Jeff Alworth
Editor, Blue Oregon
Jeff Alworth is a founder and editor of BlueOregon.com, the “watercooler around which Oregon’s progressives gather” to discuss Oregon politics, public policy, and culture. He has been blogging since January 2003. Jeff has also written for print publications, including a beer column for the Willamette Week.

Dennis Anstine
Former AP Sports Writer

Carol Ann Bassett
University of Oregon
Carol Ann Bassett has written for The New York Times, The Nation, Mother Jones, Condé Nast Traveler and numerous other national publications. She has traveled extensively around the world to lecture and conduct journalism workshops in developing countries such as Nepal, Bolivia and Botswana, and has written about the environment and indigenous cultures on four continents. She is author of A Gathering of Stones: Journeys to the Edges of a Changing World, a finalist for the Oregon Book Award in Creative Nonfiction; and Organ Pipe: Life on the Edge (Desert Places Series). Her essays have been anthologized in the American Nature Writing series. Her new book is about conservation in the Galapagos.

Duane Bosworth
Duane Bosworth, a partner in Portland law firm Davis Wright Tremaine, is an expert media attorney. Besides representing his firm as an associate member of the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association, he serves on the board of Open Oregon, the state freedom of information coalition, and the Oregon State Bar’s Bar/Press/Broadcasters Council.

Rick Burch
State Police Academy Instructor

Michael Calcagno
Online Editor, Oregon Daily Emerald
Michael Calcagno is the Online Editor for the Oregon Daily Emerald. Developing multimedia content for the Daily Emerald has been Michael’s mission for the last two years. Video reports, exclusive interviews and slideshows all come together at dailyemerald.com. In 2006, Michael won the Regional SPJ Mark of Excellence award for best online news reporting. He was also named a finalist at the UO short film festival last spring. Michael is currently working toward his bachelor’s degree in journalism at the University of Oregon. He hopes to work for a national newspaper like The Washington Post or broadcast like NBC Nightly News. He enjoys bicycling, racquetball, watching television, cooking and spending time with his family.

Nicole DeCosta
Lake Oswego Review, West Linn Tidings
Nicole DeCosta is a reporter with the Lake Oswego Review and West Linn Tidings. She writes primarily features as well as hard news stories and is coordinator of the weekly 12-page Homes section. She began her career in March of 2003 at The Daily Barometer, the campus newspaper at Oregon State University - writing weekly contributions through “Music, News and Bits” and “Dear Famous Person.” She has worked full-time at the Review and Tidings since the summer of 2005.

Mark Garber
Pamplin Media Group

Andy Giegerich
Portland Business Journal
Andy Giegerich has more than 20 years of journalism experience. He spent eight years editing magazines and newsletters in Washington D.C. and has spent the last eight years as a business journalist in Portland. As a reporter for the Portland Business Journal and the Portland Tribune, he’s covered government, banking, technology, economic development and, the reason he’s here with us today, all gamuts of sports business.

Debra Haugen
Debra Haugen for years headed one of the busiest records offices in the state of Oregon, that of the Portland Police Bureau. She dealt with countless reporters and requests under Oregon Public Records Law, as well as their subsequent appeals. She became an expert in the legalistic maneuvers and bureaucratic dynamics that generated records responses, and is uniquely qualified to provide an insider’s view on what reportorial approaches work— or do not work.

Nigel Jaquiss
Willamette Week
A former commodities trader in New York and Singapore, Nigel Jaquiss became a reporter at Portland’s Willamette Week in 1998. Since then, he’s won numerous local, state and national awards, including the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Journalism. His Pulitzer exposed power broker Neil Goldschmidt’s preying on a 14 year-old girl when he was Portland’s mayor 30 years before, and subsequent cover-up. His 2006 series on Portland General Electric garnered national attention as well.

Tamara Kent
Assignment Editor, KGW Northwest News Channel 8
Tamara Kent is an Assignment Editor at KGW Northwest News Channel 8 in Portland, Oregon. She began her journalism career working for KGUN 9 News in Tucson, Arizona (1994-2001) as a desk assistant, associate producer and ultimately, an assignment editor. Tamara has covered most of the major news events during the past 10 years; including assisting sister station WWL with media coverage in Baton Rouge following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. She planned and executed coverage of the 2004 Presidential Debate in Tempe, Arizona and coordinated logistics and developed content for extensive coverage of the Rodeo/Chediski wildfires in 2002. Tamara graduated with honors from the University of Arizona in 2001 with a bachelor’s degree in Media Arts and a focus on English Literature. She spent a year abroad at the University of Westminster, in London, England, studying documentary photography and filmmaking. Tamara now resides in Portland with her husband, Dan.

Scott Maier
The University of Oregon

Michael Morrow
FBI Profiler

Laura Oppenheimer
The Oregonian
Laura Oppenheimer graduated from Northwestern University in 2000 with a journalism degree and an intense desire to explore. Little did she know she’d be exploring Lexington, Ky., where she got her first reporting job. Laura did stints on the police and city hall beats before moving to The Oregonian in 2001. Six years writing about growth and land-use issues sharpened her ability to find the human interest angle in absolutely anything. Now she’s putting it to good use in her new position: “free time” reporter. Laura has written about everything from outdoor movies to boxing tournaments during her first few months on the beat. In her own free time, she likes jogging, hanging out with her husband and two dogs, taking pictures and planning quirky vacations.

Andy Parker
The Oregonian
Andy Parker taught high school history, coached basketball and free-lanced stories to newspapers in Virginia for 10 years before a reporter friend convinced him to give journalism a full-time shot. He was a reporter and then editor at the Daily Press in Newport News, Va. for several years before becoming the editor in charge of education coverage at the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderale. He joined the Oregonian to become a bureau chief and regional editor. Three years ago he made the jump to writing with his natural voice of wit and wisdom in a column focusing on Clackamas County.

George Rede
The Oregonian
As Sunday Opinion editor at The Oregonian, George Rede plans and develops a weekly section of commentary on issues that affect the Portland area, Oregon and the Northwest. Until recently, Rede was the paper¹s director of recruiting and training. In that role, he coordinated newsroom hiring, staff development and internship programs.

Jodi Schneider
Donald Reynolds Center for Business Journalism
Jodi Schneider is the economics and finance editor for Congressional Quarterly. She was previously an assistant managing editor at U.S. News & World Report. A past president of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, she was local business editor at The Washington Post and deputy managing editor in charge of the business and finance coverage at the Orlando Sentinel. Schneider was involved in the initial planning of Reynolds Center programs and is a regular presenter at its workshops, drawing upon her background in all levels of business coverage.

Phil Stanford
Portland Tribune
In addition to working as a Congressional aide and a private detective, Phil Stanford has written for a variety of publications, including The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Reader’s Digest, and Parade, as well as the newsletter by legendary muckraker I.F. Stone. He wrote a regular column for the Oregonian from 1987 to 1994, and was hired by the Portland Tribune to write a similar column in 2001. He has also authored a book, Portland Confidential: Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Rose City.

Julia Sullivan
Enterprise Reporter, The Oregonian
A longtime Oregonian enterprise reporter, Julie Sullivan has become known for “human investigations, ” ones that through interviewing technique and old-fashioned gumshoe digging bring to light the uncomfortable truths of and about real people. She shared the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for exposing flaws in the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Her project on the families of children with autism, “This is How We Live,” won the national Sigma Delta Chi Award for Excellence in Journalism. Sullivan has won the American Society of Newspaper Editors Best Newspaper Writing award and numerous other reporting awards. She is the co-author of Expecting Miracles, On the Path of Hope From Infertility to Parenthood with Dr. Christo Zouves.

Inara Verzemnieks
The Oregonian
A staff writer at The Oregonian since 1997, Inara Verzemnieks writes feature stories for the paper’s arts and culture team. Her stories explore the unexpected and overlooked aspects of the city’s creative life - from maraschino cherries to velvet paintings. She grew up in Tacoma and graduated from the University of Washington in 1996. In 2007, she was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing.

Christian Wihtol
Senior Editor, The Register-Guard
Christian Wihtol is senior editor of The Register-Guard newspaper in Eugene, overseeing the newsroom’s five teams of reporters, local content on the daily’s front page and also short-term and long-range story planning for page one. He has been with the Register-Guard since 1990, first employed as the paper’s business team editor and then as government team editor. He began his career in journalism as a business reporter in 1985.

Les Zaitz
Senior Reporter, The Oregonian
Les Zaitz is a senior investigative reporter at The Oregonian. He has been a journalist in Oregon for more than 30 years, including 18 years at The Oregonian and 13 years as publisher/editor at the weekly Keizertimes, a paper that regularly won enterprise and investigating reporting honors despite having a news staff of two reporters. Zaitz’s own reporting honors include state, regional and national journalism awards for his reporting, including the George L. Polk Award this year. He is an expert in Oregon public records law.