J-Lab: Batten Awards: 2007 Advisory Board

Rosental C. Alves is the director of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, as well as a professor and Knight Chair in Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. He created the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, a four-year project to work in training programs with journalists from Latin America and the Caribbean, in 2002. The Knight Center is based at the School of Journalism in Austin, but reaches thousands of journalists throughout the hemisphere.

At the University of Texas at Austin, Alves has three basic areas for teaching and research: international reporting, journalism in Latin America, and Internet journalism. He created the first class on online journalism at UT in the 1997-98 academic year, and has been a frequent speaker in conferences and has conducted numerous workshops in several countries to train journalists and journalism professors on the use of the new medium.

Alves spent 27 years as a professional journalist, including 23 years in Rio de Janeiro where he was the managing editor and member of the board of directors of Jornal do Brasil, one of the most important Brazilian newspapers. In 1991, he created the first online, real-time finance news service, the first of its kind in Brazil. And in 1994, Alves managed the launching of Jornal do Brasil's online edition, making it the first Brazilian newspaper available on the Internet. A working journalist since he was 16, Alves received a B.A. in journalism from the Rio de Janeiro Federal University. He was the first Brazilian awarded a Nieman Fellowship to spend an academic year (1987-88) at Harvard University.

Jim Brady was named executive editor of washingtonpost.com in November 2004. Prior to his appointment, Brady served as a consultant for washingtonpost.com, focusing primarily on product development and strategy. This is Brady’s second stint at washingtonpost.com. He served as sports editor and assistant managing editor for news from 1995 to 1999, and was on staff for the site’s official launch in June 1996. During his time in news, Brady helped coordinate the site’s coverage of the Clinton impeachment.

After leaving washingtonpost.com in 1999, Brady spent more than four years at America Online, serving as Group Programming Director, News and Sports; Executive Director, Editorial Operations; and Vice President, Production & Operations. During his time at AOL, Brady was in charge of the service’s coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the 2000 presidential election.

Brady earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Print Journalism from The American University in 1989.

Jody Brannon took the Senior Editor position at MSN.com in 2006 after six years at USATODAY.com. She is MSN.com's first blogger with a home-page presence, writing on topics of her choice, from sports to news to pop culture. She is also the chief liaison with users.

As the executive producer of news for USATODAY.com, Brannon handled breaking news and coordinated prime-time programming. She was previously the executive producer at Washington Post.Newsweek Interactive where she oversaw projects and partnerships. For two years, Brannon served as managing editor for washingtonpost.com during which time the site was judged winner of the EPpy (Editor & Publisher's awards honoring the best new media services from the newspaper industry) for best news section in a newspaper online service.

Brannon was editor of Sports Etc., a Seattle-based magazine, and has been a reporter, columnist and editor for The Seattle Times and The Tacoma News Tribune.

Brannon received her Doctor of Philosophy in Mass Communication, from the University of Maryland, Philip Merrill College of Journalism in 1999; her dissertation was entitled, "Maximizing the Medium: Assessing Impediments to Performing Multimedia Journalism at Three News Web Sites." An adjunct at various Seattle-area universities before pursuing her doctorate, Brannon taught news writing classes to undergraduates while at the University and will teach the spring capstone course in American University's weekend master's program in digital journalism. Brannon's other journalism degrees are from Seattle University (BA) and AU (MA).

Bill Buzenberg became Executive Director of the Center for Public Integrity in December 2006. He has been a journalist and news executive at newspapers and in public radio for more than 35 years. As Senior Vice President of News at American Public Media / Minnesota Public Radio, Buzenberg began Public Insight Journalism, an innovative use of technology to draw knowledge from the audience. The project won an Award of Distinction in the 2005 Batten Awards.

Buzenberg was at National Public Radio from 1978 to 1997, beginning as a reporter and working his way up to Vice President of News and Information.

He began his journalism career in newspapers, serving as city editor of the Colorado Springs Sun in the early '70s. Buzenberg was a Peace Corps volunteer in Bolivia from 1968 to 1970. He has won numerous awards, including the prestigious Edward R. Murrow Award, public radio's highest honor.

A graduate of Kansas State University, Buzenberg has also studied at the University of Michigan as part of its mid-career professional journalism fellowship program, in the M.A. program at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna, Italy, and as a Fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

Nick Charles is the former editor in chief for AOL Black Voices, where he was responsible for spearheading the day-to-day editorial activities across seven channels including Main, News, Sports, Lifestyle, Entertainment, Work & Money, Blogs (Community), and several sub-channels.

Charles was also the founding editor in chief of the Toyota & Jungle Media Group culture/lifestyle magazine Forward, responsible for the conceptualization and design of the 60-page title. Before that, he was a staff writer at People magazine, where he penned human interest and celebrity features. He was also a staff reporter at The New York Daily News, writing feature articles and cultural criticism, plus a weekly column on pop culture.

He spent time as a foreign correspondent for the Cleveland (OH) Plain Dealer reporting from Somalia, Djibouti and Kenya, and he has contributed to various publications including The Los Angeles Times,The Nation, The Village Voice, Black Enterprise, The New York Times Book Review, Essence, Emerge, Interview, and The New York Sun, to name a few.

Charles holds a B.A. in Journalism from New York University and an M.S. in International Affairs from New School University. He currently resides in Brooklyn, NY.

Chris Harvey has worked as an online editor, a magazine editor, a newspaper reporter and a journalism teacher. She left her job as managing editor at American Journalism Review in August 2000 to help build the online curriculum at the College of Journalism. She created and now edits the College's online newsmagazine, Maryland Newsline, which is staffed by students. She also teaches an introductory online journalism course.

Before coming to AJR, Harvey worked as an associate Metro editor at washingtonpost.com. There, she led a content redesign of the Metro section and edited news and feature stories. She earlier taught reporting and editing at the College and ran the College's student-staffed Capital News Service bureaus in Washington and Annapolis.

She has held reporting and editing jobs at several papers, including The Washington Times, and has free-lanced for The Washington Post and Congressional Quarterly's "Politics in America."

Mark Hinojosa
Associate Managing Editor, Electronic News
The Chicago Tribune

Mark Hinojosa joined The Chicago Tribune in 1991 as an assistant photo editor. In 1994 he was promoted to Director of Photography. He was again promoted 1999 to Associate Managing Editor for Photography. In 2000 Hinojosa filled the newly created position of A.M.E. for Electronic News. In his new role, Hinojosa works as a liaison between the print, broadcast and the Internet, facilitating the development of stories across these different media. In his capacity as A.M.E. for photography, Hinojosa was responsible for a staff of 68, which included photographers, photo editors and lab support staff. Hinojosa is the first person at the Tribune to hold both A.M.E. positions.

Prior to joining The Tribune, Hinojosa worked as a staff photographer at New York Newsday and as a photographer/photo editor for the Kansas City Star. He has won awards for both his photography and photo editing and has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize three times.

Born in Los Angeles in August 1956, Hinojosa has lived in Kansas City, Mo. and in three of the five boroughs of New York City. He holds a bachelor's degree in Mass Communication from Pepperdine University in Malibu, Ca. Hinojosa serves on the board of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the board of Street Level Youth Media, an organization committed to teaching media awareness to urban youth. He is married to a freelance journalist, with whom he has three children, and, when time permits, is an avid flyfisher.

Larry Kirkman is the dean of the American University School of Communication, where he directs and develops academic and professional programs in Journalism, Film and Media Arts and Public Communication with a cross-cutting focus on public affairs and public service.

Dean Kirkman came to AU in 2001 from the Benton Foundation. As director of Benton, from 1989 to 2001, he created programs in strategic communications for nonprofit organizations, public media, and communications policy. Under his direction, Benton became a leading nonprofit Internet publisher, producing online knowledge networks that served as test-beds for journalism, education and social action. He launched the U.S. Center for www.oneworld.net, and he served as Chair of the One World International Foundation from ‘02-’06. He serves on the Public Issues Advisory Committee of The Advertising Council. He served in various roles for the Council on Foundations and its affinity groups, including: chair of the Communication Committee; chair of the Film and Video Festival; and chair of the Communications Committee for the Funders for Citizen Participation.

Prior to his work at the Benton Foundation, Dean Kirkman was the founding director of the Labor Institute of Public Affairs, where he worked from 1982 to 1989, and he worked at the American Film Institute from 1979 to 1982. As an AU professor in the 1970s, he helped bring the School of Communication into the video age while serving as editor of TeleVisions magazine.

Harrison "Lee" Rainie is the Director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a research center that examines the social impact of the Internet - or, how people's Internet use is affecting families, communities, health care, education, civic/political life, and work places.

Since its creation in December 1999, the project has issued more than 100 reports about Americans' use of the Internet. The research findings often center on the Project's regular monitoring of online life, including the ways in which their behavior changes as they gain more experience on the Internet. In addition, Project reports have dealt with such topics as: the impact of people's use of email on their key relationships, the way that Internet users act on the health information they get online, the impact of the Internet on campaigns, elections, and Americans' civic life, how broadband connections change people's online lives, the way teenagers and college students use the Internet, the durability and usefulness of online communities, the reasons why people do not have Internet access, how email use has changed U.S. workplaces, and the way people used the Internet after the September 11 terror attacks and their views about online information on government Web sites. The project's work can be found at http://www.pewinternet.org/.

Jan Schaffer is the executive director for J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism, a center at the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism that helps news organizations and citizens use new information ideas and innovative computer technologies to develop new ways for people to engage in critical public policy issues.

She is the former Executive Director of the Pew Center for Civic Journalism, an incubator for more than 120 journalism projects that created new ways of reporting that helped engage people better in public life. Schaffer, a former Business Editor for The Philadelphia Inquirer, directed the reporting and editing of two investigative series that were named finalists for the Pulitzer Prize, one on pharmaceutical pricing and one on abuses in the nation's non-profit sector. As a federal court reporter, she helped write a series of stories that won freedom for a man wrongly convicted of five murders. The stories led to the civil rights convictions of the Philadelphia homicide detectives involved in the investigation. The articles won several national journalism awards, including the 1978 Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal for Public Service, the Sigma Delta Chi Distinguished Public Service Award, the Roy W. Howard Medal for Public Service and the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel.

Also while covering federal courts, she broke the Philadelphia Abscam story about the FBI sting operation that used agents posing as Arab sheiks. She was sentenced to jail for six months for refusing to reveal her sources; the sentence was stayed on appeal. Schaffer has been a journalism fellow at Stanford University and has taught journalism courses at Temple University and workshops at the American Press Institute. The Pew Center for Civic Journalism, a $14 million project created in 1993, was the first journalism-related initiative funded by the Pew Trusts. Since then the Trusts have supported several other journalism-based projects.

Bryan Monroe (Board Chair, 2003-2007)
Vice President and Editorial Director
Ebony and Jet magazines

Bryan Monroe joined Johnson Publishing Company as the vice president and editorial director of Ebony and Jet magazines in 2006. He is also currently president of the National Association of Black Journalists.

Monroe was formerly the assistant vice president/ news at now defunct Knight Ridder, where he was responsible for the journalistic operations of all 31 Knight Ridder properties nationwide. He also completed his Nieman Fellowship at Harvard in June 2003. Prior to that, he was deputy managing editor at the San Jose Mercury News in California, where he was in charge of nearly 200 journalists and a $12 million budget. Monroe joined Knight Ridder in 1987 as director of graphics and photography at The (Myrtle Beach, S.C.) Sun News.

From 1989 to 1991 he was assistant project director for Knight Ridder's 25/43 Project, an effort to design a newspaper specifically for readers in that key demographic, based at the Boca Raton News. He joined the San Jose Mercury News in 1991 as design director, also serving as a reporter and assigning editor. Among many duties there, Monroe led redesigns of the Mercury News in 1992 and again in 2000. The paper has repeatedly been named one of the five world's best-designed by the Society for News Design.

He worked earlier in his career as a photographer at The Seattle Times, The Roanoke Times & World News and United Press International. Monroe is vice president/print of the National Association of Black Journalists and immediate past president of the Bay Area Black Journalists Association. He has taught frequently for The Poynter Institute, the American Press Institute and many other organizations.

Mike McCurry is a principal of Public Strategies Group, LLC, a Washington, D.C.-based public affairs and strategic communications consulting firm, where he has practiced since leaving the White House. He also serves on boards or advisory councils for Share Our Strength, the Center for International Private Enterprise, the Council for Excellence in Government, the Junior Statesmen Foundation, the Wesley Theological Seminary, and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.

McCurry is a veteran political strategist and spokesperson with 25-years experience in Washington, D.C. He began his affiliation with Grassroots Enterprise as a member of the board of advisors in January 2000. Since then, McCurry has become chief executive officer and chairman of the board of directors, leading the strategic development of the company and its software and services.

McCurry served in the White House as press secretary to President Bill Clinton (1995-1998). He also served as spokesman for the Department of State (1993-1995) and director of communications for the Democratic National Committee (1988-1990). McCurry has also held leadership roles in several national campaigns, including national press secretary for the vice presidential campaign of Senator Lloyd M. Bentsen (1988), and spokesman and political strategist in the presidential campaigns of Senator John Glenn (1984), Governor Bruce Babbitt (1988) and Senator Bob Kerrey (1992). McCurry began his political career on the staff of the United States Senate, working as press secretary to the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources and to the committee's chairman, Senator Harrison A. Williams, Jr. (1976-1981). He also served as press secretary to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1981-1983).

McCurry received his bachelor of arts from Princeton University in 1976 and a master of arts from Georgetown University in 1985.

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