Mike Fancher
Discussion Leader
A 2008 – 2009 Donald W. Reynolds Fellow, Mike Fancher retired from The Seattle Times last year after 20 years as executive editor. During his tenure The Times won four Pulitzer Prizes and was a Pulitzer finalist 13 other times.
A story about his retirement quoted a Seattle official as saying, “Under Mike, the paper was fearless about tackling subjects it thought were important to the community. There were a lot of people in the community who didn’t like that. But, at the same time, the paper was gutsy, and fearless in admitting when it made a mistake.” Fancher credits two factors: as a sophomore in high school working on the school paper he was inspired by the Journalist’s Creed. And he worked for a paper that believed in public-service journalism.
Today he worries that the journalism business model is changing. Technology has altered the relationship between journalists and citizens. Is it time to rewrite the Journalist’s Creed? Will public-service journalism survive?
Fancher is devoting his Fellowship year to the question, “What is the Journalist’s Creed for the 21st Century?” and has convened a series of forums to discuss these issues.
In addition, during the coming year he will serve as chairman of the ASNE ethics committee. He advises a commission for the Knight Foundation and is a frequent speaker at industry, civic and academic gatherings.
Pam Johnson
Executive Director, RJI
Pam Johnson became the first executive director of the Reynolds Journalism Institute in November 2004. She previously served as a member of the Leadership Faculty at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, in executive and managing editor positions at The Arizona Republic and The Phoenix Gazette and as assistant managing editor at The Kansas City Star. Johnson also worked at The Joplin Globe and the Binghamton (N.Y.) Evening Press.
Johnson has served as president of the Associated Press Managing Editors, as a Pulitzer juror and as a judge for the American Society of Newspaper Editors Best Writing Awards contest. She has served on numerous boards including ASNE, APME, the Freedom Forum Pacific Coast Center, Investigative Reporters and Editors, The Foundation for American Communications and the Missourian Publishing Association. Johnson is a founder of the Journalism and Women’s Symposium, a group formed to help women in newspapers through networking.
A 1969 journalism graduate of the University of Missouri, Johnson was awarded the Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism in 2000. She shared the 1982 Pulitzer Prize that was awarded to The Kansas City Star and Kansas City Times for coverage of the Hyatt Hotel skywalks collapse.
Tom Bivins
Tom Bivins is the John L. Hulteng Chair in Media Ethics in the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon where he is the head of the Graduate Certificate Program in Communication Ethics.
He has a B.A. in English and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, both from the University of Alaska, Anchorage, and a PhD in Telecommunications from the University of
Oregon. He has worked in television and radio broadcasting, documentary film production, advertising, corporate public relations, and as a graphic designer and editorial cartoonist.
He is the author of numerous articles on the mass media in academic and professional publications, and has written books on media ethics, public relations writing, publication design, advertising, and newsletter publication. He has also designed numerous Web sites for education, business, and professional societies.
Mark Carter
Mark Carter, a 20-year veteran media executive, strategist, reporter and executive producer, is the executive director of the Committee of Concerned Journalists and the Goldenson Chair in Community Broadcasting at the Missouri School of Journalism.
Carter began his career as a consultant with McKinsey & Company. Later, as a television correspondent, he reported from 15 countries for CNN and Channel One.
Before founding his own production company, Mark Carter & Company, Carter worked at Hearst/Women.com, where he was responsible for creating television and broadband Internet opportunities and pioneered a seven-figure, multi-platform programming partnership with CBS News.
Carter is on the advisory board of the Nieman Foundation for Journalists at Harvard University, where he was a Nieman Fellow in 1995 and spent a year studying at the Harvard Business School. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the chairman of the advisory board of “Do Something,” a national youth service organization. A graduate of Harvard College, Carter has studied in France as a Rotary Scholar.
Sharon Pian Chan
Sharon Pian Chan is a staff reporter for The Seattle Times and national president of the Asian American Journalists Association. She has covered the mayor, courts, Fortune 500 companies, Christina Aguilera, Medicare fraud at the University of Washington and accounting tricks at the region’s largest Internet firm.
At The Seattle Times, she has worked as a business reporter, education reporter and with the investigative team. Previously, she served as managing editor for Orange Coast magazine. She graduated from Pomona College.
Barbara Cochran
Barbara Cochran has been president of RTNDA and RTNDF since 1997. RTNDA is the world’s largest professional organization devoted to electronic journalism, representing local and network news executives in broadcasting, cable and other electronic media in more than 30 countries. RTNDF, a 501(c)3 organization, promotes excellence in electronic journalism through research, education and training for news professionals and journalism students.
Cochran is a leading advocate for First Amendment rights. She has been at the forefront of the major issues facing electronic journalists, including fighting for cameras and microphones in state and federal courtrooms, protecting journalists’ access in post-9/11 America, opposing government secrecy and battling intrusive regulation of news content. She has led RTNDA’s sponsorship of Sunshine Week, an annual campaign to raise public awareness of the importance of open government.
Cochran has a master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York and a bachelor’s degree from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. She and her husband, John Cochran, senior correspondent for ABC News, live in Washington.
Roger Gafke
Roger Gafke is professor emeritus at the Missouri School of Journalism and director of program development for the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute. In that role he builds partnerships for research projects, programs and funding from corporations, foundations, associations and individuals who share RJI’s priority to advance the practice of journalism.
He has expanded the international programs and relationships for the Missouri School of Journalism. He has led several cooperative projects with journalists and educators in the Middle East. He is the first American journalist to deliver training at the Aljazeera Media Training and Development Center in Doha, Qatar. He has also provided training programs for the Alhurra Television Channel, U.S. He serves as faculty adviser for the International School of Media and Entertainment Studies in Delhi, India. He was primary host and coordinator for international journalists in the Hubert Humphrey Fellowship program at the Missouri School of Journalism.
Deborah Gump
After reporting and editing jobs at the Rochester (N.Y.) Times-Union, Deborah Gump worked for the San Jose Mercury News, the Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, USA Today and the Marin (Calif.) Independent Journal. While she was news editor of the Marin IJ, the paper was a six-time winner of the California Newspaper Publisher Association’s best-newspaper award and twice won Gannett’s award for the best paper in its circulation category.
In 1999, The Freedom Forum selected Gump for its doctorate program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she focused her research on the psychological and ethical implications of the language of journalism. Gump joined the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University as the Knight professor of editing and director of the Knight Ohio Program for Editing and Editing Education, funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
She is a founding member of the American Copy Editors Society, the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, the Society of Professional Journalists and the Online News Association. She is a frequent presenter at industry and academic conferences.
Deborah Howell
Deborah Howell was a native of San Antonio, Tex., and became a reporter and editor, first at her high school newspaper and then at the Daily Texan at the University of Texas (BJ ‘62). She was a reporter at the Austin American-Statesman, the Corpus Christi Caller-Times and the Minneapolis Star. She became the city editor at the Star and then the managing editor and editor of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. She was the Washington Bureau chief and editor of Newhouse News from 1990 until 2005. Howell joined The Washington Post in October 2005 as an ombudsman. In that capacity, she promoted public understanding of the newspaper and journalism. She also wrote a weekly column.
Rush Kidder
Dr. Rush Kidder has worked for more than seventeen years to refine his guidelines for ethical decision-making through his Institute for Global Ethics, a non-profit, non-partisan think-tank headquartered in Rockland, Maine. Through extensive, around-the-world, research-based interviews, surveys, and focus groups, the Institute is finding that, despite different cultures, religions, and political systems, people worldwide tend to agree on five core, shared values: honesty, responsibility, respect, fairness, and compassion.
A graduate of Amherst College with a Ph.D. from Columbia University, he continues to write weekly commentaries for Ethics Newsline®, the premier online source for news and information on ethics and current events, published by the Institute and circulating to subscribers in more than 120 countries. He also places op-ed pieces in such periodicals as the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and The Boston Globe.
In books, lectures, seminars, and frequent news commentary, Kidder gives us a common language and a methodology for analyzing situations where two values are in conflict.
Bill Kovach
Bill Kovach is the founding chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists and its programs.
He has been a journalist and writer for almost 50 years. In that time he was chief of the New York Times Washington Bureau, and served as executive editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and curator of the Nieman Fellowships at Harvard University. He served two years as Ombudsman for Brill’s Content magazine and in 2005 was named a Fellow of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Kovach is co-author with Tom Rosenstiel of The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect (Crown, 2001), which was awarded Harvard University’s Goldsmith Book Prize (2002), the Sigma Delta Chi award for research in journalism, and the Bart Richards Award for Media Criticism. Kovach and Rosenstiel also co-authored Warp Speed: America in the Age of Mixed Media (Century Press, 1999), which earned an SDX Award for research in journalism in 2000. Kovach was also a contributing writer for Profiles in Courage for Our Time (Hyperion, 2002), The Prevailing South (Peachtree Press, 1988), The Art of Writing Non Fiction (Syracuse Press, 1986) and Assignment America (Quadrangle Press, 1984).
In 2006 Kovach was appointed to the faculty of the University of Missouri Journalism School. In 2004 he filled the John Seigenthaler Chair in Excellence in First Amendment Studies at Middle Tennessee State University. And from 1994-96 he lectured on Press, Politics and Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Kovach is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and serves on a number of boards including: the board of directors of the Center for Public Integrity; the board of incorporators and the advisory board of Harvard Magazine; and the advisory boards of the Consortium of Investigative Reporters, the Native American Journalists Foundation, The Right Question Project, and the Encyclopedia of the Appalachians.
Kelly McBride
Kelly McBride is at the epicenter of the world of journalism ethics. As the Ethics Group Leader at the Poynter Institute, she guides journalists and newsrooms around the globe as they navigate both new and old ethical pressures. She’s spending a lot of time these days on the new. Her most requested workshops address ethics in a digital era, new forms of media like social networks and retooling the newsroom. She’s been on faculty at Poynter since 2002. Before that she was a newspaper reporter for 15 years, first covering the crime beat, then the religion beat.
She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and a master’s degree in religion from Gonzaga University.
Tom Rosenstiel
Tom Rosenstiel designed the Project for Excellence in Journalism and directs its activities. He also serves as vice chair of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, an initiative engaged in conducting a national conversation among journalists about standards and values. From 1997 to 2006, he also functioned as executive director in charge of the daily operation of CCJ, which was then also administered by PEJ. A journalist for more than 20 years, he is a former media critic for the Los Angeles Times and chief congressional correspondent for Newsweek magazine. He is the editor and principal author of PEJ’s Annual Report on the State of the News Media, a comprehensive report on the health of American journalism. He also directs the Project’s content analysis reports on the performance of the press.
Rosenstiel is also co-author of the CCJ’s “Traveling Curriculum,” an ongoing education program that since 2001 has trained more than 6,000 journalists in print, TV and online newsrooms nationwide. Among his books, he is the author with Bill Kovach of The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect (Crown 2001). He and Kovach are also authors together of Warp Speed: America in The Age of Mixed Media (Century Foundation 1999). Most recently, he is co-editor of Thinking Clearly: Cases in Journalistic Decision Making (Columbia University Press 2003).
Rosenstiel is also the author of Strange Bedfellows: How Television and the Presidential Candidates Changed American Politics 1992, (Hyperion 1993). His writing also has appeared in such publications as Esquire, The New Republic, The New York Times, Columbia Journalism Review and The Washington Monthly. A former media critic for MSNBC’s The News with Brian Williams; he is a frequent commentator on radio and television and in print.
Jan Schaffer
Jan Schaffer is executive director of J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism and a leading thinker in the journalism reform movement. She left daily journalism in 1994 to lead pioneering journalism initiatives in civic journalism, interactive and participatory journalism, and citizen media ventures. She launched J-Lab in 2002 to spotlight new forms of digital storytelling. It also spotlights interactive news exercises and digital storytelling examples that involve people in public issues.
Schaffer previously directed the Pew Center for Civic Journalism, a $14 million initiative that funded more than 120 pilot news projects that better engaged people in public issues. She is a former Business Editor and a Pulitzer Prize winner for The Philadelphia Inquirer, where she worked for 22 years as a reporter and editor.
Currently, she serves as a speaker, trainer, author, consultant and web publisher on digital storytelling models and the future of journalism. J-Lab is a center of American University’s School of Communication.
Matt Thompson
Matt Thompson is currently serving as a 2008-2009 Donald W. Reynolds Fellow at the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri. During his fellowship, Thompson is working with the Columbia Missourian on a research prototype to be shared with the industry. The goal is to expose the context surrounding news events by creating a living archive of evolving news topics.
Thompson recently served as deputy Web editor for the Minneapolis Star Tribune where he led the creation of the two-time Edgie-award-winning, socially networked arts-and-entertainment website vita.mn. Matt was an online reporter/producer for the Fresno Bee, winning first- and third-place Best of the West awards in 2004 for his multimedia stories. From 2003-2004 he worked at the Poynter Institute as the Naughton Fellow for Online Reporting and Writing.
While at Poynter, he and his colleague Robin Sloan produced the Flash movie EPIC 2014, a picture of the media past set 10 years in the future, mentioned in the New York Times, Financial Times, USA Today, the Guardian, on MSNBC, and elsewhere. Matt graduated with honors in English from Harvard College in 2002, after writing his senior thesis on the television show “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
Keith Woods
Keith Woods is Dean of Faculty at The Poynter Institute. 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. 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. Woods is a co-author of “The Authentic Voice/The Best Reporting on Race & Ethnicity.” He is a former editor of “Best Newspaper Writing,” Poynter’s annual collection of prize-winning stories and photojournalism selected by the American Society of Newspaper Editors. He is a regular speaker at the Poynter-sponsored National Writers Workshops each year 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.
Carole Christie
Carole Christie is the communications director for the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute. She has more than 25 years of experience in the advertising industry, including two years as an international creative director based in Amsterdam, leading teams in London, Paris, and Hamburg. She also served as senior vice president and group creative director at DMB&B/St. Louis, where she was a leader in new business efforts for M&M/Mars, Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Busch, AT&T, Procter & Gamble and Blockbuster. Awards, include Communication Arts, Cannes, Addy, New York Festivals, One Show and London International. Christie also has been a freelance writer for major metropolitan dailies and is a member of American Society of Journalists and Authors.
