2016 Conference Program - Virginia Press Association

VPA/The Associated Press &
SPJ Region 2
News/Advertising Conference
Hilton Richmond Hotel & Spa
April 8-9, 2016
PROGRAM
FRIDAY, APRIL 8
3-5 p.m.
VPA/VPS Board of Directors Meeting - Capital D
2-4:30 p.m.
Job Fair/Clip-Resume Critiques - Short Pump
Representatives from:
Daily Press, Richmond Magazine, Richmond Times-Dispatch,
The Roanoke Times, & The Virginian-Pilot
5:30 p.m.
VPA Reception - Capital FG
Sponsored By Richmond Times-Dispatch
6:30 p.m.
VPA Virginian of the Year/AP Banquet - Capital FG
2016 Virginians of the Year: James E. Ukrop & Robert S. Ukrop
7-11 p.m.
SPJ Reception/Film Screening of Spotlight- Henrico Ballroom
SATURDAY, APRIL 9
9 a.m.
VPA Registration & SPJ Region 2 Registration VPA-Registration Desk; SPJ-Henrico Prefunction
9 a.m. Open
Coffee House - Capital Foyer
Sponsored By Dominion Resources, Inc.
9:15 a.m.
Conference Welcome Opening - Capital G
9:30 a.m.- 11 a.m
Our Right to Know: The Future of Open Access - Capital G
Sponsored By The Omni Homestead Resorts
This roundtable discussion will explore the ongoing legal battle
to open up circuit court case databases to the public, the ongoing
proposals to revise the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, and
how the General Assembly came down on FOIA/access issues in the
2016 session.
Moderator: Marisa Porto, Publisher & Editor-in-Chief, Daily Press
Media Group, VPA President.
Panelists: Dave Ress, Reporter, Daily Press; Megan Rhyne,
Executive Director, Virginia Coalition for Open Government;
Ginger Stanley, Executive Director, Virginia Press Association.
11-12 p.m. Case Study in Tragedy: WDBJ - Capital AB
Hear from those affected by the August 2015 shooting of two WDBJ7
journalists and their interviewee as they discuss the practical and
ethical considerations media organizations need to take when
covering a tragedy in their own newsroom.
Moderator: Nicole Livas, Veteran Broadcast Journalist
Panelists: Kelly Zuber, News Director, WDBJ7, Roanoke;
Ryan Parkhurst, Assistant Professor of Jounalism, James Madison
University; Brad Jenkins, General Manager, The Breeze.
11-12 p.m.
So You Want to be An International Reporter: Hear From Those
Who Have Done it and How You Can Do the Same - Capital G
Learn what it takes to become a foreign correspondent from
journalists who have headed overseas bureaus and covered wars,
disasters and other news all over the world. Renew your passport,
start taking Rosetta Stone lessons and come to this session for a
primer on going global.
Session Leaders: David Lynch, Correspondent, Washington
bureau of the Financial Times; Suzanne McBride, Interim Chair,
Communication and Media Innovation, Columbia College Chicago;
Paul Wiseman, International Economics Writer, The Associated
Press
12-1:45 p.m
VPA/AP Annual Meeting/Business Meeting/Awards Luncheon Capital CD
Noon- 1:45 p.m.
SPJ Annual Mark of Excellence Awards & Keynote Luncheon Capital E
Keynote Speaker: T. Rees Shapiro, Reporter, The Washington Post
2- 3 p.m.
Using Unmanned Aerial Systems for Newsgathering - Short Pump
Discussion about the future of unmanned aerial systems and
their applications in news gathering. Learn about current and
proposed regulations and what they mean for the future of aerial
photography.
(Continued)
Conference Schedule (continued)
Moderator: Evan Jones, The Southside Messenger;
Panelists: Charles Tobin, Partner, Holland & Knight;
Daryl Watkins, Founder, Creative Dog Media;
Gary Gillam, Career Videographer and Producer-Director; Jeff
South, Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies,
Robertson School of Media and Culture, VCU.
2–3p.m.
The State of the Mid-Atlantic News Media and the Climate of
Today’s News Outlets - Perfect Season (located inside Shula’s
Restaurant)
Newsrooms have undergone multiple changes over the past year from how we deliver news, to the audiences we target, to how we
report. Our speakers will discuss the status of their newsrooms,
how they’ve managed the changes and what they see for the future
of news.
Session Leaders: Steve Gunn, Editor, The Virginian Pilot and
PilotOnline.com; Paige Mudd, Editor, Richmond Times-Dispatch
2-3p.m
Sharpen Your Social Media Skills: How to Use It to Expand Your
Reach and Attract More Readers - Henrico Ballroom
These days your social media presence is just as important as your
stories. Hear from pros who will tell you about today’s social media
landscape and how to best navigate it for the highest impact.
Session Leaders: Bob Bennett, Senior Producer, WAVY-TV/WVBTTV Norfolk; Alix Bryan, Interactive Producer,WTVR-TV CBS6
Richmond; Bryan Devasher, Breaking News Reporter, Richmond
Times-Dispatch
3-4 p.m.
New Products and Existing Products “Steal Our Ideas”- Perfect
Season (located inside Shula’s Restaurant)
How are news organizations in Virginia adjusting to find new
sources of revenue and audience? We invite you to bring your ideas
and to hear about the success the Richmond Times-Dispatch has
had with its expanding Discover Richmond magazine franchise.
Session Leaders: Paige Mudd, Editor, Richmond Times-Dispatch;
Lewis Brissman, Editor, Discover Richmond
3-4 p.m.
Stop Errors in Their Tracks: Copy Editing for Everyone - Short
Pump
With fewer copy editors at local newspapers, reporters have to be
their own copy editors. Panelists will offer tips about how to write
cleaner copy, making reporters and their publications look smarter.
Learn basic copy editing tips that will take you far no matter what
kind of stories you write.
Session Leaders: Karen Denny, Director, Annapolis Bureau,
Maryland Capital News Service; Suzanne Wardle, Copy Editor &
Books Editor, The Roanoke Times
3-4 p.m.
Ethics Advice: How to Act When You Find Yourself in
Questionable Situations - Henrico Ballroom
Ethical thinking is like a muscle-use it often to keep it strong.
Explore and talk through sticky situations in journalism with two
experts.
Session Leader: Paul Fletcher, SPJ National President.
5-6 p.m.
VPA Reception & Cash Bar - Capital Prefunction
6 p.m.
VPA Ad/News/Editorial Awards Banquet - Capital Ballroom
Thank you for your part
organizing this conference
Associated Press
SPJ Region 2
VPA Awards Committee
VPA Program Committee
Tweet about this
conference using:
# SPJVPA16
SAVE THE DATE
2017 Conference
April 7 & 8
Hilton Richmond
Hotel & Spa
Conference Presenters
Bob Bennett is senior producer for WAVY-TV/
WVBT-TV in Norfolk. He has 23 years of television
experience and has won numerous Emmys and an
Edward R. Murrow award. Bennett also worked at
WJLA-TV, where his web team increased the station’s
Facebook fan base by more than 100,000 users in less
than a year. Besides social media, Bob specializes in
severe weather coverage and breaking news.
Lewis Brissman is editor of Discover Richmond, a
specialty publication of the Richmond Times-Dispatch. He
joined the newspaper as an intern in 1991 and worked as
a reporter, copy editor, page designer and editor of several
business sections. He became copy desk chief in 2002
and, in subsequent positions, directed the RTD’s news
production. In the past year, he helped expand the RTD’s
Discover Richmond from an annual guide to a quarterly and
now bi-monthly publication schedule. He is a 1991 graduate
of the University of Virginia.
Alix Bryan is an interactive producer at WTVR-TV
CBS6 Richmond. Alix completed her undergraduate and
graduate work at VCU. Her work involves a combination
of reporting, generating interactive content and utilizing
social media to engage the WTVR audience, as well as
to cross promote digital and TV platforms. She’s online all
day, everyday, and is most fascinated by how social media
has changed participation in the production and reception
of news.
Karen Denny is a director, Annapolis bureau, Maryland
Capital News Service. Denny is a former editor with the
McClatchy-Tribune (formerly Knight Ridder/Tribune) News
Service, where she founded the wire’s Newsfeatures
and International sections. She previously worked as
the Maryland editor for the Washington Times and as an
editor and government reporter at the suburban Journal
Newspapers.
Bryan DeVasher is a breaking news reporter at the
Richmond Times-Dispatch. He has 30 years of experience as
a reporter, copy editor and designer. DeVasher has worked at
newspapers in Illinois, Missouri, Indiana and Virginia. He came
to the Times-Dispatch in 2007 after 13 years at the Daily Press
in Newport News. DeVasher teaches copy editing at Virginia
Commonwealth University.
Paul Fletcher is the SPJ national president. He has been
publisher and editor-in-chief at Virginia Lawyers Weekly since
1989. A graduate of Washington & Lee University law school,
Fletcher joined the paper after practicing law for three years. He
has been a member of SPJ since 1992 and serves on the SPJ
Ethics Committee. He was president of the Virginia Pro chapter
from 2011-13.
Gary Gillam is a career videographer and producer-
director. Gillam has spent more than 25 years working
in commercial television and running his own production
company, shooting industrial videos and travelogues all
over the world. For the past eight years, he has taught
broadcast journalism at the Robertson School of Media and
Culture at Virginia Commonwealth University. Three years
ago, Gillam started flying drones to take aerial videos, and
he now builds drones as well.
Steve Gunn is the editor of The Virginian-Pilot and
PilotOnline.com. Before joining The Pilot last year, he had been
the editor of the Capital Gazette of Annapolis, Md. and worked
in editing positions at the Charlotte Observer, Newsday, and
the Dallas Times Herald. He began his career as a reporter
at the Kansas City Times. He has a bachelor’s degree from
Northwestern University and a master’s from Columbia University,
both journalism.
Brad Jenkins is the general manager of The Breeze,
the weekly student newspaper at James Madison University,
a role he has had for the past 10 years. As general manager,
he oversees operations of the print newspaper, a news
website, a lifestyles magazine and an annual magazine
guide to JMU. His students have won national and statewide
honors for their work and have gone on to careers in a wide
variety of fields. Jenkins also teaches feature writing and
feature-magazine production as an adjunct instructor for the
School of Media Arts and Design. Prior to coming to JMU,
Jenkins was a reporter, features editor and city editor for the
Daily News-Record in Harrisonburg.
Evan Jones is the assistant editor at The Southside
Messenger. He enjoys building and flying model aircraft with
the end goal of using photos and videos from the aircraft in
his publication.
Nicole Livas is a veteran broadcast journalist who
recently stepped down from her position as main evening
co-anchor/digital journalist at WAVY-TV in Norfolk, to join
her husband who earned a career promotion in Washington,
DC. She is a community leader who often speaks to aspiring
journalists and various community groups about the media,
leadership and life in general. She is a proud graduate
of George Mason University, and serves on the Board
of Advisors for GMU’s College of Humanities and Social
Sciences. She also serves on the board of the Society of
Professional Journalists Virginia Chapter. Nicole speaks,
reads, and writes Spanish (well maybe more like Spanglish) fluently. Nicole spends
her free time with her husband and family, in the gym or yoga studio and loves
traveling, reading, cooking and supporting local businesses.
David J. Lynch is a correspondent in the Washington
bureau of the Financial Times. He was the founding bureau
chief in both London and Beijing for USA Today; covered the
wars in Kosovo and Iraq, the latter as an embedded reporter
with the U.S. Marines; and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard.
He has reported from more than 50 countries. Lynch has a
master’s degree in international relations from Yale University.
Conference Presenters
Suzanne McBride is interim chair of the
Communication and Media Innovation Department at
Columbia College Chicago. She established two local
news websites in Chicago. McBride has been a Fulbright
Scholar in Ireland and lectured in Thailand through the U.S.
Department of State. Before joining Columbia, McBride was
an editor and reporter at The Indianapolis Star, WTHR-TV
and other news outlets.
Paige Mudd is editor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
She came to the newspaper first in 1999 as a summer intern
and then in 2000 as a local news reporter covering suburban
schools. Mudd became breaking news desk editor in 2008,
metro editor in 2009, managing editor in 2014 and editor in
2015. She is a 2000 graduate of Syracuse University and native
of Wilmington, Del.
Ryan Parkhurst is an assistant professor of journalism
at James Madison University. He has worked in both print and
broadcast journalism during his career. Parkhurst helped lead
spot and breaking news coverage that won local, regional and
national broadcast journalism awards. He is currently working
on research that focuses on the ethics of media coverage
during and after mass and high profile shootings.
Marisa J. Porto is VPA President and Publisher &
Editor-in-Chief for the Daily Press in Newport News, the
Virginia Gazette (Williamsburg) and the Tidewater Review
(West Point). Marisa is also a citizen member of Virginia
FOIA advisory council. An alumnus of the University of
South Carolina, she previously held leadership positions
with news organizations in Florida, Delaware and
Ohio. Among her passions: watchdog reporting, digital
journalism, advocating for government in the sunshine,
beaches, collies and photography, in that order.
Dave Ress covers state and regional issues for the
Daily Press. He started off in journalism as a stringer for
the Christian Science Monitor while a student in Montreal a
very long time ago and was a correspondent for Reuters in
Montreal, London and Nairobi before getting sense enough
to settle in Virginia. Dave is the author of The Burundi Ethnic
Massacres: 1988 and Gov. Edward Coles and the Vote to
Forbid Slavery in Illinois and is far too interested in history,
economics and politics for his own good.
Megan Rhyne has worked at the Virginia Coalition for
Open Government since 1998 and became its executive
director in 2008. Before that, she served as an opinions
editor for Texas Lawyer in Dallas, as a freelance writer and
reporter for Androvett Legal Media in Dallas and the National
Law Journal in New York, and as an adjunct professor of
media law at Hampton University’s journalism school. She
first became interested in open government as an FOI intern
at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in
1991. Her law degree is from the University of ColoradoBoulder, and she was a radio, television and motion pictures
major at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
T. Rees Shapiro is an education reporter at The
Washington Post. He was an English major at Virginia
Tech, where he got his start as a journalist working for the
college newspaper covering the April 16, 2007 shootings
on campus. At The Post, Shapiro has covered campus
crime and poverty in high schools and conducted an
award-winning investigation on sexual assault at the
University of Virginia.
Jeff South is the associate professor and director of
undergraduate studies, Robertson School of Media and
Culture, Virginia Commonwealth University. South worked
for newspapers in Texas, Arizona, and Virginia for 20 years
before joining the faculty at VCU, where he teaches data
journalism, political reporting and other courses. Last spring,
he taught a course on drones, and his students submitted
a study to federal regulators developing rules governing the
technology.
Ginger Stanley is the executive director of the Virginia
Press Association and one of the leading experts on legal
notices and the public’s right to know. For the past 31
years, she has lobbied Virginia’s General Assembly and the
U.S. Congress to keep public records, public meetings, and
public notices open and accessible. Prior to joining VPA,
Stanley worked at the Herald-Progress in Ashland.
Charles Tobin is a partner in Holland & Knight’s
Washington, D.C. office and chairs the firm’s National
Media Practice Team. A former journalist, Mr. Tobin has
appeared in state and federal courts around the country,
representing the media in libel and privacy lawsuits at
both the trial and appellate levels. He also conducts prepublication review for newsrooms and provides advice
on subpoenas, access, the Freedom of Information
Act (FOIA), reporter’s privilege, copyright, and all
other First Amendment matters relating to the editorial content of newspapers
and broadcasts. In addition, he counsels business clients on commercial
disparagement, unfair competition and Lanham Act issues.
Suzanne Wardle is a copy editor and books editor
for The Roanoke Times. She graduated from Northwestern
University and joined The Times’ copy desk in 2006. Wardle
became books editor in 2013. She won the Virginia Press
Association’s first-place award for critical writing in 2012 for
her book reviews.
Daryl Watkins has over 24 years of executive sales
and leadership experience, across a number of technology
companies. He is part owner and VP of Global Sales of
an insurance telematics firm based in Huntington Beach,
California. His creative eye and lifelong passion for
photography extended into the air when he formed Creative
Dog Media, a Richmond-based (FAA 333 exempt) aerial
photography firm, in 2014.
Paul Wiseman is an international economics writer
for The Associated Press. Before joining AP in 2010,
he spent 20 years at USA TODAY. From 1998 to 2009,
he was based in Hong Kong as USA TODAY’s Asia
correspondent. In that role, he covered the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan, the Asian financial crisis, the political
upheaval in Pakistan, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and
other major regional stories.
Kelly Zuber is the news director for WDBJ7 in
Roanoke, Virginia, where she has worked for more
than three decades as a reporter, photojournalist and
assignment editor. She has also served as director of
public affairs, director of promotion and marketing, and
director of digital services.