Speakers' Bios
Kevin Allman is the editor of Gambit Weekly in New Orleans. Follow NOLAKevin on Twitter. |
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Blair Barna has worked in the world of alt-weeklies for 20 years and is the advertising director of the Charleston City Paper in Charleston, S. C. He founded and co-owns the paper -- now in its sixteenth year -- with his two business partners, publisher Noel Mermer and editor Stephanie Barna. One of them is also his life partner -- he'll leave it up to you to guess which. Barna has two children, three cats, two dogs, and no time to himself. Prior to blazing trails in Chucktown, he worked for Creative Loafing in Savannah and Atlanta. |
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Sanford L. Bohrer heads Holland & Knight's Class Action Litigation Team and has litigated class actions in state and federal courts, including appeals throughout the United States. He was special counsel to the Florida Department of Children & Families from 2009 to 2010 and has has represented the press in most of the major media cases that have arisen in South Florida, including representing the press before the Supreme Court on four occasions. He has represented publishers and broadcasters in approximately 100 defamation, privacy and intellectual property cases. He also founded Florida's First Amendment Hotline. |
Patricia Calhoun has the world’s shortest resume. After graduating from Cornell University, she founded the SandPaper, a weekly on Long Beach Island, New Jersey. In 1977, she started Westword, an alternative weekly in Denver, where she's been the editor ever since. Her columns have been awarded the Golden Quill, the Unity Award and the national Women in Communications prize, in 2006 and again this year. Her career highlights including serving as the president of the Association of Alternative Newsmedia and, interviewing President Bill Clinton (in flip flops!), and playing an actual reporter in John Sayles’s movie Silver City. |
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Martin Cizmar is the arts & culture editor at Willamette Week. |
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Michael Crystal is a financial consultant based in Seattle. He has over thirty years of financial and strategic management experience, much of that time spent in publishing. He was the CEO and publisher of Seattle Weekly for 20 years. He also served as the publisher of the Chicago Reader and COO of its parent company, a multi-city publishing business. He was instrumental in creating the first AAN Financial Standards survey and was responsible for it for many years. Michael's current practice focuses on the financial management and structure of early stage companies and non-profit organizations. He continues his interest in the transition of media to new formats, serving as a key figure in the operation of Crosscut Public Media, a pioneer in the evolving area of non-profit, online, civic journalism. |
Erik Cushman is publisher of Monterey County Weekly. |
Jim DeFede joined Miami’s CBS4 News in January 2006, providing regular commentary on the evening news. He now serves as an investigative reporter and a member of the CBS4 News I-Team. In 1986, he landed his first job in journalism as a night cops reporter for The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington. In 1991, Jim accepted an offer to become a staff writer with the weekly newspaper Miami New Times, where he won numerous awards during his eleven year tenure with the paper. Between 2002 and 2005, he was a metro columnist for The Miami Herald. Jim was a regular contributing writer for Tina Brown's Talk magazine and his work has also appeared in Radar, The New Republic, Newsday, Mother Jones, The (London) Independent, Miami Monthly, Key West Magazine and Loft. His first book, "The Day The World Came To Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland," was published in 2002 by HarperCollins and was recognized with a 2003 Christopher Award for its ability to "affirm the highest values of the human spirit." |
Jamie DeRosa is chef/partner at Tongue & Cheek in South Beach. The chef attended Johnson & Wales University before embarking on a career that would have him work with some of the best names in the culinary world, including Wolfgang Puck. Jamie also served a three-month apprenticeship at The Fat Duck, which was named "Best Restaurant in the World" in 2005 by Britain's Restaurant magazine. In 2009, Jamie returned to south Florida to open Taste Gastropub in Delray Beach alongside Allen Susser. Most recently, he served as executive chef at Tudor House, owned by celebrity chef, Geoffrey Zakarian. |
Laine Doss is lead food and spirits reporter for Miami New Times and Broward/Palm Beach New Times, where she focuses on the stories behind the beautiful food and cocktails put out by south Florida's best chefs and bartenders. Laine has also written for USA Today, Livestrong, and Buzz magazine, and co-hosted a weekly radio show. Prior to refocusing on journalism, Laine was a public relations and marketing professional at several major radio stations and worked on the project to rebuild the television antenna that was lost atop the World Trade Center after 9/11. |
Jose D. Duran has been web editor of Miami New Times and New Times Broward-Palm Beach for the past five years. He's the voice and strategist behind the publication's eyebrow-raising Facebook and Twitter feeds. He also reports on Miami's music, entertainment, and cultural scenes. He graduated in 2005 from the University of Florida's College of Journalism and Communications. |
Tim Elfrink is managing editor of Miami New Times. He joined New Times in 2008 as a staff writer, winning eight first-place Green Eyeshades Awards from the Society for Professional Journalists in four years for stories ranging from Marco Rubio's rise to Tea Party stardom to the young Miami hackers who pulled off the world's biggest credit card heist. In January, he broke the story of Biogenesis, the Coral Gables clinic linked to selling performance enhancing drugs to Alex Rodriguez, Ryan Braun and other MLB stars. He's a St. Louis native, University of Missouri graduate and diehard Cardinals fan. |
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Sarah Fenske is the editor of the L.A. Weekly and a veteran of alt-weeklies in no less than five cities, which is surely some kind of record. Born and raised in Cleveland, she started her career at the Morning Journal in Lorain, Ohio, and is absurdly proud of being a two-time AAN Award winner for column writing. She also won the 2011 Livingston Award for local reporting. |
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Anton Gelman is the CEO of Cont3nt.com -- a market for entrepreneurial media and video journalism that connects freelancers with media companies, media companies to each other and allows them to buy, sell, and trade breaking news. Formerly of the National Geographic where he launched online communities and collaboration systems, Anton has over a decade of technology experience that he brings to bear to develop the first free market for the free press. Always up for a coffee or a drink to chat about the future of media. |
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Penelope Huston-Baer is the Director of Advertising for Contemporary Media, Inc., the parent company of the Memphis Flyer. Penelope has worked in the industry in a number of roles, both in Memphis and at the Santa Barbara Independent (CA). In between gigs at alt-weeklies, she also worked in corporate relations and media at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. |
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Bill Jensen has a master's degree in religious studies from the University of Kansas, has written about unsolved crimes, punk rock and fisticuffs and played professional roller hockey (earning the first minor penalty in league history). He co-founded the nerd news and self-loathing blog Topless Robot and the Long Island Press newspaper and website (where he hired Amy Fisher as a crime columnist). In 2006, Bill took the digital helm at Village Voice Media to oversee all web and mobile content and platforms for 17 newspapers (including LA Weekly and Village Voice). During his tenure, digital media revenue grew more than 400%, and pageviews and uniques grew from 176 to more than 750 million. Bill also created several mobile apps which have been downloaded more than two million times. Itunes named the "Best Of" app one of the top five travel apps of 2011, and Wired included it in its collection of "400 Essential Apps." In November 2011, Bill moved to Los Angeles where he ran the music content platform for BuzzMEDIA, including Stereogum, Idolator, and SPIN magazine. He now consults newspaper and other media companies to implement new digital strategies and revenue streams. He recently had a development deal with Cartoon Network, and just launched Epic Playgrounds, a non-profit with the singular goal of building the coolest playgrounds in the world. |
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Tony Lee is the publisher of CareerCast.com and founder/former publisher of The Wall Street Journal Online Vertical Network. |
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Melanie Mathewson is the vice president and chief sales officer of Intersect Media Solutions, the advertising services arm of the Florida Press Association. In this capacity, she oversees validating the value of newspaper advertising to clients and facilitating advertising placements in newspapers in Florida and nationwide. Melanie joined IMS in 2008. Florida Press Association and Intersect Media Solutions are committed to the success of newspaper companies as vital sources of news, advertising and information on which millions of readers depend on each day. Melanie is passionate about newspapers and the clients they serve. Her career spans 30 years, having served in revenue leadership roles at metro and community newspapers. Her career experience is equal in both size operations, enabling her and her team to present the unique attributes of each. Melanie holds a BA in Journalism from the University of South Carolina. |
Terrence McCoy is a staff writer at New Times Broward-Palm Beach. McCoy was a finalist for the 2012 Livingston Award for his Kindle Single, The Playground, which exposed how China's forceful investments have devastated Cambodia and other parts of Southeast Asia. He got a masters' at Columbia University and served in the U.S. Peace Corps in Cambodia between 2009 and 2011. |
Peter Meng is the founder and CEO of AdFreeeq. He was a 2011-2012 fellow at the Reynolds Journalism Institute. Experienced entrepreneur and highly-regarded expert in Internet services and online marketing with over 26 years of technology and Internet experience including 7 years in education sales and marketing at Apple. Peter specializes in core idea development, system and technical design, Internet marketing, vision based leadership, and dogged persistence. |
Lindsey Millar is the editor of Arkansas Times. |
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Miranda Mulligan is the executive director, Northwestern University Knight Lab. |
Scott Murtaugh is the Vice President of Business Development at Infogroup. |
Elizabeth Nitz is an Account Executive for The Austin Chronicle. She started with The Chronicle in 2001 as a part-time receptionist while in college, and eventually moved into the retail advertising department as an assistant. Her first sales position was a year-long stint in classifieds before being recruited by the advertising director to the retail sales department. Making the classic mistake of thinking the grass was greener elsewhere, she made the move agency-side for a short six-months before seeing the light, and very humbly asking to return to her retail sales position. Thankfully, The Chronicle welcomed her back, and she has been a part of the retail sales team since 2005. |
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Mikal Rohde is the Executive Vice President, Corporate Development for cXense. Rohde's move to Cxense followed a 20-year career in finance, marketing, and business development. He was most recently a Director and Vice President of Strategy and Business in the Norwegian media company Schibsted. and before this as the CEO of a Schibsted local search and directory subsidiary department. Before this, he served as Executive Vice President for marketing at NetCom GSM, and also served as an Executive Vice President for marketing and business development at the directory publishing firm Findexa (Eniro). Mikal holds a bachelor's degree in Marketing and Management from the Norwegian School of Management (BI) |
Mark Sableman litigates trademark, copyright, patent, advertising, libel, privacy, unfair competition, and trade secret cases, as well as technology and Internet-related claims. He advises clients with intellectual property, media, technology, and Internet issues. Mark has written one book, More Speech, Not Less: Communications Law in the Information Age, and more than a dozen law review articles and book chapters. |
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Rebecca Schoenkopf is publisher and editrix of the vulgar, hilarious, crass, liberal political site Wonkette.com. She started in alt weeklies in 1991, as intern then editorial assistant at the Santa Barbara Independent. After college, her first job was helping to launch OC Weekly as its founding copyeditor. She stayed for 12 years, as arts editor, senior editor, art critic and political columnist. She was editor in chief of LA CityBeat for about five minutes in 2008, then was unemployed forever. She has probably applied to and been rejected by every newspaper in this room. |
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Stephen H. Segal is a Hugo Award-winning editor, writer and publication designer, and is the current editor in chief of Philadelphia Weekly. Segal began his editorial career as a journalist at In Pittsburgh Weekly and WQED's Pittsburgh Magazine. In 2006, he joined the staff of the long-running fantasy magazine Weird Tales, and was named its editorial and creative director in early 2007 as part of an overall reorganization and revamp of the publication. His book GEEK WISDOM: The Sacred Teachings of Nerd Culture was published by Quirk Books in 2011. |
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Becca Sickbert s a proud staffer at the Colorado Springs Independent, where she oversees the company's digital presence across all platforms as the Director of Digital Media. She began a professional life in digital media in 2002 as the education coordinator for a community technology center in K.C. MO, where sassy-ass students shaped her personal philosophy: technology should serve people, not the other way around. A social media professional/web designer with over 11 years experience in digital communications, Becca loves the challenges of keeping up with emerging technologies and figuring out how to use them for the forces of good. |
Dora Sison is production and art director at Gambit Weekly in New Orleans. |
Kevin Spidel - Digital social scientist/marketer. Recovering political hack turned community architect for media organizations. Formerly Gannett, now Voice Media Group. Past life: Managing Partner for a Public Relations and Marketing firm and Political Consultant including Amnesty International, ACLU, & DNC. |
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Gwynedd Stuart is a 2009 AAN award winner for long-form news (circulation under 50,000). Now she disseminates information in 140 characters or less as the Chicago Reader’s Social Media Manager. As a staff writer at Folio Weekly from 2005 until 2010, she wrote predominantly about crime, courts, and the police department, although she remains particularly proud of an interview she conducted with a local psychic medium and contestant on the ABC reality program “Wife Swap.” In 2010, she relocated to Atlanta to cover crime, courts, cops, and neighborhoods for Creative Loafing, where she wrote about everything from out of control street gangs on the city’s south side to a man in the northern suburbs who blew himself up inside his home to avoid eviction. In addition to her social media duties, she writes about food and TV, and recaps the Bachelor franchise. |
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Steve Suskin is legal counsel for Voice Media Group, owner of alternative newsweeklies in 11 major markets in the United States, including Miami New Times, Village Voice and L.A. Weekly, and has daily experience in pre-publication legal review, libel, privacy and intellectual property litigation as well as representation of journalists in subpoena, access and public records matters. |
Andy Sutcliffe is the General Manager of Salt Lake City Weekly. He has been a part of the alternative newsweekly community for over twenty years as a publisher, vendor, entrepreneur and consultant. |
Matt Taibbi is a contributing editor for Rolling Stone. He's the author of five books, most recently "The Great Derangement" and "Griftopia," and a winner of the National Magazine Award for commentary. Follow Matt on Twitter here. |
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Mari Torres is the executive producer of "Al Punto con Jorge Ramos" at Univision. |
Taylor Treese is the President and CEO of MediaTrax, LLC. MediaTrax provides digital marketing infrastructure and end-to-end solutions that enable the channel (digital agencies, newspapers, Yellow Pages and digital publishers) to be more efficient and profitable. Before MediaTrax Taylor was the head of Global Business Development for Ericsson Telecom AB, the Swedish cellular Telecom Giant. Taylor was responsible for Ericsson's 3G product development, marketing and sales on a world-wide basis. |
Don Van Natta Jr. is a bestselling author and an investigative reporter for ESPN, which he joined in January 2012. He previously worked for 16 years as an investigative correspondent at The New York Times, where he was a member of two Pulitzer Prize-winning teams. Prior to joining the Times in July 1995, Van Natta worked for eight years at The Miami Herald, where he was a member of a team of reporters awarded the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of Hurricane Andrew. |
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Andy Van De Voorde is the executive associate editor for Voice Media Group. He began with the company in 1983, working his way up as a calendar editor, music editor, staff writer and managing editor. For the past 15 years he has worked at the corporate level, recruiting and hiring writers and editors, overseeing various special projects, and racking up large bar tabs. He is a graduate of the University of Arizona. |
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Lori Collier Waran is the publisher of Style Weekly in Richmond, Va. |
Rob Wescott is the Vice President of Business Development for cXense. Wescott's move to Cxense followed a 18-year career in news media that began with City Newspaper, Rochester's alt-weekly, and included Gannett as well as OPUBCO Communications Group in Oklahoma City. His various roles have included Marketing, Advertising, Product Development and Technology. As CPO (Chief Product Officer), Rob lead the creation of an independent New Co. startup, wimgo.com, for The Oklahoma Publishing Company. Rob holds a bachelor's degree in Communication from the Rochester Institute of Technology. |
Kris Wessel is chef/partner at Florida Cookery at the James Royal Palm Hotel in South Beach. The Florida native's culinary style draws inspiration from his family ties to Miami, using fresh, seasonal produce, local seafood, and strong Latin influences. In fact, the name of his restaurant is an homage to a cookbook dating back to 1943 that was a staple in his grandmother's kitchen. Prior to Florida Cookery, Kris was the chef/owner of Red Light, Little River, a small restaurant on the Miami River that received praises from both critics and foodies. Kris is a graduate of Florida International University in Miami, with a Bachelor's degree in Hotel Restaurant Management. He has been recognized by the James Beard Foundation, and competed on Food Network's Chopped -- where he won. |
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