UC Berkeley Journalism - Events

We host public events with distinguished speakers from the media, politics, business and other fields. You can receive event notifications by mailing list, RSS feed, or iCal.

Many school-sponsored events are also webcast as streaming video, either live or as video archives. All events with associated video are listed on the Webcasts page. Currently featured: Jack Hitt: The Art of the Query and Mao's Revolution: What Remains.

Some J-School-sponsored events can also be viewed at UCTV (Real video format).

Many J-School-sponsored events are also available at webcast.berkeley.edu.

Speaker Bios

Don Bott has taught at Stagg High School in Stockton, Ca., for 18 years, advising publications all of that time. He transformed a lackluster school newspaper into one of the best in the country. The Stagg Line has won several prestigious awards throughout his tenure and is especially known for its coverage of issues of diversity. Bott was honored as the 2002 Dow Jones Newspaper Adviser of the Year, an honor that allowed him to speak and conduct workshops across the country.

Angela Buenning is on the faculty of Eastside College Preparatory School, where she teaches journalism and photography and advises the school newspaper. Founded in 1996, Eastside is a private school that serves academically motivated high school students from low income, minority communities of East Palo Alto and eastern Menlo Park in California. Now in its fifth year, the school’s newspaper and its staff members have received county, state and national awards for writing, photography and design. When not teaching, Buenning continues to work on her long-term photography project that focuses on the Silicon Valley landscape. Images from this series will be exhibited next summer at the San Jose Museum of Art.

Thomas R. Burke is a partner in the San Francisco office of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP. He regularly provides pre-publication counseling and represents newspapers, broadcasters, networks, authors and web site owners in libel, invasion of privacy, reporter’s subpoena issues and in matters involving access to public records and closed court proceedings. He has served as a legal advisor to the California First Amendment Coalition since 1990. He is co-editor of The Reporter’s Handbook on Media Law, published by the California Newspaper Publisher’s Association.

Steve O’Donoghue is Director of the High School Newspaper Support Program in San Francisco. He taught in the Oakland Public Schools for 33 years, including 27 years teaching journalism and advising the school newspaper, yearbook and magazine. O’Donoghue founded The Media Academy in 1985, a California State Partnership Academy built around journalism careers. The journalism program at The Media Academy was recognized by Editor & Publisher, the National Scholastic Press Association, the Children’s Media Lab, and the National Council of Teachers of English for its efficacy and its efforts to improve diversity in scholastic journalism. O’Donoghue has been awarded the Gold Key from Columbia Scholastic Press Association, the Pioneer Award from National Scholastic Press Association and the Medal of Merit from the Journalism Education Association. He was named the State High School Journalism Teacher by the California Newspaper Publishers Association in 1989 and the National High School Journalism Teacher of the Year in 1990 by the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund.

William J. Drummond began his career reporting for the Louisville Courier-Journal and later reported for many years for the Los Angeles Times (including stints as bureau chief in New Delhi and Jerusalem). Professor Drummond served as associate press secretary to President Jimmy Carter and also worked as editor and national security correspondent for National Public Radio. Drummond has been honored with a National Press Club Foundation Award, the Sidney Hillman Foundation Award for Journalism Excellence, and the Award for Outstanding Coverage of the Black Condition from the National Association of Black Journalists. While teaching, he remains an active freelancer in both print and radio. Drummond received his bachelor’s degree in journalism from U.C. Berkeley and his master’s degree from Columbia University’s School of Journalism.

Mark Goodman is the executive director of the Student Press Law Center. Goodman received a bachelor of journalism degree from the University of Missouri and a law degree from Duke University.

Cynthia Gorney is a former staff writer for The Washington Post. While at the Post, Gorney worked as a West Coast-based national correspondent, South America bureau chief, and metro reporter. She is the author of Articles of Faith: A Frontline History of the Abortion Wars and has written for numerous magazines, including The New Yorker; The New York Times Magazine; Mother Jones; Health; O, The Oprah Magazine; and Bazaar. She has served as a visiting Poynter Institute teacher, a newsroom writing coach and consultant, and a host and interviewer on “Forum,” the Northern California public affairs radio program on KQED-FM. Gorney is a past recipient of the American Society of Newspaper Editors feature writing award. At the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism she teaches feature writing, reporting the news, law and ethics, profiles, and a variety of other writing courses.

Brenda W. Gorsuch, MJE, has been the Wingspan newspaper adviser at West Henderson High School in Hendersonville, N.C., since 1983 and the Westwind yearbook adviser since 1989. The publications have consistently won awards from state, regional and national scholastic journalism organizations, including CSPA Gold and Silver Crowns and NSPA Pacemaker awards. She is a past president of the North Carolina Scholastic Media Advisers’ Association and recently served two terms as chairperson of the Southern Interscholastic Press Association executive committee. Last November Gorsuch was named the 2004 Dow Jones Newspaper Fund National High School Journalism Teacher of the Year.

Nishat Kurwa is a producer at Youth Radio in Berkeley, Calif. Kurwa works with newsroom interns to produce local and national programming, and is the editor of Youth Radio’s International Desk. A graduate of Youth Radio’s core class of Fall 1995, she moved on to become a producer for KMEL’s public affairs show, “Street Knowledge with Davey D,” and is also a news producer at KCBS Radio in San Francisco. In 2002, she was the co-creator and executive producer of KPFA’s Islam Today, the first program by and about Muslims on U.S. public radio. Kurwa also works with Cultural Unity, an immigrant student group at Berkeley High School.

Victor Merina is a Senior Fellow at the USC Annenberg Institute for Justice and Journalism. He is a former Los Angeles Times investigative reporter who has led writing and reporting workshops from South Dakota to South Africa and works as an editor for the reznetnews.org web site on Native American issues. A former fellow at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in Florida and the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center in New York, Merina also was a teaching fellow at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

Diana Mitsu Klos joined ASNE as project director in 1996 and was promoted to senior project director in May 2000. She supervises the High School Journalism Initiative, launched in April 2000 and funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. This ASNE program aims to improve the quality and quantity of high school newspapers and impart a better understanding of the First Amendment. The overall goal is to encourage diverse young people to go into newspaper journalism careers. She also supervises work on other ASNE projects stretching from readership to international journalism. Prior to joining ASNE, Klos was managing editor of the New York-based Poughkeepsie Journal and city editor of Connecticut’s Norwich Bulletin. She also worked as a reporter at the Asbury Park Press and The Vineland Daily Journal in New Jersey, and won several New Jersey Press Association awards.

Marcia Parker is a lecturer and director of the Bloomberg Business Reporting Program at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. A veteran print and online journalist, she has worked for AOL Time Warner, Quicken.com, the Contra Costa Times and other publications. She is also editor of two lifestyle magazines, Tri-Valley Magazine and Nirvana Woman. Parker has a master’s degree from the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts University. In her spare time, she does media training in emerging democracies through the World Free Press Institute, a non-profit that she and several colleagues established.

P. David Pearson serves as Dean of the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley, and as a faculty member in its Language and Literacy program. His current research, as a principal investigator for the Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement (CIERA), focuses on issues of reading instruction and reading assessment policies and practices at all levels—local, state, and national. Prior to coming to Berkeley in 2001, he served as the John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor of Education in the College of Education at Michigan State and as Co-Director of CIERA, with faculty appointments in Teacher Education and Educational Psychology. Even earlier, he was Dean of the College of Education, Co-Director of the Center for the Study of Reading, and Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Illinois. His initial professorial appointment was at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

Bob Porterfield is a staff writer at the Associated Press in San Francisco. A two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Porterfield is a former investigative reporter at the Anchorage Daily News, the Boston Globe, and Newsday. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and a Walter Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University.

Robert J. Rosenthal joined The San Francisco Chronicle as managing editor and vice president in October of 2002. Prior to joining The Chronicle, Rosenthal was editor and executive vice president of The Philadelphia Inquirer. He was a member of The Inquirer’s staff for 22 years, in a variety of roles - reporter, foreign correspondent, city editor, foreign editor, and associate managing editor. Before joining The Inquirer in 1979, Rosenthal worked for six years at the Boston Globe as a reporter, and three-and-a-half years at the New York Times as a news assistant on the foreign desk. He has received numerous journalism awards, including the Overseas Press Club award for magazine writing; the National Sigma Delta Chi award for distinguished foreign correspondence for reporting from South Africa; the National Association of Black Journalists Award for Third World Reporting; and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in international reporting. Since he joined The Chronicle, it 21has received numerous national journalism awards. Among the awards won in 2004 were the Pulitzer Prize for feature photography; the George Polk Award for its Balco coverage; and the White House Correspondents Association’s Poe Award for national reporting.

Scott Squire is an award-winning multimedia journalist and recent graduate of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. His work has appeared on the websites of PBS’ “Frontline/World,” The Washington Post, the San Francisco Examiner and elsewhere. A stint as a high school journalism teacher convinced him that doing journalism is easier than teaching it. An early adopter of digital photographic processes, Scott hasn’t been in a traditional darkroom since the 1980s.

Frank O. Sotomayor is editorial coordinator of the Student Journalism Program at the Los Angeles Times and assistant director of METPRO—the Minority Editorial Training Program. He has been an editor at the Times for 33 years, including 18 years as an assistant metro editor and 12 years as an editor on the Foreign Desk. He was co-editor of the 1983 Times series on Latinos in Southern California, which won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. He previously worked at the Arizona Daily Star, Philadelphia Inquirer and Pacific Stars and Stripes. He has a B.A. from the University of Arizona and an M.A. from Stanford and he studied at Harvard as a Nieman Fellow. He was a founding board member of what is now the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education. Sotomayor formerly served on the school’s Board of Advisors and he currently is an advisor to the University of Arizona Department of Journalism. He is a founding member of NAHJ and the California Chicano News Media Association.

Elliott Rebhun is the editor of The New York Times Upfront, published with Scholastic. In 10 years with the newspaper prior to joining Upfront, Rebhun was an editor at The New York Times News Service and the founding editor of The New York Times on America Online and New York Today, both part of New York Times Digital. Before The Times, Rebhun was special projects director at Newsweek International and managing editor of Departures magazine at American Express Publishing Co.

Kevin Wendt oversees news, business and sports presentation at the San Jose Mercury News. In his five years there, Wendt’s work has been routinely honored by SND, including several gold and silver medals. Recently, he joined the speaking circuit, visiting newspapers from the Philadelphia Inquirer to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. He also teaches a newspaper editing and design class at Santa Clara University. Wendt is known for his ability to insert himself into meetings he wasn’t invited to in the first place, and his constant desire to make pages bigger and more energetic. He is loud. He is full of ideas. He loves getting cool work into print. His passions include work, whiskey, hating the Chicago Cubs and a far-too-serious following of Northern Illinois University football – he graduated five years ago and still lives in the past a little bit.

Kevin Weston is the Editor-In-Chief and Publisher of YO! Youth Outlook Magazine – a multi-media literary journal of youth life in the Bay Area. www.youthoutlook.org.

Matthew Wilson

Matthew Wilson is the executive editor of the Marin Independent Journal, a daily newspaper with 40,000 circulation in Marin County. At the IJ, he oversees a newsroom of 50 journalists. He joined the IJ in May 2004. Wilson has nearly 30 years of experience at newspapers, including more than 20 years at the San Francisco Chronicle, where he started as a copy clerk in 1976 and rose to become managing editor and then executive editor. Under this leadership, the Chronicle won two Pulitzer Prizes for journalistic excellence and was a finalist for a third. He left the Chronicle in 2001, after its purchase by the Hearst Corporation. Before joining the IJ this year, Wilson ran a media consulting business, tried but failed to buy two weekly newspapers in the Napa Valley, and had a lot of fun for a year as publisher of the Novato Advance, a paid weekly in Marin. (The Advance recently won nine journalism awards, including one for overall excellence, in the California Newspaper Publishers Association contest.) Wilson was born in San Francisco and was editor of his high school paper. He is married and lives in Berkeley.