Bill Densmore, director, Journalism that Matters

Bill Densmore,  a consultant and researcher on the future and sustainability of journalism, is  an expert on Internet information technologies and business models. He is a consulting fellow to the  Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI) at the Missouri School of Journalism.  He is author of the white paper, “From Paper to Persona.”

Densmore also serves as director/editor of the Media Giraffe Project at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and the New England News Forum. He also serves on the boards of the New England Newspaper & Press Association and Shires Media Partnership, Inc.

In a career spanning news writing, journalism, publishing and entrepreneurship, Densmore has founded two technology companies.  Amherst, Mass.-based Clickshare Service Corp. provides user registration, authentication, content access control and transaction services to Internet web content sites and publishers.  CircLabs Inc. is a development-stage startup incubated as part of Densmore’s Information Valet Project at RJI. It’s testing service concepts for news personalization and customization, including the InfoValet Circulate Discovery Service.

The Media Giraffe Project, launched in March, 2005, is an ongoing effort to find and spotlight individuals making sustainable, innovative use of media (old and new) to foster participatory democracy and community. Densmore  holds a B.A. from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst in environmental policy and communications. A career journalist, Densmore has been an editor/writer for The Associated Press in Boston, Chicago and San Francisco and for trade publications in business, law,  insurance and information-technology in Boston, Chicago and New York.

*****

Mike Fancher, Board secretary, Journalism That Matters

In 2008 Mike Fancher retired from The Seattle Times after 20 years as executive editor. During his tenure The Times won four Pulitzer Prizes and was a Pulitzer finalist 13 other times. A Seattle official is quoted as saying, “Under Mike, the paper was fearless about tackling subjects it thought were important to the community. There were a lot of people in the community who didn’t like that. But, at the same time, the paper was gutsy, and fearless in admitting when it made a mistake.”

Fancher devoted his 2008/2009 Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute Fellowship year to the question, “What is the Journalist’s Creed for the 21st Century?” His research explored how shifting elements, such as the relationship between journalists and the public, affect the values and principles of journalists today and in the future.  Currently Fancher serves as an adviser to the Knight Commission and is a frequent speaker at industry, civic and academic gatherings. He is working on a book on the Journalist’s Creed in the 21st Century.

Fancher is the Reynolds Visiting Chair in the Ethics of Entrepreneurial and Innovative Journalism at the Donald W. Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno.

*****

Dr. Michelle Barrett Ferrier, Board Vice President, Journalism That Matters

Associate professor at Elon University in the School of Communications. Her students developed the virtual International Civil Rights Museum on Second Life. She created and runs LocallyGrownNews.com, an online community about local food, sustainability, local economies and related issues. She also is the principal of Creative Technologists, LLC, a firm focused on digital content architecture and development.

For more than twenty years, Dr. Ferrier has been experimenting with and developing content for a variety of digital platforms. She has been a beta tester and early adopter of such technologies as listservs, page layout software, direct-to-plate printing, early CD-ROM development, early website development, online communities, online education and other digital communication technologies.

She completed a Ph.D. degree in Texts and Technology at the University of Central Florida and a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Memphis. As a research associate, she helped architect a new digital media curriculum for 2- and 4-year colleges and universities in central Florida.

*****

Peggy Holman, Board treasurer and co-founder, Journalism that Matters

Seattle based author and consultant, Peggy Holman, has helped explore a nascent field of social technologies that engage “whole systems” of people from organizations and communities in creating their own future. She consults on strategies for enabling diverse groups to face complex issues by turning presentation into conversation and passivity into participation.  In the second edition of The Change Handbook, she joins with her co-authors to profile sixty-one change processes.  Her award-winning book, Engaging Emergence: Turning Upheaval into Opportunity, dives beneath these change methods to make visible deeper patterns, principles, and practices for change that can guide us through turbulent times.

Bringing her expertise in organization and community engagement, Holman joined three career journalists in founding Journalism That Matters to support the pioneers who are shaping the emerging news and information ecology.

*****

Chris Peck, Board president and co-founder, Journalism that Matters

Editor, The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tenn. Chris Peck is a former president of both the Associated Press Managing Editors and the American Society of Newspaper Editors and is now editor of The Commercial Appeal in Memphis. He oversees all news and opinion operations and directs a staff of approximately 180 reporters, editors and photographers. Peck came to Memphis in 2003 after serving for one year as the first Belo Distinguished Chair of Journalism at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Before that, he was editor of The Spokesman-Review, in Spokane, Wash. Under his direction, The Spokesman-Review was cited by Columbia Journalism Review as one of the 25 best papers in the United States.

*****

Jorge Reina Schement, Director, Journalism that Matters

Dean, School of Communication & Information, at Rutgers University.   Jorge Reina is also Professor II in the Bloustein School of Public Policy, and in the Department of Latino-Hispanic Caribbean Studies.

A Ph.D. from the Institute for Communication Research at Stanford University, and M.S. from the School of Commerce at the University of Illinois, he is author of over 200 papers and articles, with book credits including, Global Networks (1999/2002), Tendencies and Tensions of the Information Age (1997), Toward an Information Bill of Rights and Responsibilities (1995), Between Communication and Information (1993), Competing Visions, Complex Realities: Social Aspects of the Information Society (1988), The International Flow of Television Programs (1984),   Telecommunications Policy Handbook (1982), and Spanish-Language Radio in the Southwestern United States (1979). A Latino from South Texas, his research focuses on the social and policy consequences of the production and consumption of information, especially as they relate to ethnic minorities. His research has been supported by the Ford Foundation, Markle Foundation, Rainbow Coalition, Port Authority of NY/NJ, Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Communications Commission, National Science Foundation, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Verizon, Lockheed-Martin.   He has received awards for his policy scholarship from the International Communication Association, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Pace University, the University of Kentucky, UCLA, and Penn State.   Schement has served on the editorial boards of twelve academic journals, and has edited the Annual Review of Technology for the Aspen Institute.   He is editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Communication and Information.

*****

Stephen Silha, co-founder, Journalism That Matters

Past president, Washington News Council, Seattle, Wash.  Stephen Silha is a freelance writer, communications consultant, facilitator, futurist, and filmmaker. A co-founder of Journalism That Matters, Stephen was a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor and The Minneapolis Star before becoming communications director for the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. He co-convened the first symposium on The Media and Philanthropy at the Chicago Tribune, and worked on the research project on community communications called Good News/Good Deeds: Citizen Effectiveness in the Age of Electronic Democracy.

Silha has worked with youth to get their voices in the media, and to facilitate youth-adult dialogues on Vashon Island, near Seattle, where he lives. He is currently making his first film, Big Joy, a documentary about the power of art and poetry to change lives, using the life and work of filmmaker/poet James Broughton as a lens.