Susan Burzynski Bullard is a visiting editor-in-residence at Michigan State University, teaching public affairs reporting, editing and media management.

Before joining MSU in August of 2007, she was the managing editor of The Detroit News, where she worked for 21 years as an editor in a variety of roles.
The newspaper won dozens of state and national awards during her tenure. Most recently, it was named the best newspaper in the state by the Michigan Press Association.

For almost a decade, she handled the newspaper’s recruiting and training, hiring hundreds of journalists. Before joining The News, she worked as a reporter and editor at newspapers in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., Lansing and Port Huron, Mich.

She served on the Professional Advisory Council for the School of Journalism at MSU and also serves on an advisory board for Wayne State University’s Journalism Institute for Media Diversity.  She also has served on the boards of the Mid-America Press Institute and the Michigan AP Editorial Association, including a brief stint as president of the board. She also is a member of APME.

She received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Michigan State University in 1974 and a master’s degree in administration from Central Michigan University in 2000. She is married and has two children, both MSU graduates.

Maria Carrillo is managing editor at The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va., where she tries to help create the most accurate, aggressive and engaging news report every day.

She has been at The Pilot for nine years, previously directing many of the paper’s projects and overseeing its narrative team. Her staff has been nationally recognized, including being Pulitzer finalists in 2007 for explanatory reporting. Three serial narratives that she edited for the paper have been expanded and published as books.
She was a Pulitzer juror in 2006 and 2007, and has been a visiting faculty member for the Poynter Institute and the Nieman Narrative Conference for Editors.

Before coming to Norfolk, she was a reporter and editor at The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Va., and interned at the Richmond Times-Dispatch and at the Pioneer Press in St. Paul, Minn.
She has been a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists almost since its inception.

Ron Coddington is a visual journalist whose career spans several major U.S. newspapers, including USA TODAY, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and the San Jose Mercury News, where he was part of the staff awarded the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for general news reporting of the Bay Area earthquake and its aftermath.

As art director for Knight-Ridder Tribune Graphics (now McClatchy Tribune Graphics) and KRT Interactive in Washington, D.C., he helped launch two successful products, Faces in the News caricature service (1993) and KRT European Graphics (1994). He embarked on his online career in 1995.
Today, he is a senior designer at usatoday.com.

The Associated Press, The Society of News Design, and The Society of Illustrators have recognized his work. He received the Best of Cox award for illustrative graphics in 1988.

He is a 1985 graduate of The University of Georgia, a past participant in the Nigel Holmes Information Graphics Workshop at the Rhode Island School of Design, and a guest speaker at The Poynter Institute, The Society of News Design, and other venues. He has judged the SNDies competition.
He writes Faces of War, a monthly column in The Civil War News. In 2004, The Johns Hopkins University Press published his first book, Faces of the Civil War: An Album of Union Soldiers and Their Stories. He has just completed the manuscript for a companion volume on Confederate soldiers.

He lives in Arlington, Virginia, with his wife, Anne, a freelance graphics editor for McClatchy Tribune Graphics, and pugs Lucy, Missy and Bella. He is an avid runner and hiker.

Judy DeHaas has been a photographer at the Rocky Mountain News since 2004. She shoots, edits, writes, and produces audio slide shows and videos.

She graduated from the University of Texas in Austin with a degree in Journalism. She took her first job in Odessa, Texas, with the Odessa American in 1987. Three months later, the Dallas Morning News hired her, where she worked until March 1999, covering socially relevant issues at home and abroad such as immigration, war and famine, peace and reconciliation, and poverty throughout the world.

He was part of a team of journalists for the Morning News that received the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for their series on violent human rights abuses against women worldwide. She was the first person to photograph a female genital mutilation ceremony in Somalia and the News was the first newspaper to publish photos about the practice. Her book about children and war in Southern Sudan was published in September 1998 by Houghton-Mifflin.

From 1999 to 2004, she based herself in Taos, New Mexico, and worked as a freelance photographer for publications such as Texas Monthly, National Geographic Traveler, People Magazine, and The New York Times. She traveled the world shooting promotional photos for the Peace Corps' recruiting campaign, contributed to Peter Jennings’s last book, In Search of America, co-directed a film on tribal elders in Kenya and produced and shot a documentary film about the Quechua-speaking people in Peru.

Among her other achievements are: an Award of Excellence from the Robert F. Kennedy Foundation, The Harry Chapin World Hunger Award, The Barbara Jordan Award for reporting on people with disabilities, the APME Photojournalism Award and the APME Sweepstakes Award for her series dealing with immigrants and refugees in Dallas, the Headliners Award for her work in Southern Sudan and the Texas Council Against Violence Award for her work with abused women, several Colorado Press Association, Colorado Associated Press, and Colorado Association of Black Journalists awards, a Communication Arts Award of Excellence and several American Photography Awards.

She lives in Denver with her husband Peter, their baby, Theo and her stepson, Hans.

Kenny Irby is the Poynter Institute's visual journalism group leader and director of diversity. He is an integral figure in visual journalism education, known for his insightful knowledge of photographic storytelling, innovative management ideas, and steadfast ethical thinking. He founded Poynter's photojournalism program in 1995. He teaches in seminars and consults in areas of photojournalism, leadership, ethics, and diversity.

During his 12-year tenure at Poynter, he has traveled to Nigeria, Amsterdam, Denmark, Canada, Jamaica, Singapore, South Africa and Russia preaching excellence in photojournalism. He chaired the 2007 Pulitzer Prize photography categories, lectured at the World Press Photos buddy training program, is a member of the Eddie Adams Workshop board, presented on the 2003 Flying Short Course, served as photo manager at two USA Olympic Games ('96 and '02), chaired the Unity '99 Visual Task Force and is Poynter's representative and a founding member of The Best of Photojournalism (BOP) Committee.

He contributed as a photo editor to three Pulitzer Prize-winning projects while at Newsday. He is a recipient of numerous NPPA awards, including the 2007 Sprague Award (the organization's highest honor), 2002 President's Award, 1999 Joseph Costa Award and others. He has been a juror for the American Society of Newspaper Editor's Community Service Photojournalism Awards, the Society for News Design, Annual Pictures of the Year Competition, White House News Photographers' Competition, and the Scripps Howard National Journalism Awards. As a leader and facilitator in the visual journalism arena, he is a frequent lecturer and author on photographic reporting issues.

Bennie Ivory is executive editor and vice president/news for The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky. He became executive editor of The Courier-Journal on May 22, 1997.

The Courier-Journal was a 2004 finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in the Public Service category and a 2007 finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in the Breaking News category.

He joined The Courier-Journal after 18 months as executive editor of The News Journal in Wilmington, Del.

He was named Gannett’s Editor of the Year for 1994 and FLORIDA TODAY was named newspaper of the year.

He has been in the newspaper business since the summer of 1969 and has held a variety of editing jobs across the country.

He started his career as a general assignment reporter at the Hot Springs, Ark., Sentinel-Record in 1969.  He later became sports editor and government reporter.

He moved to the News-Star-World in Monroe, La., in 1979 as assistant city editor.  In 1981, he was named city editor.

He became a member of the USA TODAY startup team in June of 1982.  He started as a state editor, then became night national editor to direct the paper’s national news coverage.

In 1985, he moved to the Jackson, Miss., Daily News afternoon newspaper as managing editor. Three years later he was named managing editor of both the Daily News and The Clarion-Ledger.  The two papers were merged the following year into The Clarion-Ledger.

While in Jackson, he directed the news coverage that led to the re-indictment of the man accused of murdering Mississippi civil rights leader Medgar Evers some 30 years earlier. The man subsequently was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

He was named executive editor of FLORIDA TODAY in 1993, and executive editor of The News Journal, Wilmington, Del., in 1995.

He is married to the former Rosalind Jones of Malvern, Ark.  They have two sons.

Marisa Porto is editor of Smallponds, Inc., a company that develops and creates content for online Web sites. She has held that position since August 2007.

Before joining Smallponds she was assistant managing editor/news at The News Journal, in Wilmington, Del. While at The News Journal from 2005 to 2007 she was in charge of metro, sports, features and business online and in print, including database and project reports.

She was involved with the newspaper’s diversity efforts and internship programs. She handled training, oversaw database news projects, narrative projects, online and print news projects, calendar and management of newsroom IT functions.

Prior to her work at The News Journal she was assistant managing editor/features at The News-Press in Fort Myers, Florida from 2003 to 2005. She was responsible for 11 feature sections and special projects.

Before moving to Florida she was executive editor of the Times-Recorder/Tribune in Zanesville and Coshocton, Ohio from 1998 to 2003. She was in charge of all aspects of operations at the two daily papers and their online sites.

In 2002 she was one of the ’20 under 40’ journalism professionals recognized by Presstime magazine. She has received numerous awards for her editorial, column and feature writing.

She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of South Carolina-Columbia.

John Robinson is editor of the News & Record in Greensboro, N.C. He has been at the News & Record since 1985, when he started as an assistant city editor. Since then, he's been city editor, assistant managing editor, editorial page editor and Team Management coach. He has been editor of the paper since 1999.

Born in Virginia and reared in Oklahoma, he graduated from high school in Raleigh, N.C. and earned a B.A. at St. Andrews Presbyterian College in Laurinburg.

He has taught school in Salisbury, helped build a mental health hospital in Raleigh, edited a magazine in Norfolk, Va., and worked at newspapers in Monroe, N.C., Asheville and Raleigh.

Dixie D. Vereen is sports design editor for USA TODAY and a freelance photographer in the Washington, D.C. area. She formerly was USA TODAY’s page one design editor.

She is an award-winning photographer whose subjects have included the inauguration of Nelson Mandela, the civil war in El Salvador, the massive and bloody exodus from Rwanda, U.S. presidents, and world renowned celebrities.

She has been on the photography staffs of some of the most respected publications in the world including USA TODAY, Newsday, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Her work has appeared in National Geographic, Washington Post Magazine, U.S. News and World Report, and Time magazine.

She has contributed to books such as Songs of My People, History of Photography, and Love Supreme, A Day in the Life of American Women. Her work has been exhibited in the Library of Congress, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and many international venues, most recently Havana, Cuba.

Stuart Warner, the writing coach and projects editor at The Plain Dealer, has developed a national reputation as an editor and teacher of literary journalism.  He has written or edited three Pulitzer Prize-winning entries and edited a Pulitzer finalist for feature writing.

His 20,000-word narrative, The Goodyear War, was the centerpiece of the Akron Beacon Journal’s 1987 Pulitzer-winning effort.  He supervised the 1994 Pulitzer Gold Medal-winning project A Question of Color.  He edited Connie Schultz’s columns that won the 2005 Pulitzer for commentary and he edited Schultz’s 25,000-word series Burden of Innocence, which won the Robert F. Kennedy Award for social justice reporting and was a finalist for the Pulitzer in feature writing.

His writers also have won the Silver Gavel, the James Batten Medal, the National Headliner Award, the Paul Myhre Award, and the AASFE award.  In 2006 alone, seven of the writers he edits won national awards. For five years in a row, one of his writers was named either best news writer or best feature writer in Ohio.

He has been invited to speak on writing at the Nieman narrative conference, the National Writers Workshop sponsored by the Poynter Institute, the IRE’s national Computer Assisted Reporting workshop and at Capitolbeat, the national seminar for state government reporters.  He was on the guest faculty for Poynter’s first workshop on covering race relations and he was a gatekeeper at Columbia’s Let’s Do It Better seminar.

He has his own writing consulting company, The Write Coach LLC, and has taught literary journalism at Cleveland State University.  He spent his first 29 years in the business at Knight-Ridder papers in Lexington and Akron.  He has been at The Plain Dealer since 1999.

He is the author of “Jock: A true story about The Quickest Thinking Coach in America.”