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Kenneth Aaron is a co-founder of Neighborhood Notes, a hyper-local news site covering Portland’s 95 diverse neighborhoods. He is also a freelance photographer and holds an MBA from Santa Clara University.
Mark Briggs is CEO of Serra Media, a Seattle company that builds interactive applications and digital platforms for local publishers. He is the author of “Journalism 2.0: How to survive and thrive in the digital age,” which was published in 2007, and of “Journalism Next,” due out in November. Previously, Briggs was assistant managing editor for interactive news at The News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash. from 2004 to 2008 and new media director at The Herald in Everett, Wash. from 2000 to 2004.
Matthew J. Brown has been director of search strategy for the New York Times Co. since 2005, and is co-founder and chief operating officer at Define Search Strategies. At the New York Times, and its subsidiaries the Boston Globe and the International Herald Tribune, he drives research into the development of search marketing, and develops technological systems to drive audience to these sites. In 2005, he co-founded Define Search Strategies, which develops comprehensive reporting systems for large Web sites so that they can learn from and improve their search engine performance.
Byron Beck has been a journalist for two decades and was a staff writer at Willamette Week and a frequent contributor to The Oregonian. He currently is a freelancer for national and Oregon-based publications. appears on television and radio and has his own blog at byronbeck.com.
Knute “Skip” Berger is Mossback. In addition to writing and blogging for Crosscut, he is editor-at-large ofSeattle magazine, political columnist forWashington Law & Politics, and a regular guest of Weekday with Steve Scher on NPR affiliate KUOW-FM (94.9). A Seattle native, Berger has long been a writer and editor for local magazines and newspapers. Most recently, he was editor-in-chief of Village Voice Media’s Seattle Weekly from 2002 to 2006, where he wrote the award-winning Mossback column. Berger also had a book out this year — “Pugetopolis” (Sasquatch Books, 2009), a collection of columns, essays and new material.
Nick Budnick, the statehouse reporter for The Bulletin newspaper of Bend, has worked for a number of newspapers in California and Oregon, including Willamette Week and the Portland Tribune. He got his start in journalism as an intern for the Pulitzer-winning investigative columnist Jack Anderson. He has served on the board of the transparency group Open Oregon, and for years tracked state public records issues for SPJ.
Josh Feit is the co-founder of the online news site, PubliCola, the first online site in Washington state history to get press credentials in Olympia to cover the state Legislature. Before founding PubliCola, Feit was the news editor, city hall columnist, and state house reporter at Seattle’s alt-weekly, the Stranger, from 1999-2008. From 1996-1998 Feit was a reporter at Willamette Week. He has won five first place SPJ awards and has written for Newsweek and Fortune.
Anna Griffin is a Metro columnist for The Oregonian. Before that, as a City Hall reporter for the O, she combined prolific beat reporting with dogged investigative work. Formerly of the Charlotte Observer, she has become known for one of the more distinctive and engaging writing styles to be found in an Oregon newspaper.
Jack Hart is a former managing editor of The Oregonian and legendary writing coach. He is author of A Writer’s Coach: The Complete Guide to Writing Strategies That Work, as well as the just-completed Storycraft, a comprehensive guide to nonfiction storytelling.
Rita Hibbard is executive director and editor of InvestigateWest, a reporting nonprofit launched by former Seattle Post-Intelligencer employees. InvestigateWest is creating a new model for investigative work and new pathways for information distribution for an industry in transition. Hibbard’s team creates stories that are produced across platforms, for distribution to online, print and broadcast media. The nonprofit maintains an active Web site daily, and is engaged in long-term investigative work that is focused on the issues of the environment, social justice and health in the West.
Marshall Kirkpatrick is the lead writer at ReadWriteWeb.com, one of the most widely read technology blogs online and syndicated by the New York Times. Prior to joining RWW in Sept 2007, Marshall was director of content at SplashCast Media. During 2006 he was lead blogger at TechCrunch.
Hagit Limor is regarded as a “do-it-all” journalist at Cincinnati-based WCPO-TV. She has served as an anchor and general assignment reporter, and now helms the award-winning Investigative Team. Her abilities as a writer and reporter have garnered Hagit dozens of journalism awards including National Headliner Awards, Emmy Awards, and Sigma Delta Chi Awards from SPJ. She currently serves as national president-elect of SPJ.
Kevin J. Max, editor-in-chief of 1859 Oregon’s Magazine, has more than decade in journalism in New York and Oregon. At Money magazine, he analyzed companies for investment opportunities. He was subsequently courted by a New York Times/TheStreet.com joint venture to dissect IPOs during the Alan Greenspan-dubbed “irrational exuberance.” Max later joined the AXA investor relations team as the speech-writer for the company’s top executives. He and his wife, Sarah, moved to Bend from New York after 9/11 for a change of pace and scenery. There he became editor of Bend Living and Bend Business Review, before launching 1859 Oregon’s Magazine, a statewide lifestyle quarterly that launched in July and is distributed in Colorado, California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Alaska.
Dennis Newman, who was born and raised in Minnesota, got his first full-time news job at KXMD-TV in Williston, N.D., where he was news director and anchor. From there, he moved to producing positions at KRIS-TV in Corpus Christi, Texas, and WHO-TV in Des Moines, Iowa. In 1984 he joined CNN Headline News, and during his two decades there was a newscast producer, special projects manager and newsroom supervisor. He and his wife moved to Portland in 2005, and in May of that year he became Portland bureau chief for Northwest Cable News and worked in the KGW-TV newsroom. He was laid off in February of 2009.
Ken Perry is president and CEO of Broker Knowledge Group and trains professionals in all facets of the real estate industry, including real estate agents, mortgage brokers, bankers, title and escrow agents, lenders — and now journalists. Perry is constantly expanding his own knowledge base, challenging himself to “step outside the box” and be that one dynamic speaker that his students will never forget. He believes education should be fun and has successfully taught thousands of people nationwide.
Orest Pilskalns is an assistant professor at Washington State University Vancouver’s School of Engineering and Computer Science. He is the founder and CEO of MapWith.Us, a company that provides the publishing industry with mobile and web based tools for engaging communities at the neighborhood level.
Greg Swanson is founding partner and CEO of Portland-based ITZ Publishing, which has partnered with Journalism Online’s effort to reinvigorate the industry. Before launching ITZ in 2005, Swanson spent seven years as director of interactive media sales for Lee Enterprises. He’s served on the board of the Newspaper Association of America’s New Media Federation and regularly speaks and leads training sessions for the Media Center, the American Press Institute and the NAA. His consulting clients have ranged from large companies such as Knight Ridder, Belo,Ottaway, CNHI, Lee, McClatchy, Media News Group and Copley to independent newspapers and alternative weeklies.
Lee van der Voo’s battles with Lake Oswego for public records and access have been followed in state media and open-government circles, and have been reported on by the Associated Press and OPB. In addition to stringing for Reuters, she’s worked for the Forest Grove News Times, the Lake Oswego Review, and covered City Hall for the Portland Tribune. In Lake Oswego she distinguished herself with watchdog reporting on the environment, City Hall and the police. She was the driving force behind SPJ Oregon/SWWashington’s public records blog for nearly three years.
Brent Walth is a senior investigative reporter at The Oregonian. A 1984 graduate of the University of Oregon’s journalism school, Brent has worked as an investigative reporter for Willamette Week and as Washington, D.C., correspondent, for The Oregonian. He wrote a biography of Tom McCall, Fire at Eden’s Gate, and his work appears in the 2006-2007 edition of Best Newspaper Writing. He is a five-time winner of the Bruce Baer Award, Oregon’s top reporting prize; recipient of the Gerald Loeb Award, a national award for business and financial reporting; and he shared the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. He’s adjunct at the U of O journalism school and taught for a term at Harvard University, where he was a 2006 Nieman Fellow.
D.J. Wilson is president and general manager of the KGW Media Group in Portland, a position she has held since July 2007. Previously, she served as president/general manager of KREM-TV (CBS) and KSKN-TV (CW) in Spokane as well as vice president and assistant general manager of KING-TV (NBC), KONG-TV (IND) and NorthWest Cable News in Seattle/Tacoma. Wilson has spent more than 25 years in Northwest markets during her career in television sales and marketing and general management. Wilson is on the advisory board for the Edward R. Murrow College of Communications at Washington State University and on the Board of Governors of the WSU Foundation. Wilson is a past Board Chair of the Institute for Family Development, Marketing Communications Executives International (MCEI) and FareStart in Seattle.
David Wolman is a contributing editor at Wired and the author of two books, A Left-Hand Turn Around the World: Chasing the Mystery and Meaning of All Things Southpaw and Righting the Mother Tongue: From Olde English to Email. His work has also been published in magazines such as Newsweek, Discover, National Geographic Traveler, New Scientist, Outside, Delta Sky and Forbes.
