PAINTING THE NEWS: CONFERENCE PARTICIPANTS

Speakers

Laurence Bricker: Co-founder / Creative Director - Popular Front Interactive Laurence is a leader in the new media industry, providing interactive designs for a broad array of clients. His 12 years in the digital interactive media environment provides both creative and strategic perspective to experience design. His background in filmmaking gives Popular Front's work a media sensibility. His commitment to the integration of strategy, technology, and creativity has resulted in a number of industry awards for Popular Front. < Website: http://www.popularfront.com >

Brooke Burgess: Creator - Broken Saints Brooke wanted to pay tribute to a medium that had given him endless artistic inspiration, and realized that New Media tools could provide a fusion of what was working on the Internet - music, still pictures, and text - to resurrect and transform the graphic literature experience. A former producer for entertainment software giant Electronic Arts, he found that life in the "cubicle barnyard" was no longer keeping him entranced. After three years at EA he finally jumped ship, using his savings to tell the story of four troubled protagonists answering a "spiritual call-to-arms" in Broken Saints. Holding an Honours BA in Communication Studies from the University of Windsor, he is now entering into a new phase of profound humility, where he prefers to let the work speak for itself. < Website: http://www.brokensaints.com >

Colette Gaiter: Assistant Professor - University of Minnesota Colette Gaiter, an artist, has worked with computers since 1982, and in interactive multimedia since 1990. She has a BFA in graphic design from Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and an MA from Hamline University in St. Paul, MN. She has exhibited her work internationally at ISEA, the SIGGRAPH art show, and in many galleries, museums, and public institutions in the United States. After working for 10 years as a graphic designer in Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C., and New York City, she began teaching at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 1986. After 14 years in the Design Division at MCAD, she is now a faculty member in the University of Minnesota's School of Journalism and Mass Communication. < Website: http://www.digidiva.net >

Auriea Harvey: Founder and Creative Director - Entropy8 Digital Arts Auriea Harvey is a New York City-based visual artist, illustrator, designer and programmer. Entropy8 Digital Art is a NYC-based web development collective, which she now runs with partner, Marc Antony Vose. Her work has been recognized with numerous distinctions, including one of the first fellowships in the Computer Arts category by the New York Foundation for the arts, Webby Awards in 1997 and 1998 for the Arts & Design category, inclusions in the 1997 and 1998 Communication Arts Interactive Design Annual, inclusion in ID Magazine's Interactive Media Review, and this year a nomination for the Rockefeller Fellowship for the Arts. < Website: http://entropy8zuper.org >

Sue Johnson: Founding Partner - Picture Projects Sue worked as a documentary photographer before founding Picture Projects with Alison Cornyn in 1995. Picture Projects has worked with photographers, journalists, radio producers and artists to create award-winning online documentaries. 360degrees.org explores first person stories from inside the criminal justice system. The project has been exhibited at several film festivals including Sundance and the International Documentary Festival in Amsterdam. 360degrees.org recently won the Online News Association's Award for Most Creative Use of the Medium. akaKurdistan.com, produced in collaboration with photographer Susan Meiselas, is an online archive of images and stories that collect and preserve the history of the Kurdish people. Other projects include RE: Vietnam ‹ Stories Since the War (www.stories.org), and Farewell to Bosnia with photographer Gilles Peress. Sue has taught photography and new media at Harvard University and City College and has lectured on digital documentaries in Mexico, Sweden, Holland, and throughout New York City. < Website: http://www.picture-projects.org >

Bart Marable: Principal and Creative Director - Terra Incognita After completing a master's degree in history at Louisiana State University, Bart founded Terra Incognita, a studio that produces interactive documentaries and online exhibits, to continue his development of educational interactive productions. Since 1995 Bart has produced award-winning projects for organizations such as the Smithsonian, National Geographic, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Institute of Human Origins, and the National Park Service. He is a frequent speaker and author on interactive storytelling, and in 2001 was selected by the IPPA as one of the top ten designers on the Web. Bart lives in Baton Rouge with his wife Angie, and their one-year-old son, Max. < Website: http://www.terraincognita.com >

Steven McCarthy: Associate Professor - University of Minnesota - Episodic.com Steven teaches graphic design in the Department of Design, Housing and Apparel in the College of Human Ecology. He has an MFA in Design from Stanford University, and a BFA in Drawing and Sculpture from Bradley University. His research interests include self-authored graphic design, artist's books and interactive digital narrative. Steven also maintains a design consultancy, Episodic-design.com. < Website: http://www.episodic-design.com >

Nora Paul: Director - Institute for New Media Studies, University of Minnesota From 1991-2000 Nora was faculty at the Poynter Institute where she led programs in computer-assisted research and new media leadership. Before Poynter she was the Editor, Information Services at the Miami Herald from 1979-1991. Nora is the author of Computer Assisted Research. She was interim director of journalism think tank New Directions for News after its move to UM. She is on the board of the Online News Association and the American Press Institute's New Media Initiative. She got her first modem in 1978 and has been accessing, studying, and explaining the electronic delivery of information ever since. < Website: http://www.inms.umn.edu/ >

Deborah Potter: Executive Director - NewsLab NewsLab is a non-profit television news center in Washington, DC, focused on research and training. NewsLab works with local stations to develop new ways of telling complex or non-visual stories. Deborah spent 16 years as a network correspondent for CBS News and CNN, where she covered the White House, State Department, Congress, national politics and the environment. From 1995 to 1998, she taught journalism at The Poynter Institute, and also hosted the PBS program "In the Prime." < Website: http://www.newslab.org >

Tennessee Rice Dixon: Artist - Teacher - School of Visual Arts, NYC Tennessee makes collages and interactive animated works for CD and performance. Her first interactive digital work, "Scrutiny in the Great Round", is an explorative landscape of dreams, artifacts and biology. This award-winning CD-ROM is based on one of her limited edition artists books of the same name. Her recent work is an on-going text assemblage and 24 hour animated story environment responsive to time of day, sound and other environmental data. < Website: http://www.thing.net/~relay/ >

Vivian Selbo: Artist and web developer Vivian is an artist and web developer living in New York City. From 1995-98, Vivian designed and produced sites for http://adaweb.com, and since then she has worked independently, largely for cultural institutions on the projects listed at http://www.cavil.com. Her sites are included in the online archives of The Walker Art Center, SFMOMA, MoMA NY, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, among others. < Website: http://www.cavil.com >

Tuomo Valiaho: Journalist - Helsingin Sanomat, Helsinki, Finland Since 1998 Tuomo has participated in creating multimedia journalism, "webortages", as a scriptwriter, concept designer, and producer. Tuomo is the producer of the two European Online Journalism Award winning webortages; "Single is Born" (2000) and "Case: Kautonen" (2001). < Website: http://www.helsinki-hs.net/ >

Ashley Wells: Interactive Producer - MSNBC.com Ashley's job is to get people to play with their news. Ashley has worked in New York and Los Angeles in TV news and freelance graphic design. Ashley has a degree in broadcast journalism from Pepperdine University. < Website: http://www.MSNBC.com >

Participants:

Daniel Pierce Bergin: Twin Cities Public Television Dan is a Public Television producer, media educator, and independent media artist. Dan has been nominated or won regional Emmys for his documentary, youth, and news feature producing. < Website: http://www.ktca.org/ >

Greg Daigle is the President of JET Flyer, LLC. JET Flyer develops entertainment and elearning content and distribution models for ultra-wide broadband.

Steve Dietz: Curator of New Media - Walker Art Center Steve founded the New Media Initiatives department in 1996. He is responsible for information systems and programming the online Gallery 9, commissioning new work and curating online exhibitions. He co-initiated the award-winning ArtsConnectEd collaboration with The Minneapolis Institute of Arts and initiated one of the earliest archive-collections of net art, the Walker's Digital Arts Study Collection. < Website: http://www.walkerart.org >

Marjorie Franklin: Assistant Professor - University of Minnesota Marjorie is a conceptual artist using digital media to produce work that comments on the growing symbiosis between digital technology and human culture. She has been producing and exhibiting interactive computer/video and computer/audio installations as well as single channel videos for the last ten years. Her videotape, "...Her...Signal...", is in the permanent collections of the Long Beach Museum of Art, University of Texas Austin and Arizona State University West. Her interactive computer/audio installation, "Seduction", has been shown in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Montreal, and Lisbon. She is currently working on "The Monster", a narrative combining video and 3-D animation. < Website: http://vv.arts.ucla.edu/terminals/t1/ucsc/franklin/Franklin.html >

Amy Gahran: Content consultant for online media, Boulder, CO. - CONTENTIOUS Amy is the creator of CONTENTIOUS, the online newsletter for people who create or publish content for online media. < Website: http://www.contentious.com >

Melody Gilbert: Adjunct Professor - University of Minnesota Melody is an award winning broadcast journalist, independent filmmaker and adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota. She started her career in video storytelling as a broadcast journalist working as a producer and reporter at a variety of television stations around the country. After landing in Minnesota ten years ago, Ms. Gilbert won many state and national journalism awards (Emmy, IRE, AWRT, AP) for her investigative reporting and documentary productions at WCCO-TV and KTCA-TV (now TPT). She is also a freelance producer for a variety of national programs including shows on PBS, Animal Planet and ABC. She is currently wrapping up production on her documentary " Married at the Mall" that will premiere at the Walker Art Center on March 2nd. When she's not making documentaries, Ms. Gilbert is teaching students at the University of Minnesota how to make them. < Website: http://sjmc.umn.edu/ >

Joy C. Kopp: Interactive Media consultant Joy C. Kopp's 25-year career in media communications has been an invigorating and enlightening blend of marketing, training and product development initiatives. As a manager, producer and writer, she offers an integrated perspective on information design, project management and team facilitation.

Regina McCombs: Multimedia reporter - startribune.com Startribune.com is the online portion of the Star Tribune, Minneapolis-St. Paul. Regina arrived there after 13 years as a television photographer and producer at KARE-TV, the NBC affiliate in the Twin Cities. As a multimedia reporter, she does a little bit of lots of things - filing news stories from the field, shooting video, stills, recording audio, creating slide shows, and training staff in creating multimedia for the Web. Regina has also taught classes in online journalism and TV news at the University of Minnesota, where she's plugging away on her master's degree. < Website: http://startribune.com/ >

Jon Menell: writer/producer/editor - KSTP.com Jon has been a writer, producer, and editor for the past 11 years. He has worked in documentary, commercial, and dramatic feature formats and has been the feature editor at KSTP-TV in Minneapolis for the past six years. Jon has a BFA from The Minneapolis College of Art and Design, received eight Emmy awards, and is the 2001 National Press Photographers Association "Editor of the Year". < Website: http://www.kstp.com/ >

Michael Opperman: Co-owner - Green Pumpkin Design Green Pumpkin is a Minneapolis-based web development company, publisher of Dislocate - a new media journal of the arts, and a writer completing his M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota. Over the years, he has run a summer camp on Martha's Vineyard, canvassed for clean water with WashPIRG, and coached rowing in Iowa and Pennsylvania. His fascination with new media results from a mix of good old fashioned geek-ness, a farm boy's desire to build things (and take things apart), and a background in post-structuralist theory that leaves him wrestling with the constructions of narrative and meaning. In his spare time, he reads, bikes, and waits for the sky to fall. < Website: http://www.greenpumpkin.com/ >

Dale Peskin: Executive Director - New Directions for News Prior to joining NDN, Dale was a vice president of Belo, the Dallas-based media company, where he launched the company's initiatives in new media and media convergence. At Belo, Peskin served as editor of Dallasnews.com and as an assistant managing editor of The Dallas Morning News. He was a founding officer of Belo Interactive, Belo's network of news Web sites. He has served as Deputy Managing Editor of The Detroit News and Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, and managing editor of the Tribune Chronicle. Peskin's awards include NAA's Digital Edge Award for Pioneering Online Journalism, the Sigma Delta Chi Award, and four Gold medals from the Society for news Design. He was part of the team at The Detroit News that won the Pulitzer Prize.

Tom Regan: Associate editor - Christian Science Monitor Tom sees himself as part of the Regan-Petzen clan: wife Barb, Liam, Bobbie and Hannah. The thing he enjoys the most is being a dad. Tom has been working in online media since 1993, first putting the Halifax Daily News online, the first on the Web in Canada. Before that he was one of the paper's political columnists. Tom came to the Monitor in 1994. Besides online work he has been general manager of a professional theatre company and written plays and film scripts for CBC-radio and The National Film Board in Canada. < Website: http://www.csmonitor.com/index.html >

David Schechter: Dimension reporter - WCCO 4 News - Channel 4 David joined the Hometown Team in 1999 and has won several broadcast awards, including a 1999 Missouri Broadcasters Association " Best Investigation" Award and has received five Emmy nominations. David's community involvement includes speaking to students, especially when the subject is journalism. He holds a degree in communications from the University of Michigan. David enjoys walking, running and bicycling around the Minneapolis lakes area. < Website: http://www.channel4000.com/news/ >

John Schott: Director - Media Studies Program, Carleton College. John's teaching concentrations are in film history and theory, Television Studies and Digital Culture. He also teaches Video Production and Web Design. He has been at Carleton since 1979. In addition to his teaching responsibilities he has also served as Executive Producer of the PBS series "Alive From Off Center," founding Executive Director of the Independent Television Service, and co-director, editor and / or Executive Producer of numerous documentaries and programs for PBS including "American Photography: A Century of Images" for which he was also the creative director of the website. < Website: http://www.carleton.edu/ >

Dona Schwartz: Associate Professor - University of Minnesota Dona's primary area is visual communication and she has been interested in the interplay between words and pictures for a really, really long time. As a documentary photographer and ethnographer she has experimented with visual and written narratives in her books (Waucoma Twilight, Smithsonian, 1992; and Contesting the Super Bowl, Routledge 1998). In current work she is exploring multimedia as a documentary medium and the web as a point of distribution for documentary work. She is building a website, http://www.picturestories.umn.edu/to launch new multimedia documentaries. < Website: http://sjmc.cla.umn.edu/faculty/schwartz/ >

Gary Schwitzer: Assistant Professor - University of Minnesota Gary has specialized in health care communications for more than 25 years. Before joining the faculty of the University of Minnesota last Fall, he was the founding editor in chief of the MayoClinic.com site. Prior to that he produced health care consumer decision-support videos along with researchers from Dartmouth and elsewhere, worked for 14 years in television medical news at CNN, WFAA (Dallas) and WTMJ (Milwaukee), and served as assistant vice president of the Office of Communications for the American Heart Association's National Office. < Website: http://sjmc.umn.edu/ >

Rex Sorgast: Multimedia Director - Internet Broadcasting Systems Rex manages all broadband, graphics-rich, interactive, and platform-specific content for a network of 50+ television station websites, which includes all Hearst, McGraw-Hill, Washington Post, and NBC O&O stations. He wages personal debates with himself over whether he's a designer, a programmer, or a journalist, and then settles it by saying these are anachronisms anyway. In his spare time, he tells the story of the Internet as it happens at Fimoculous.com. < Website: http://www.ibsys.com/ >

Jean Trumbo: Associate Professor - Missouri School of Journalism. Before coming to MU, Jean served as assistant professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she taught visual communication, seminar in computer mediated communication, visualizing science and technology, new media applications in science communication, media graphics, interface and multimedia design, content development and information design. Trumbo earned her M.F.A. ('92) in visual design from the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, her M.S. ('86) in journalism/mass communication from Iowa State University, and her B.A. ('81) in visual design from Iowa State University. < Website: http://www.journalism.missouri.edu/ >

Behind the Scenes:

Brandy Lietz: INMS Program Associate - Event Coordinator/Video Brandy is the Program Associate for the Institute for New Media Studies. She came to the Institute in March 2001 from the University of Minnesota, Crookston campus where she was the sports information director. She graduated from the University of Minnesota, Crookston but continues her learning in new media technologies through courses and continuing education. Brandy is in charge of coordinating the Institute's convenings, creating and overseeing the website and publications, and editing the New Media Networker.

Jamason Chen: Post-workshop Documentarian Jamason Chen is a photographer, videographer, and multi-media consultant who was born in Shanghai and grew-up during the Cultural Revolution in China. His professional career spans nearly twenty years working as a photojournalist as well as in the motion picture and broadcasting industry and as a multi-media consultant. In 1999, Chen was honored by Who's Who in Chinese Photography, which nominated him as an outstanding photographer and included his work in its publication. His photographs and articles have appeared in numerous Asian publications. Since 1998, Chen has been based in Minneapolis where he works as a multi-media consultant and photographer at UM's School of Journalism and Mass Communication.