A. in journalism in 1973. Before becoming a professor (and even during the summer once he came to W&L), Richardson worked at numerous media organizations, including the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Miami Herald, the Tallahassee Democrat and WDBO-TV. He received his Ph.D. in Journalism and Communications from the University of Florida.
Image courtesy W&L Department of Journalism and Mass Communications.
Dave "Mudcat" Saunders
Press Conference
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| Saunders, left, and Jarding |
Dave "Mudcat" Saunders, the colorful Bubba-Democratic political advisor who helped get Democrats Mark Warner, Jim Webb and Tim Kaine elected in Red-State Virginia, will hold a news conference just before the awards luncheon. Saunders has been featured in the Weekly Standard and the New York Times Sunday Magazine. The Roanoke Times has described him as "the go-to guy for national reporters searching out freewheeling, in-your-face quotes -- kind of a James Carville meets Dale Earnhardt meets Barney Fife." And the book he co-wrote with Harvard Professor Steve Jarding is said to be a blue-print for how the Democrats can re-take the White House: Foxes in the Henhouse: How the Republicans Stole the South and the Heartland, and what the Democrats Must Do to Run 'em Out. Mudcat says Steve wrote the book, and "I added the cuss words." Come hear him speak, hear him cuss, ask him tough questions, and you decide whether he "wrote the book" on a new Democratic strategy.
Image courtesy Mudcat Saunders.
Dan Smith
Panel: Environmentally conscious with a news conscience
Dan Smith has been a journalist since 1964, beginning as a "copy boy" for the Asheville Citizen just out of high school. Among his stops have been 10 years at the Roanoke Times and 19 years at the Blue Ridge Business Journal. He has won numerous awards for writing sports, editorials, features and news, for design, photography and for his Public Radio essays. He was named Virginia's Small Business Journalist of the Year in 2005 and was recently nominated to the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame. In recent years, he and the Business Journal have won awards for support of the arts, environmental education, marketplace ethics and he has been nominated for the Roanoke Regional Chamber's Business Advocate of the Year Award twice.
Image and biographical information courtesy Dan Smith.
Rex Springston
Panel: Environmentally conscious with a news conscience
Rex Springston is a reporter for the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
Tim Thornton
Panel: Environmentally conscious with a news conscience
Tim Thornton is a Growth and Environment Reporter from the Roanoke Times. Born in Roanoke, Thornton grew up in Roanoke and Montgomery counties. He has edited and reported at newspapers and alternative newsweeklies from Winchester to Jacksonville, Fla. Thornton received his undergraduate degree in English, history and journalism/communications from Averett College. He took his master of arts in liberal studies at Hollins University.
Image courtesy Tim Thornton. Biography courtesy the Roanoke Times.
Ed Wasserman
Panel moderator: From the eye of the storm: Reporting a crisis
Panel: The other America: How do we cover poverty?
Before becoming the Knight Chair in Journalism Ethics at W&L, Ed Wasserman was a columnist at the Miami Herald. Prior to that, he was the editorial director for Media Central LLC in New York City. Wasserman has also worked as the chairman and editor-in-chief of the Daily Business Review in Miami and an executive business editor, deputy city editor and assistant city editor at the Miami Herald. He received his Ph.D. from the London School of Economics in 1980.
Image courtesy W&L Department of Journalism and Mass Communications.