Coaches
Richard Koci Hernandez
is a national Emmy award winning video and multimedia producer and worked as a photographer at the San Jose Mercury News for 15 years. His work has appeared in Time, Newsweek, The New York Times and international magazines, including Stern. In 2008, Richard was awarded a national Emmy award for the New Approaches to Documentary category for his work on the Mercury News video entitled, Uprooted. In 2003, Richard was the recipient of the James K. Batten Knight Ridder Excellence Award. His work for the Mercury News has earned him two Pulitzer Prize nominations. His photography and multimedia work has won numerous awards on the national and regional level, including two Emmy nominations. Richard was named deputy director of photography and multimedia after spearheading the creation of MercuryNewsPhoto.com. He has taught multimedia workshops for Stanford University, National Press Photographers Association, The Southern Short Course, National Association for Hispanic Journalists and National Association for Black Journalists. He has lectured at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Stanford University. Koci-Hernandez is a San Francisco State University journalism graduate, where he has been a guest instructor. Koci Hernandez is currently a visiting Fellow at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism supported by a Ford Foundation grant to produce digital news sites for San Francisco Bay Area communities.
Meredith Birkett
is a senior multimedia editor for special projects at MSNBC.com, a general news web site seen by more than 37 million unique users each month. Birkett has worked at MSNBC.com for nine years. In this role, Meredith works as a liaison with freelancers, picture agencies and staff multimedia journalists to produce multimedia projects across all sections of MSNBC.com. Meredith also produces popular multimedia features such as The Week in Pictures and the Year in Pictures. Throughout her years at MSNBC.com, Meredith's projects have earned recognition from organizations such as the Online News Association, Pictures of the Year International and the National Press Photographers Association. Meredith has been called upon to share her multimedia experience as the news industry focuses more attention on their online publications. She coaches and teaches at multimedia workshops and speaks at industry conferences about the evolving story-telling methods and marketplace for multimedia reporting.
Rob Rosenthal
is the Director of the Radio Program at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies. Radio students from Salt work as freelancers and at the top media producers in the country including This American Life, Sound Portraits, Story Corps, On the Media, Transom.org, NPR affiliates, the New York Times, and Mediastorm.org. Rob is an independent radio producer and adjunct faculty at the University of Southern Maine. He has a Masters in Communication from the University of Hartford. Rob managed campus-based, community radio stations for 14 years. He is currently working on an hour-long radio and photo documentary about the state-sponsored eviction of the forty-five poor, black, white, and mixed-race residents of Malaga Island off the coast of Maine in 1912. He is also producing an hour long documentary on Maine poetry with Maine's Poet Laureate.
Pamela Chen
An Emmy award-winning producer, Chen manages photography and multimedia for the Open Society Institute, where she is part of the team leading the development of the foundation's interactive communications and advocacy strategy. Previously she was a producer with MediaStorm, where she collaborated on projects that earned numerous industry accolades. Her photography has been recognized by Pictures of the Year International and published in National Geographic Books. Pam is a graduate of Syracuse University with a major/minor in photography/mathematics and was a Fulbright scholar for journalism in 2005.
Josh Meltzer
has been living in Guadalajara, Mexico on a Fulbright Scholarship since August 2008 enjoying delicious tamales around the corner from his home in between working on a multimedia documentary project on the migration of indigenous families within Mexico. Before becoming a Mexican, he was a multimedia photojournalist at The Roanoke Times in Roanoke, Virginia for 9 years where he made his first audio slideshow in 1999. He was the NPPA BOP Photographer of the Year for small markets in 2006, and was part of a team that was recognized for the 2008 Best Documentary Project by Pictures of the Year international. In addition to his personal work, he is teaching a photo class for 11-15 year olds in Guadalajara, and you can view his students' work at the third link below.
Scott Anger
is the director of video for The Los Angeles Times where he oversees a staff of five full-time videojournalists producing original, character-driven stories and special projects. He is an award-winning videojournalist, photographer and documentary film producer with more than 25 years of experience. Before joining the Times, Scott's work for the PBS program FRONTLINE won two Alfred I. duPont Awards for Excellence in Journalism. In addition, he worked as the Islamabad bureau chief for VOA Radio covering Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia from 1998 to 2001.
Eric Maierson
is a multimedia producer at MediaStorm, where he has produced work for National Geographic, Open Society Institute, and Council on Foreign Relations. He won an Emmy Award for co-producing "Kingsley's Crossing," the story of a young man from Cameroon who travels halfway across Africa in search of a better life in Europe. Eric has 10 years of experience writing and producing for television. He helped produce and develop the Peabody Award-winning show "A Walk in Your Shoes" and served as head writer for VH1's hit series "Where Are They Now?" Additionally, his short films have played at film festivals across the country, and his writing has appeared in Playboy, Slate, and McSweeney's, among other publications. Eric holds a B.S. in communications from Ithaca College and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Emerson College.
David Stephenson
returned to his native Lexington and joined the staff of the Herald-Leader in 1997. In the spring of 2009, David left the Herald-Leader to become the photojournalism advisor for the the University of Kentucky's student newspaper, the Kentucky Kernel. He is a four-time recipient of the Kentucky News Photographers Association's Photographer of the Year Award and has been named Sports Photographer of the Year three times. He won the National Press Photographers Association Region 4 Photographer of the Year in 2000 and 2002. Stephenson, a 1992 WKU graduate, recently completed a four-year project, "A New Dawn?", following a young mother addicted to pain pills through a local Drug Court Program. The multimedia project he created for "A New Dawn" was named Best Multimedia Project by POYi in 2008. In 2005, David created heraldleaderphoto.com, a place for staff photographers to publish multimedia and slideshows. The site won a Media Eclipse Award for 2007 Kentucky Derby Coverage online. David led the staff's charge into multimedia and has produced videos and multimedia projects which have won awards in the Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar, POYi, NPPA's Best of Photojournalism, and The Southern Short Course. Since December of 2008, David has been using the Canon 5D Mark II as both his primary still camera and video camera while working for the Lexington Herald-Leader.
Coburn Dukehart
joined NPR.org in June 2007 as the first photo and multimedia editor. In past two years she has helped to grow the department into a five person staff, trained multiple web producers and reporters in visual literacy, started a daily photo blog on npr.org, and has been part of multiple award-winning projects. Prior to joining NPR, she spent three-and-a-half years as an online photo editor and multimedia producer at USA TODAY. She has also worked as a photo editor at washingtonpost.com, and interned in the White House photo office. She has a master's degree in photojournalism from the University of Missouri, and is the recipient of various editing awards from WHNPA, NPPA, and POYi.
Jody Sugrue
is an award-winning art director whose work spans the print, broadcast and web spectrum. With a Masters Degree in Visual Communications from Ohio University, Sugrue has designed opens for MSNBC ("The Situation with Tucker Carlson," "For God + Country"), as well as managed branding and design challenges for Showtime, The Smithsonian Channel, Bravo, the CBC and the Chicago Tribune. She is a recipient of an Alfred I. DuPont award from Columbia University as well as several Gold Broadcast Design Awards. Sugrue is a photographer, a web designer and has also designed DVD packaging and album covers for comedians Denis Leary and Todd Barry. She lives in Toronto with her cat, George.
Mike Schmidt
is really into storytelling, graphic design, motion graphics, interactive design and video production. When he's not building interactive multimedia audio and video graphics packages for clients like the New York Times, the Open Society Institute, National Geographic and even Lenovo or GSK, he can be found teaching the next generation of Journalists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he lectures as an Adjunct Professor and teaches Interactive Multimedia Narratives. Schmidt worked as a videographer, video editor, production manager, television producer, motion graphic designer, web designer, flash animator and multimedia art director before starting his own studio, http://www.MohawkStreet.com.
Matt Ford
is a multimedia journalist at the Associated Press.Matt joined the Associated Press D.C. bureau in the Spring of 2007. For the 2008 presidential election, Matt shot video pieces about voters in battleground states and produced visualizations of election year data and polling. He also coordinated the AP's interactive coverage of the political conventions and the 2009 presidential inauguration. Before joining the AP, Matt worked as a lighting technician in Los Angeles. He has done lighting for Spiderman 2, Along Came Polly, and numerous films that populate the bottom shelf at your local video store. His claim to fame is his work as a flash light in an episode of the West Wing, and as the red store front light flickering on Jennifer Garner in a season finale of Alias. Matt studied film and video production at York University in Toronto and holds journalism degrees from Penn State University and Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. You can view Matt's work at MattFordMedia.com or follow Matt's blog at wireandlights.com. Thankfully, Matt doesn't write in the 3rd person on his blog.
Bruce Strong
is a multimedia storyteller who likes to work with cool people on awesome projects. Life is too short to do anything else. He has shot in nearly 60 countries, with Sudan added to the mix this March. Bruce was on staff at The Orange County Register in Southern California for 11 years and has freelanced for a variety of international publications and non-profit organizations. His work has earned numerous awards and two fellowships-The Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellowship at the University of Michigan and the Knight Fellowship at Ohio University-but it still hasn't brought him jaw-dropping fame or fortune. When he's not on the field, Bruce spends a lot of time helping others learn to tell stories of significance. Currently, he's an associate professor at Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, where he teaches an array of video, audio and photography courses. Teaching has been a rewarding and enlightening journey, and he is proud of his students, many of whom-while still students-have won top honors from NPPA, POY, World Press and BOP. He also had the good fortune of mentoring back-to-back College Photographer of the Year winners, Matt Eich and Travis Dove. But Bruce is most proud of his two young sons, Jack and Cole, and loves adventuring through life with his visual journalist/professor wife, Claudia.
Will Yurman
is a staff photographer at the Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat & Chronicle, where he has been a long-time innovator in multimedia story-telling. He teaches classes in photojournalism and multimedia at the Rochester Institute of Technology. His work features elegant design and h2 visual content, driven by natural sound and the subject's own words. He is a 1983 graduate of the State University New York at Albany and is a former NPPA Region 2 Photographer of the Year. His still photography and multimedia work have been recognized in the Best of Photography and Picture of the Year International contests. A photographer for more than 20 years, Yurman began as a photographer's assistant in Albany, N.Y., and later worked as a freelance photographer in Alaska and the Middle East. Upon returning to the States he became the photo editor of the Observer Dispatch newspaper in Utica, N.Y., where he began to explore multimedia storytelling on the web. At the Democrat and Chronicle he helped launch a weekly photo column called First Person that appeared in print and online. He has produced numerous shows for the site, working with stills, audio and text to tell stories in a way that just isn't possible in print.
Miki Meek
is a producer NYTimes.com, where she oversees multimedia, photography and special projects for the travel section. She also works on integration efforts between the print and web divisions, and trains staff and freelancers. Before joining the Times in 2008, Miki worked for six years as a producer and photo editor at National Geographic Magazine online, where she won awards from the National Press Foundation, Webbys, National Magazine Awards and other institutions.
Steve Elfers
is the video director for USA TODAY. Steve has been a photojournalist for 22 years, and has been combining video with his coverage for the last 10 years. Steve has covered military conflict in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Somalia, and covered the military in general during 17 years with Army Times Publishing as chief photographer and director of photography. Steve's video and still credits include: CBS, NBC, CNN, ABC, The National Geographic Channel, and Discovery as well as Time, Newsweek, US News, and many major newspapers.Steve produced and edited a web video project, "The Making of a Marine Corps Officer", that became an Emmy-nominated prime time special and won 1st Place, Editing-Documentary in the White House News Photographer's Eyes of History 2006 television contest. He also directed and co-produced "America's Journey: Inauguration Day 2009".
Julie Jones
has two lives: one as an associate professor of multimedia at the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication at University of Oklahoma and one life, the previous life, as a visual storyteller. In 1983, Julie began her photojournalism career in a small newsroom located in a mobile home trailer on the bluffs of Farmington, New Mexico. Within a month the station sent her to the National Press Photographers' Association Video Workshop in Norman, Oklahoma. That week in Norman changed Julie's life. By the time she left the news industry 20 years later, she had traveled the world and much of the American southwest with a camera telling stories from the heart of the people she met. During that time, Julie was one of the few among her peers who worked as a one-man band or, framed in today's terms, one of the original backpack journalists. At two Phoenix stations, KPNX and ABC15, Julie gathered news as a producer/photographer and editor at both station's special projects unit and, at ABC15, the brand development unit. She produced long form stories, investigative pieces, and six documentaries, but also covered breaking news such as the Northridge earthquake, the Malibu fires and all manner of Arizona stories. That work received 29 Rocky Mountain Emmys, numerous national and regional awards from NPPA, SPJ, RTNDA, New York Film Festival, and Arizona Press Club. Twice she was regional Photographer of the Year as well as the Arizona Press Club's Photographer of the Year. Ten years after attending the Workshop, Julie returned to the Norman, Oklahoma as a faculty member - a role she looks forward to every year. In 2008, Julie returned to Norman with a new purpose. As an associate professor at the Gaylord College, Julie is helping the younger generation of journalists find their future in changing news environment. That work is enriched by her doctoral time at the School of Journalism and Mass Communicaiton at the University of Minnesota. Currently, she is still finishing her dissertation on motives to post to YouTube. Once that hurdle is crossed, and she returns to the Twin Cities to defend her work, you may call Julie "Dr. J."
Brian Kaufman
is a two time national Emmy award winning video journalist with the Detroit Free Press. His contributions to Web video production and multimedia have pushed the forefront of news delivery in a digital world. Through a compelling mix of cinematography and traditional still photography, Brian's style of visual storytelling is an intimate reflection of the subjects that he works with. At Brooks Institute of Photography in Ventura, Calif., Brian developed a documentary style of video production that has followed him through his relatively short career. Upon graduation in 2006, Brian accepted a job at the Naples Daily News in Florida, where he helped launch the first newspaper-based television newscast in the country. As a way to take on larger projects, Brian's second career opportunity took him to the Detroit Free Press in 2007. He has been instrumental in facilitating the education of video journalism to other newspaper photographers and reporters there, and his work has been recognized nationally for projects ranging from hard news to moments of life. Brian's personal work includes nature and wildlife cinematography and adventure travel. His continuing work on a social documentary retraces the life of Kim Phuc, a Vietnamese woman who was made famous in Nick Ut's Pulitzer Prize winning photograph during the Vietnam War. With a positive and determined approach to life, Brian hopes to eventually pursue feature length documentary films.
Will Sullivan
is the Nerd in Chief of Journerdism.com. From 9-6ish, he's the Interactive Director of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He's worked with more than a dozen news organizations from Sydney, Australia to Toledo, Ohio in roles from staff photographer to Editor in Chief and won awards for his multimedia and design work from more than half a dozen organizations ranging the National Press Photographer Association to the Society for News Design. He is a co-director of the Third Annual NPPA Multimedia Immersion Workshop.
Evelio Contreras
Evelio Contreras, a videojournalist for the Las Vegas Sun, began shooting video for newspapers on the morning of the Virginia Tech shootings. As a reporter for The Roanoke Times, Evelio worked with his newsroom mentor Seth Gitner to produce multimedia covering the tragedy on campus. Evelio continues to shoot video and has won first and second place awards in the 2008 and 2009 NPPA's Best of Photojournalism contest. His work on the One Year Later video portraits at Virginia Tech contributed to The Roanoke Times earning a silver medal from the Society for News Design. Evelio enjoys telling visual stories. Whether it's through text, photography or video, he believes the principles of storytelling remain the same. He has been a sports, news reporter and multimedia producer at The Roanoke Times. Previously, he worked at The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer as a desk assistant.
Smiley N. Pool
has spent his 20-year career collecting images that capture the critical stories of our time and the memorable moments in individual peoples lives. He's covered the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and 9/11, the travels and funeral of Pope John Paul II, seven Olympic games, professional sporting events like the Super Bowl and NBA finals, visiting dignitaries and presidential inaugurations, and many other major local, national and international news events. Pool was a key contributor to the Dallas Morning News' coverage of Hurricane Katrina, which won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography. He is a seven-time winner of the National Press Photographers Association regional photographer of the year award, as well as numerous other local, state and national awards. His portfolio of work for 2005 was judged runner up for Photojournalist of the Year honors in the worldwide Best of Photojournalism competition. His pictures of street children in Romania in the 1990's has morphed into a long-term project on the Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative and its efforts to improve the lives of children with HIV/AIDS worldwide. Pool, a native Texan who was born in Galveston, is currently the chief photographer and photo coach at the Houston Chronicle. He has also worked for the Dallas Morning News, Colorado Springs Gazette and Austin American Statesman. He interned at the Austin American Statesman while a college freshman and worked at weekly newspapers in St. Louis, Missouri, during high school.
Ben de la Cruz
is an Emmy Award winning documentary video producer and reporter for washingtonpost.com and most recently was named Acting Director of Multimedia/Video earlier this year. Prior to joining the website in January 2000, Ben worked as an independent producer for public television, a print reporter covering the Internet industry and a freelance photography reviewer for Photo District News. Ben has also co-produced songs released by Sony Music and Dischord. Ben's series of 12 video stories about racial identity on washingtonpost.com was part of Being a Black Man, a year-long multimedia project that won the George Foster Peabody Award in 2007. The video series also received a National Emmy nomination. His video series Living With PTSD, which was produced for the Pulitzer Prize-winning series on the lack of care at Walter Reed, received a National Emmy nomination last year. He has also contributed stories to the investigative series Fixing D.C. Schools, covered Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the attacks on 9-11 and produced many local stories from affordable housing to day labor disputes to religion and an Emmy Award winning series on homelessness. In addition to post.com, his work has appeared on MSNBC, PBS and in film festivals around the country.
Joe Mahoney
a two-time Pulitzer prize-winning photojournalist, was the assistant director of multimedia for the Rocky Mountain News. In that role, he supervised the introduction of video/audio-gathering and production to the paper's photo staff and the newsroom. During the past 20 years, Mahoney covered a wide range of assignments including the recent U.S. presidential campaigns and national conventions, the 2007 World Series, 2004 Summer Olympics, the Columbia shuttle disaster, Colorado's devastating wildfires in 2002 and the Columbine high school shootings. Prior to working for the Rocky, he was with the Associated Press. Mahoney lives in Lakewood, Colorado with his wife and two children.
Seth Gitner
starting in fall of 2009 he will be an Assistant Professor of Newspaper and Online Journalism at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. Previously he was the multimedia editor for The Roanoke Times/roanoke.com in Roanoke, Va. Before entering the online news side of journalism, Seth was a photojournalist for 10 years. Seth has taught multimedia storytelling at numerous photojournalism workshops around the country including Poynter's Visual Edge Workshop, The Stan Kalish Picture Editing Workshop, The Eddie Adams Workshop, The NPPA NewsVideo Workshop, The Missouri Photo Workshop, The North Carolina Photojournalism Workshop, The Truth With a Camera Workshop, The Keystone Multimedia Workshop and the CICM Multimedia Workshop. He strives to help still photographers see the value of learning new skills to tell stories online through still images, video, and interactivity. He is a past president of the Virginia News Photographer's Association, and presently chairs the multimedia committee for the National Press Photographers Association. Each month he writes a column for the NPPA News Photographer Magazine called "Multimedia Moments." While at The Roanoke Times and roanoke.com the team won the top online awards from Editor and Publisher magazine, the Newspaper Association of America, the Associated Press Managing Editors Association and the Online News Association. He is a past recipient and finalist of the Scripps Howard Award for Web Reporting and the 2009 Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism in Multimedia. In the 2008 NPPA Best of Photojournalism for The Web Contest,The Roanoke Times/roanoke.com won a total of 13 awards for their multimedia content. Most recently he was part of a team that was recognized for the 2008 Best Documentary Project by Pictures of the Year international. He is a co-director of the Third Annual NPPA Multimedia Immersion Workshop.