![Banner Image for Speaker Bios](https://nieman.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/2019georges_banner.jpg)
2019 Christopher J. Georges Conference on College Journalism
Speaker Bios
Benny Becker
Ohio Valley ReSource and WMMT/Appalshop. His reporting focuses on efforts to revitalize the region’s economy, obstacles to economic transition and the human impact of a century of extraction. Becker grew up in Morgantown, West Virginia, and got his start in radio news at WBRU and Rhode Island Public Radio in Providence. He then worked in Tel Aviv as a producer for the “Israel Story” podcast before moving to Kentucky to join WMMT. One of three 2019 Abrams Nieman Fellows for Local Investigative Journalism, he is researching and will do fieldwork on strategies for funding infrastructure in rural communities that are struggling with the collapse of an extractive economy.
@BHEBecker
Taylor Blatchford
Taylor Blatchford is a news producer at The Seattle Times, where she develops audience engagement strategies, connects with readers through social media and curates the seattletimes.com homepage. She also writes a weekly newsletter called The Lead to provide resources and connections for student journalists in college and high school. A graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism, she is especially interested in how investigative reporting and audience engagement can connect more organically. Blatchford previously reported on the future of news with a focus on student media at The Poynter Institute. At the Columbia Missourian, she led a team focused on bringing community engagement into the reporting process and reported on health and higher education. She also wrote and edited at Investigative Reporters and Editors and at POLITICO Europe, she developed engagement strategies to reach an international audience.
@blatchfordtr
Ian Brooking
Ian Livingston Brooking is the editor-in-chief of Coastal Carolina University’s student newspaper, The Chanticleer, and a news editor/prompter director for WPDE ABC 15 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. At The Chanticleer, he leads volunteer reporters and photographers. He also dedicates time to reporting for the publication, covering a variety of topics from campus sporting events to changes in administrative staff. At WPDE, he cuts and edits video footage and sound bites for newscasts, runs the teleprompter and aids field reporters in obtaining B-roll and shooting live shots. A four-time South Carolina Press Association Collegiate Journalism award winner, Brooking is a senior at Coastal Carolina University majoring in communications with a concentration in interactive journalism.
@livingstonway
Anica Butler
Andy Duehren
Catie Edmondson
Catie Edmondson is a Washington, D.C.-based reporter for The New York Times covering Congress, with a focus on foreign policy. From June 2018-January 2019, she was a James Reston Reporting Fellow at the Times. She graduated from Barnard College in 2018, where she was the editor-in-chief of the Columbia Daily Spectator. She previously interned at The Boston Globe and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel before joining the Times, and is from Appleton, Wisconsin.
@CatieEdmondson
Kaeti Hinck
Mary Ellen Klas
Innocents Lost,” won the Goldsmith Prize and Nieman’s Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Journalism. Klas is studying the relationship between declining journalism resources and corruption in state and local government, and what happens to government integrity when watchdog reporting declines
@MaryEllenKlas
Marisa Kwiatkowski
Marisa Kwiatkowski recently joined USA Today after working as an investigative reporter at The Indianapolis Star. At the Star, she handled investigations relating to social services and welfare issues, including child abuse and neglect, poverty, elder abuse, human trafficking, domestic violence and access to mental health services. In 2016, Kwiatkowski and her Star colleagues launched an investigation into USA Gymnastics that revealed top officials at the sport’s national governing body failed to report many allegations of sexual abuse by coaches. It also showed how predators exploited a lax culture to prey on children. As a result of the series, about 500 women came forward with allegations of sexual abuse against Larry Nassar, a longtime team physician who worked in four Olympic games. Nassar pleaded guilty and is now serving time in prison, and the CEO and board of directors of USA Gymnastics resigned. Others involved in the scandal have faced criminal charges. The series also spurred the Protecting Young Victims from Sexual Abuse and Safe Sport Authorization Act of 2017. Kwiatkowski has earned more than 50 journalism awards for her work, including her coverage of the difficulties faced by children with mental illnesses and developmental disabilities when seeking appropriate mental health services. Prior to joining the Star, she worked for media outlets in northwestern Indiana, South Carolina and Michigan.
@IndyMarisaK
Ann Marie Lipinski
Frank D. LoMonte
Student Press Law Center (SPLC) from 2008-2017 and currently heads the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information, a First Amendment think tank at the University of Florida. He has worked as a lawyer in every sector—government, private practice, nonprofit and education—after a career as an investigative reporter and political columnist. He remains an active volunteer as the Senior Legal Fellow at SPLC, where he is national co-chair of New Voices USA, a movement to pass laws in all 50 states that protect the independence of student newsrooms.
@FrankLoMonte
Steve Myers
Francesca Panetta
Nathan Payne
Abrams Nieman Fellows for Local Investigative Journalism. He is studying the impact of data-driven investigative journalism on public perceptions of local media organizations and his fieldwork will examine the effects of mental health policies on local communities.
Nathan Payne is executive editor of Michigan’s Traverse City Record-Eagle, where he previously worked as the paper’s features editor. He also serves as a regional editor for the CNHI newspaper group and works with the company’s local editors in Michigan, Minnesota and Iowa. Earlier in his career, Payne was a photographer, photo editor and city editor at the Gillette (Wyoming) News Record, where he covered police, courts and special projects. Payne is one of three 2019