Matt Thompson is an editorial product manager at NPR, where he's helping to coordinate the development of 12 niche, local websites in conjunction with NPR member stations. He is also an adjunct faculty member at the Poynter Institute, having completed a four-year term on the organization's National Advisory Board in 2010. He currently serves on the board of the Center for Public Integrity. Before coming to NPR, Matt served as an interim online community manager for the Knight Foundation. From 2008 to 2009, he was a Donald W. Reynolds Fellow at the Reynolds Journalism Institute; his explorations in building context into news websites have been widely cited in discussions about online journalism's future. He came to RJI from his position as deputy web editor for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, where he led the creation of the Edgie-award-winning, socially networked arts-and-entertainment website vita.mn, as well as managing other technology and interactivity-related projects for StarTribune.com. Matt moved to the Star Tribune after serving as the first online reporter/producer for the Fresno Bee, winning first- and third-place Best of the West awards in 2004 for his multimedia projects. At the Bee, he led an internal advisory committee exploring the paper's strategies for acquiring new audiences. He worked at the Poynter Institute from 2003-04 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, which was written up 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." Outside of work, he blogs at Snarkmarket.com, has completed one Twin Cities Marathon, and is itching to get ready for another.

Grace Lee Boggs is an author, lifelong social activist and feminist. She is known for her years of political collaboration with C.L.R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya in the 1940s and 1950s. She eventually went off in her own political direction in the 1960s with her husband of some forty years, James Boggs, until his death in 1993. By 1998, she had written four books, including an autobiography. In 2011, still active at the age of 95, she wrote a fifth book, “The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century,” co-written by Scott Kurashige and published by the University of California Press.

Herschel Fink is a senior partner at the Detroit law firm Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn LLP. His background includes ten years' experience as a daily newspaper reporter and editor. As an attorney, he has specialized in representing news organizations, media and entertainment companies in a broad range of issues, including libel, privacy and intellectual property. He has represented the Detroit Free Press, Michigan's largest daily newspaper for more than 25 years, as well as local television and radio stations, and national networks. For many years, he taught media law at Wayne State University in Detroit. He received his B.A. from Wayne State, where he was editor of the daily student newspaper, and went on to receive his law degree from Michigan State University. He is a frequent panelist and speaker at national media law conferences, and speaks regularly on media law topics to gatherings of judges and lawyers. He has been listed in every edition of America's Best Lawyers under First Amendment law. He is the co­author of the Michigan Freedom of Information and Open Meetings Act guidebooks published by Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. In 2005, he was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Michigan Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, the only time a lawyer has been so honored, and the Society also awarded him its national 2010 First Amendment Award. Michigan Lamers Weekly recognized him as one of its 25 “Leaders in the Law” in 2009, and Crain’s Detroit Business named him a "Power Lawyer" in 2008. He has been recognized by Chambers USA: America's Leading Lagers for Business every year since 2007, calling him "a highly-regarded First Amendment litigator with superlative knowledge of free speech issues."

Wayne Kramer is a songwriter whose reputation writing music for film and television now risks supplanting his legend as one of the world’s stellar guitarists. Rolling Stone lists him as one of the top 100 guitarists of all time.
 
As teenaged leader of Detroit’s ultimate incendiary rock band The MC5, in the 1960s, Wayne formed the White Panther Party in solidarity with other organizations working for racial and economic equality during the Vietnam War. Wayne and manager John Sinclair’s resulting dubious position at the center of the target for the FBI's counter-intelligence (or "COINTELPRO") program between 1968 and 1971 is well documented.

Following the break-up of The MC5, Wayne suffered from drug addiction, a problem that culminated in a bust and consequential federal prison sentence at Lexington Federal Correctional Institution. Following release, Wayne returned to his musical career and to even greater acclaim. He has subsequently released 10 solo albums and is considered a pioneer of both punk rock and heavy metal. Wayne's involvement in and commitment to social justice initiatives never wavered.

Now a respected film and television composer, Wayne scored the comedy feature Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby; the controversial HBO documentary Hacking Democracy (about the 2004 presidential voting machine scandal) and the PBS film The Narcotic Farm (about Lexington and America’s decades-long failed drug war), as well as all three seasons of the HBO series East Bound & Down.

Wayne has lived a life of music and activism. His friendship with revolutionary British songwriter Billy Bragg inspired the two men to create Jail Guitar Doors USA, a Los Angeles based 501(c)3 non-profit organization with a mission to help rehabilitate prison inmates. The musicians run charity provides musical instruments to inmates with which they are taught non-violent communication skills.

Wayne recently joined forces with Tom Morello for the Axis of Justice music and activism tours and made a special appearance at an anti-war protest concert for 10,000 fans during the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado with Rage Against the Machine.

Wayne regularly writes with, and produces, upstart rock 'n' roll bands.

Ethan Zuckerman is director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT, and a principal research scientist at MIT's Media Lab. His research focuses on the distribution of attention in mainstream and new media, the use of technology for international development, and the use of new media technologies by activists.With Rebecca MacKinnon, Ethan co-founded international blogging community Global Voices. Global Voices showcases news and opinions from citizen media in over 150 nations and thirty languages, publishing editions in twenty languages. Through Global Voices and through the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, where he served as a researcher and fellow for eight years, Ethan is active in efforts to promote freedom of expression and fight censorship in online spaces. In 2000, Ethan founded Geekcorps, a technology volunteer corps that sends IT specialists to work on projects in developing nations, with a focus on West Africa. Previously Ethan helped found Tripod.com, one of the web's first "personal publishing" sites. He blogs at http://ethanzuckerman.com/blog and lives in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts, with his wife, son and a small, fluffy cat.