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.

Panelists and Speakers

Kim Alexander, President of the California Voter Foundation. CVF is a non-profit, nonpartisan organization Alexander started to explore how technology can be used to provide the public with timely, convenient and free access to the information needed to participate in public life in a meaningful way. In 1996 and 1997, she and CVF received the James Madison Freedom of Information Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California chapter.

Spencer E. Ante, Writer and New-Media Consultant. A former associate editor at The Web magazine, Ante currently produces the Event Series for the Professional Connections area on Netscape's Web site. In 1995 he launched and edited the Annex for PC World Online, its first original content webzine. He has written for The New York Times, Wired, I.D., the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Industry Standard, among other publications, and is an editorial consultant to The 1999 Webby Awards.

Joey Anuff, Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Suck.com. In addition to editing Suck, writing the Net Surf column for HotWired, and acting as the principal copywriter of Wired Digital's advertising creative staff, Anuff has published a number of articles on pop media in Spin, Might, and Wired, and sits on the National Research Council/Computer Science and Telecommunications Board Committee on Intellectual Property Rights and the Emerging Information Infrastructure. He is the co-editor of “Suck: Worst-Case Scenarios in Media, Culture, Advertising and the Internet” (1997).

Denise Caruso, Columnist, The New York Times. A 15-year veteran of high-tech journalism, Caruso writes the "Digital Commerce" column for The New York Times. During a 1997 sabbatical, she was a visiting scholar at Interval Research Corp. in Palo Alto, and a visiting lecturer in the computer science department at Stanford University. She was founding editor of the acclaimed industry newsletter Digital Media, and, prior to launching Digital Media in 1990, was a columnist for the San Francisco Examiner's Sunday Technology page.

Steven Chin, Web consultant. Chin currently runs Monkey King Media, a Web consulting firm specializing in design and content strategy. He is co-founder of San Carlos-based Channel A, a contemporary Asian-lifestyle Web site and served as its executive editor for the last two years. He was also a reporter with the San Francisco Examiner, where he covered Asian affairs, legal affairs and City Hall. Through the Asian American Journalists Association and the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, he has been active in efforts to diversify coverage and staffing in the newspaper industry.

Kathleen deLaski, Director of News Programming, America Online. DeLaski joined AOL in 1996 to develop and lead the network's first coverage of a presidential campaign. Before joining AOL, deLaski was the Pentagon spokesman for Secretaries of Defense Les Aspin and William Perry. She also spent five years at ABC News as a Washington correspondent.

Katherine Fulton, a Principal with Global Business Network. Fulton leads scenario and strategy development efforts for a variety of industries and organizations, and has special interests in organizational learning and the future of communications. Before joining GBN, she co-founded a publishing company and edited its award-winning weekly. She also has taught at Duke University where her courses dealt with a variety of issues, among them advanced reporting techniques and the future of communications.

Dan Gillmor, Technology Columnist, San Jose Mercury News. Gillmor’s column runs three days a week in the Mercury News and is a regular feature in other American newspapers including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, St. Petersburg Times and Arizona Republic. Gillmor also appears frequently on television and radio programs, including National Public Radio's “Morning Edition.”

Paul Grabowicz, Coordinator of the New Media Program, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Grabowicz previously worked for 17 years at The Oakland Tribune, primarily as an investigative reporter but also as night city editor and acting city editor. He is co-author of “California Inc.,” a book on how entrepreneurism and the high technology industry shaped California’s politics, economy and culture.

Richard Gingras, Vice President, Programming and Editor-in-Chief, the @Home Network. Gingras came to @Home from Apple Computer where he was responsible for Apple developments in the online arena. He was responsible for guiding the design and programming of the online service, eWorld, as well as other Internet offerings from Apple. While at Apple, Gingras provided the initial seed funding and guided the development of the highly-regarded literary Web site Salon.

Gary Kamiya, Executive Editor of Salon Internet. Prior to Salon's launch in 1995, Kamiya was at the San Francisco Examiner where his various incarnations included senior editor at Image Magazine, book editor, and movie critic. His writing has appeared in ArtForum, Sports Illustrated, the Los Angeles Times Book Review, Hippocrates, Mother Jones and many other publications.

Bruce Koon, Managing Editor, San Jose Mercury News' Mercury Center. Koon heads the editorial team of Mercury Center, the award-winning online publishing unit of the San Jose Mercury News. He has also written for the San Francisco Examiner, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Wall Street Journal and The Oakland Tribune. He was president of the San Francisco Chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association in 1996 and currently serves on the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education's New Media Advisory Committee.

J.D. Lasica, Copy Chief, San Francisco Sidewalk. At San Francisco Sidewalk, Lasica has been a key player in the launch of Microsoft's online city guide. He also is new media columnist for The American Journalism Review. Previously he was an editor and columnist at The Sacramento Bee for 12 years, and before that he was a top manager at the now-defunct Sacramento Union.

Phil Lemmons, Editorial Director of PC World. Lemmons oversees both PC World magazine and PC World Online. His December 1996 editorial, "Lies, Damned Lies, and Searched Engines," attacked the clandestine practice of selling distorted relevancy in search engine results. Since 1996, he has served as a member of the board of the American Society of Magazine Editors. The board assigned him the task of drafting ASME's guidelines for separation of editorial and advertising in new media.

John Markoff, West Coast Correspondent for The New York Times. Markoff covers Silicon Valley, computers and information technologies. He also covered Silicon Valley for the San Francisco Examiner beginning in 1985. Markoff has been a writer at InfoWorld and was West Coast technical editor for Byte Magazine. He is the co-author of "Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier," "The High Cost of High Tech" and "Takedown: The Pursuit and Capture of America's Most Wanted Computer Outlaw.”

John McChesney, Technology Correspondent, National Public Radio. McChesney has been with National Public Radio since 1979. He has served as national desk editor and foreign desk editor and currently works from NPR's San Francisco bureau.

Kevin McKenna, John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University. McKenna is on leave from The New York Times, where he has been an editor for 13 years. He served for more than two years as editorial director of The New York Times Electronic Media Company. He began his career as a reporter for The Associated Press in Los Angeles and Raleigh, N.C., and spent five and a half years in Paris as an editor for The International Herald Tribune.

Todd Oppenheimer, Associate Editor of Newsweek Interactive. Oppenheimer is the author of “The Computer Delusion,” The Atlantic Monthly's cover story last year about the hidden dangers of outfitting classrooms with computers. He has written for publications including Newsweek, The Washington Post, Columbia Journalism Review, National Journal, Mother Jones, Utne Reader, the Sacramento Bee and the San Francisco Examiner.

Lewis Perdue, President of IdeaWorx and Founder of SmartWired Inc. SmartWired is a Web and print information company, which operated Smart Wine, the world's most frequently visited online wine site. Perdue is the author of 15 published books, has worked as a journalist and investigative reporter, including stints with columnist Jack Anderson, Gannett newspapers and The Washington Post and has served on the communications faculties at UCLA and Cornell University.

Dale Peskin, Assistant Managing Editor, The Dallas Morning News. Peskin is responsible for developing new products in various media. He manages The Morning News Web site, Dallasnews.com, which was awarded The Digital Edge Award from the Newspaper Association of America for pioneering online journalism. Peskin formerly served as Deputy Managing Editor of The Detroit News.

Pamela Pfiffner, Executive Producer of ZDTV.com. Pfiffner is a recognized computer industry expert and seasoned veteran of the publishing industry. She was most recently editor in chief of Ziff-Davis' MacUser magazine. Prior to joining MacUser in 1992, Pfiffner served as executive editor at Publish magazine and as a reporter at Ziff-Davis's MacWEEK. She is the co-author of “How Desktop Publishing Works” (MacMillan/ZD Press). She also teaches magazine publishing at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.

Francis Pisani, Technology Correspondent for El Pais (Spain), Le Monde (France) and Reforma (Mexico). Pisani has covered Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean for several European media companies. Francis was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard in 1992-93. He also teaches hypertext writing at the Universidad Ibero Americana in Mexico City.

Adam Clayton Powell III, Vice President of Technology and Programs at The Freedom Forum. Powell served as Director of Technology Studies and Programs at the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center at Columbia University. He also was an executive producer at Quincy Jones Entertainment and vice president of news programming at National Public Radio.

James Risser, Director, John S. Knight Fellowships for Professional Journalists at Stanford University. Risser is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and a professor of communication at Stanford. He worked for 20 years for The Des Moines Register, and was the paper’s Washington bureau chief for nine years. He is also a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board.

Tom Rosenstiel, Vice Chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists and Director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. Rosenstiel is also a media critic for MSNBC and was the chief congressional correspondent for Newsweek from 1995 to 1996. Prior to joining Newsweek, Rosenstiel spent 12 years as the media critic for the Los Angeles Times and also worked there as a Washington correspondent, national correspondent and financial writer.

Louis Rossetto, Chair, CEO & Editorial Director, Wired Ventures Inc. Rossetto is co-founder of Wired Ventures, the company which created Wired magazine, Wired Books, and Wired Digital, the pioneering online media company. Wired Digital is home for HotWired, Wired News, the best-in-breed search engine HotBot, and the irreverent Webzine Suck. Prior to this role, he was editor-in-chief of Wired magazine.

Paul Saffo, Director, Institute For The Future. Saffo is a technology forecaster studying long-term information technology trends and their impact on business and society. IFTF is a 30-year-old foundation that provides strategic planning and forecasting services to major corporations and government agencies. In his spare time, he writes occasional essays, which have appeared in a variety of publications including The Harvard Business Review, Wired, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and Fortune, as well as other more specialized periodicals.

Orville Schell, Professor and Dean, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Schell has written widely about Asia for the New Yorker and other magazines. He is the author of 14 books, nine about China, including “Mandate of Heaven” and “Discos and Democracy.” He served as a correspondent and consultant for several PBS “Frontline” documentaries and for an award-winning program on "60 Minutes."

Jack Shafer, Deputy Editor of Slate. Previously Shafer edited SF Weekly and the Washington City Paper. His articles have appeared in the Washington Post, The New York Times magazine, The Wall Street Journal, the New Republic, the American Spectator, Psychology Today, Washington Journalism Review and other publications.

Jai Singh, Editor of NEWS.COM for CNET: The Computer Network. Singh is responsible for overseeing all news gathering efforts for CNET, both for radio and online. Before joining CNET, he headed up the news operation at InfoWorld. He has also worked at PC Week and The Source.

David Talbot, Founder, Editor and CEO of Salon. Before launching Salon, Talbot worked as the arts and features editor of the San Francisco Examiner and edited the paper's Sunday magazine, then called Image. He is a former senior editor of Mother Jones and has written for the Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, the New Yorker, Playboy, Interview and other publications.

Jonathan Weber, Editor in Chief of The Industry Standard. Scheduled for launch on April 27, The Industry Standard is a new weekly newsmagazine about the Internet economy. Previously, Weber was the technology editor for the Los Angeles Times and was responsible for launching the Times' highly successful technology section, The Cutting Edge. He was also senior editor for World Link, a monthly magazine on international politics based in Geneva, Switzerland.

David Weir, Media Consultant and New Media Fellow at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Weir is the former vice president of content for Wired Digital, executive vice president of KQED Inc., acting news director for KQED-FM. He previously was an editor of Rolling Stone, California, and Mother Jones, an editorial writer for the San Francisco Examiner, and co-founder and executive director of the Center for Investigative Reporting.

Clair Whitmer, Features Editor, CNET.COM. Whitmer joined CNET two years ago as news editor. After working on the launch of the satellite site NEWS.COM and writing the CNET editorial ethics policy, she returned to the CNET mothership as features editor. She has worked in technology journalism for 11 years, reporting and editing for InfoWorld, the IDG News Service, and MacWEEK and freelancing for many other leading technology publications.

G. Pascal Zachary, Senior Writer, The Wall Street Journal. Zachary writes about world affairs, economics, social issues and technology and is the author of "Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century" and “Showstopper!,” on innovation at Microsoft.