Amanda Bennett was appointed editor and executive vice president of The Philadelphia Inquirer effective June 16, 2003.

Prior to that, she was the editor of The Lexington Herald-Leader, Lexington, Kentucky. Before joining The Lexington Herald-Leader, she was managing editor/projects of The Oregonian in Portland, Oregon. As managing editor, she helped lead a reporting team that won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in public service for a series detailing abuses by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

She is also a 23-year veteran of The Wall Street Journal, working in Toronto, Canada; Detroit, Washington, D.C.; Beijing, China; and New York. She was Atlanta bureau chief from 1994 to 1998. She shared in the Journal’s 1998 Pulitzer in national reporting for her story about how public health officials mis-characterized the AIDS epidemic to increase public funding.

She has served as Pulitzer juror and National Headliners’ judge.

She is a 1975 graduate of Harvard College. In April 2002, she was elected to the Pulitzer Prize Board.


Glenn Burkins is business editor at the Charlotte Observer.

Before coming to The Observer in June 2000, he was White House reporter for the Wall Street Journal. He also spent five years as The Journal's labor reporter, covering organized labor and the U.S. Department of Labor. While at the Journal he also covered NATO peacekeeping efforts in Kosovo.

Before joining The Journal, he was Africa correspondent for the Philadelphia Inquirer, based in Johannesburg, South Africa. He covered the genocide in Rwanda, the Ebola outbreak in the former Zaire and the 1994 South Africa elections that saw Nelson Mandela elected president.

He also was a personal-finance columnist for the Inquirer. Glenn began his career at the St. Petersburg ( Fla.) Times, where he covered Florida tourism and other business topics.

He has a degree in Journalism from the University of South Carolina and lives in Charlotte. He is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists.


Michelle Deal-Zimmerman is the Assistant Managing Editor/ Design & Graphics at The Baltimore Sun.

A graduate of the University of Florida, Michelle is a native of South Florida who got her start in journalism as a copy editor at The Palm Beach Post.

She has won many design awards and was news design director at The Sun when the paper was named one of the 'World's Best Designed' in 2000.

Michelle is also a board member of the Society for News Design.


Joe Distelheim retired in 2002 after eight years as editor of The Huntsville Times in Alabama. Previously, he was executive editor of The Anniston ( Ala.) Star, and held various reporting and editing positions with the Wilmington ( Del.) News Journal, The Charlotte Observer and the Detroit Free Press.

He spent a year at Stanford University as a John S. Knight Professional Journalism Fellow. He has been a Pulitzer judge and, since retirement, a coach/lecturer at the Freedom Forum's Diversity Institute.


Tom Hallman, Jr., 49, has worked at The Oregonian for 24 years. He was born and raised in Portland. He graduated with a degree in journalism from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.

He worked as a copy editor in New York City for Hearst Magazines, and as a reporter for the Hermiston Herald in Hermiston, Ore., and the Tri-City Herald in Kennewick, Wash., before joining The Oregonian in 1980. He was assigned the police beat and was there for a decade, longer than any reporter since the 1950s.

While covering cops, Hallman began writing feature stories. At first they were off the beat, but over time he cast a wider net and began telling the stories of everyday people. Hallman, now a senior reporter at the paper, specializes in feature stories.

In the spring of 2001, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for his series on a young boy facing life with a significantly deformed face. He was also a Pulitzer Prize finalist in beat reporting in 1995 and feature writing in 1999.

He won the 2001 and the 1996 ASNE Distinguished Writing Award for non-deadline writing, and the 2001 and 1996 feature writing award from the National Society of Professional Journalists. He won the Livingston Award for Young Journalists in 1985.

He also has won the National Headliner Award for Outstanding Feature writing twice and the national Ernie Pyle Award from Scripps Howard for feature writing.


Bill Luster is senior enterprise photographer and associate picture editor at The Courier Journal in Louisville, Kentucky and has worked there since joining the staff in 1969. He has served the newspaper as a staff photographer, chief photographer, and director of photography. He joined The Courier-Journal after working for his hometown newspaper, the Glasgow Daily Times for four years. During his career, he has shared in two Pulitzer Prizes; one for Feature Photography in 1976, and one for Local Reporting in 1988. In 1971 he was named the University of Missouri-JC Penny Feature Photographer of the Year. In 1982, he was runner-up as Newspaper Photographer of the Year in the NPPA - University of Missouri Pictures of the Year competition. He has been the Kentucky News Photographer of the Year four times. In 1984 he was named the winner of the Clarion Award in Environmental Reporting for his photographic reporting of issues involving acid rain in Europe. Bill has covered thirty-nine Kentucky Derbies, six national political conventions, two World Series, one Super Bowl and one Olympics.

He has published three books; one on Kentucky basketball which he co-authored with Dave Kindred; one on the University of Kentucky; and one on Indiana University. His photographs have also appeared in such publications as National Geographic, National Geographic Traveler, Sports Illustrated, Fortune, and Time. He has taught at various seminars, most notably the National Press Photographers Flying Short Course, the Missouri Photo Workshop, the Northern Short Course in News Photography, and the Western Kentucky University Mountain Peoples Workshop. He has lectured at Western Kentucky University, Syracuse University, Indiana University, the University of Missouri, San Jose State University, and Ohio University. In 1992 he was a judge at the prestigious University of Missouri-NPPA Pictures of the Year contest and in 1994 was a judge at the White House News Photographers Association annual contest. He was also scheduled to judge that contest in February, 2005.

Bill is a past president of the National Press Photographers Association and in 2000 received the Joseph Costa award for leadership in that organization. He also received the Visual Journalist of the Year award from Western Kentucky University.

Bill lives in Louisville with Linda, his wife, his son Joseph, and his trusty dog, Charlie. He is a huge fan of University of Kentucky basketball.


Monica Moses, deputy managing editor/visuals at the Star Tribune, is leading what may be one of the most ambitious redesign and reinvention projects on the planet. It feels like that, anyway. Under Monica’s leadership, the newsroom is taking on dumping-ground inside pages, day-old-news headlines, the inverted pyramid, formulaic fronts and general indifference to readers.

Before coming to the Strib two years ago, Monica was a Poynter faculty member for four years. Before that, she held various editing and design positions in various newsrooms.

Many of her writings on collaboration, leadership and visual communication can be found at monicamoses.com.


Michael Robinson-Chavez , a native Californian, began his career working for the Associated Press in Central America and Mexico. Based in Panama he covered Cuban refugees, the economic crisis in Mexico and the drug problems in Panama City's Casco Viejo neighborhood.

He then took a job with The Boston Globe where he covered a variety of assignments ranging from the Super Bowl to civil wars in Congo and Bosnia. He currently works at The Washington Post where he covers mainly international news including the elections in Mexico, the ongoing Israeli/Palestinian conflict, refugees in Kenya, the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, the Roma people of Slovakia and prior to this judging worked in Indonesia on the effects of the tsunami that devastated the region.

He has had his work exhibited at the Visa pour l'Image in France; Havana, Cuba; New York City, Santa Barbara and Washington D.C.. His photographs have received awards from the White House News Photographers Association, including Photographer of the Year 2004, Pictures of the Year competition, Best of Photojournalism competition, National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the Society for News Design.

His most personal work has been a ten year project on the people and landscapes of Peru, the home country of his mother. He currently lives on a farm outside of Washington, D.C.


Laura Ruel teaches multimedia journalism in the visual communication sequence at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. Before coming to UNC in July of 2004, she was the inaugural executive director of the Edward W. Estlow International Center for Journalism and New Media, an educational organization in the School of Communication at the University of Denver.

She is coordinator of the SND.ies, the Society for News Design's Best of Multimedia Design competition. She also is a project leader for the Poynter Institute's Eyetrack III research, a study that examines online news consumer behavior in the age of multimedia.

Before joining the academic world in Fall of 2000, she worked for more than 15 years in the journalism industry as a reporter, editor, designer and manager at a number of newspapers and magazines including the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, the Omaha World-Herald and the Denver Rocky Mountain News. Laura has taught journalism at the University of Denver, Creighton University and the University of Maine, and was part of a faculty team who trained the Web staff of China's Guangzhou Daily News Group in 2001.

She is a board member and a regular speaker for the Society for News Design. She is the recipient of local, state and national awards for her reporting and design work. Her research interests include examining user behavior and cognitive processes in the age of multimedia journalism. She also has studied ethical implications of new technologies in the field of journalism.


Phaedra Singelis is currently Deputy Managing Editor for Multimedia at washingtonpost.com where she had been producing multimedia since 1999 and is responsible for content development. She is also the liaison between the online product and the newspaper's award-winning photojournalism department.

Prior to joining the Post, Singelis worked as a picture editor at the Baltimore Sun and as a staff photographer at the Cleveland Plain Dealer and The Cincinnati Enquirer.

She attended Ohio University's school of Visual Communication and has been a guest speaker at the University and at Unity 2004, a conference of minority journalists. She has also been a guest teacher with the University of North Carolina, whose students produced multimedia projects which have won several awards.

She served as a judge for the Robert F. Kennedy Awards and won a few herself, including some NPPA Best of Photojournalism awards for her multimedia work.


Marquita Smith is a city editor for The Virginian-Pilot and has been at the paper for three years. This year, she is a Maynard Media Academy fellow at Harvard University.

Besides her editing responsibilities, she teaches a news writing and reporting class at Norfolk State University and serves as vice president of the Hampton Roads Black Media Professionals.

Before coming to The Pilot, she was an assistant metro editor at the Montgomery ( Ala.) Advertiser and a reporter at the Lexington Herald-Leader, The ( Biloxi) Sun Herald and Knight Ridder's Washington Bureau.

She has a master's degree in public affairs reporting from the University of Maryland.


Catherine Straight is one of two managing editors at the Pioneer Press in St. Paul, Minn. She oversees Daily and Sunday 1A planning, lifestyle and entertainment coverage and the visuals team at the paper.

Straight came to St. Paul in 2001 as a senior editor. She was named managing editor in 2002. Prior to joining Knight Ridder, she worked as Deputy Managing Editor for The Tennessean in Nashville, where she began her management career in features before moving to news.

She is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists, the Associated Press Managing Editors organization, a board member of the Minnesota AP and a volunteer with the Urban Journalism Workshop at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul.


Will Sutton is a deputy managing editor at The News & Observer, a McClatchy newspaper, where he has worked as an editor since December 1996. Under his leadership at The N&O, the design team won recognition as a Society for News Design (SND) World's Best Designed Newspaper in 1998, and he went on to be an SND World's Best judge in 2001.

A graduate of Hampton (University), he's judged several national journalism contests, including the Pulitzer Prizes for photojournalism, the Nieman Foundation's Taylor Award for Fairness and various local, state and regional design, editing, photography and story contests.

A true newsroom renaissance man, he's worked with the features design, news design, graphics and photography teams at The N&O as well as the features and sports departments -- and the paper's copy editors. Will started his career in post press, stuffing newspapers with those advertising circulars that help pay newsroom salaries. He has worked for Gannett, Knight Ridder and McClatchy since 1977. He reported and edited for KR's Philadelphia Inquirer, covering cops, courts, Philadelphia neighborhoods, Philly city hall, among other beats.

After a Nieman journalism fellowship at Harvard University in1988, Will started editing at The Inky. He launched successful suburban coverage in Montgomery County and worked for NPR Managing Editor Bill Marimow as deputy city editor when Marimow was city editor.

He moved from Philly to Indiana as managing editor, and then editor and vice president, of KR's Post-Tribune. Will has been active in various journalism organizations through the years. Along with Juan Gonzalez, former president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ), he is a co-founder of what came to be UNITY: Journalists of Color, Inc. He served a two-year term as president of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), an organization he joined as a student in 1977. He served four terms on the NABJ board.

A longtime diversity advocate, Will puts into practice what he preaches, helping lead the Post-Tribune newsroom's ethnic diversity to more than 30 percent at one point and helping The N&O ramp up its newsroom ethnic diversity percentages from about 11 percent to 22 percent in 2005 in the last few years.


Rick Thomason is publisher of The Walton Sun and The Destin Log. He is in his 25th year with Freedom Communications, Inc.

Began my career in Dothan, Ala. as a general assignment reporter at The Dothan Progress, a weekly newspaper. Eventually held positions there as sports writer, sports editor and editor for 10 years.

Next stop: The Kinston (N.C.) Free Press as editor. In two years there The Free Press bumped statewide editorial awards from about four per year to 12 my second year, including the state investigative journalism award.

Next stop: The Walton Sun ( Santa Rosa Beach, Fla.) where I was founding editor of the newspaper, 12,000 weekly circulation.

Next stop: Publisher of The Delta Democrat-Times ( Greenville, Miss.). First publisher's job...and what a ride! Good training ground.

Latest stop: Returned as publisher of The Walton Sun (12,000 weekly free distribution) and The Destin Log (8,000 twice-a-week paid circulation). Have been here since August, 2001. 2003 and 2004 proved to be record revenue and cash flow years for both papers.

Serve on the Destin Area Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors, Destin Area Chamber of Commerce Military Affairs Committee, and the South Walton County Beach Safety Committee.


Marilyn W. Thompson is editor and vice president of the Lexington ( Ky.) Herald-Leader. She came to Kentucky from The Washington Post, where she was assistant managing editor for investigations. She also worked as a reporter at the New York Daily News, where she broke a government corruption scandal known as Wedtech that brought more than 20 federal convictions.

She formerly worked at the Philadelphia Daily News and the Columbia (S.C.) Record.

Marilyn broke the story in late 2003 of Strom Thurmond’s black daughter after a 20-year pursuit that began when she was a young reporter in South Carolina.


John M. Willis is the editor and publisher of the Calhoun ( Ga.) Times.

He has been with the newspaper's parent company, News Publishing Co., since 1989, first as a reporter and editor for The Coosa Valley View, a regional business magazine based in Calhoun, and later at the daily Rome News-Tribune.

He served in a variety of capacities at the Rome News-Tribune, including Roman Record editor and senior writer. He was named business editor in1996 and held that position until May 2003, when he was named editor and publisher of the Calhoun Times. He has won a number of Georgia Press Association awards for his columns and business coverage.

A 1971 graduate of the Virginia Military Institute, Willis has spent most of his career in the publishing and printing industry.

He has two daughters, Molly, who recently completed two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Nicaragua, and Jennifer, who is a senior at Berry College in Rome, Ga.

© 2005 Cox News Service