Poynter Names Five New Members to National Advisory Board

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., Oct. 23, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Poynter, a global leader in journalism, is pleased to announce the addition of five new members to serve on its National Advisory Board (NAB). The new board members bring a breadth of expertise as media executives, digital journalists, academic leaders and award-winning reporters. They will help guide Poynter's strategic direction across all areas, including digital innovation, thought leadership and academic expansion efforts. Each of them will begin their two year term in January 2015.

"All five of these new board members are widely admired for their work, and they all bring reputations as innovators in journalism," said Poynter president Tim Franklin. "They'll be invaluable partners for Poynter as we transform the institute to make it even more relevant and useful for media executives, practitioners, educators and students. We'll benefit greatly from having their expertise and knowledge on the advisory board."

"These additions to our National Advisory Board represent Poynter's range of interests across the expanding world of journalism and news media," added Paul Tash, chairman of Poynter's board of trustees. "These new members will help us see more clearly how to help journalists and media leaders respond to the changes and opportunities before them. I am deeply grateful to all the National Advisory Board members for their insights and their commitment to Poynter."

The newly-named board members are:

• Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, senior editor for strategy, The New York Times
  
  Sulzberger is senior editor for strategy at The Times, where he leads a small newsroom team charged with identifying and responding to emerging trends and opportunities. This role emerged from his work leading the newsroom team that wrote the Innovation Report, which was widely praised for its examination of the challenges facing legacy media institutions adapting to the digital age. He previously was a metro editor and reporter and a national correspondent for The Times based out of Kansas City. Before that he was a reporter at The Oregonian and The Providence Journal.
  
  
• Lori Bergen, Ph.D., dean of the J. William and Mary Diederich College of Communication at Marquette University
  
  Bergen was named 2014 Journalism and Mass Communication Administrator of the Year by the Scripps Howard Foundation. She is president-elect of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication and will become president of the association in 2015. As dean, Bergen has spearheaded innovative academic initiatives at Marquette that include the O'Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism and the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service, projects focused on improving student learning through partnerships with professionals to create high impact journalism. She is co-author of Media Violence and Aggression: Science and Ideology, a book that details the impact of violence in the media on children.
  
  
• Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, managing editor of digital at The Washington Post
  
  Garcia-Ruiz is the chief strategist for digital execution at the Post and the newsroom's chief liaison with business operations for digital programs. He also worked as both metro and sports editor at the Post. Prior to his work there, as sports editor at the St. Paul Pioneer Press, he oversaw direction of the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation of academic fraud in the University of Minnesota's basketball program. After working in strategy development in the three areas of advertising, engineering and content creation, across desktop and mobile, Garcia-Ruiz's role as a driving force for innovation at the Post has helped position him to successfully meet the challenges and possibilities that lie ahead for the industry.
  
  
• Anders Gyllenhaal, vice president, news and Washington editor of The McClatchy Co.
  
  Before being appointed as vice president at McClatchy, Gyllenhaal was senior vice president and executive editor of the Miami Herald from 2007 to 2010. He has held leadership positions at two other McClatchy newsrooms, which included editor and senior vice president of the Minneapolis Star Tribune from 2002 to 2007 and executive editor at The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C. from 1997 to 2002. Gyllenhaal was also chairman of the Pulitzer Prize Board in 2009-10 and served on the Pulitzer Board as a member from 2001-2010.
  
  
• Alexandra Zayas, investigative reporter, The Tampa Bay Times
  
  Zayas has won several awards for her investigative reporting, including the 2013 Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting, the Livingston Award for Young Journalists and a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism. She was also a Pulitzer finalist for her story series "In God's Name," which exposed abusive conditions at Florida's unlicensed religious children's homes. Zayas joined the Times in 2005 and has taught classes at the Poynter Institute about finding and telling untold stories. She has also held editorial positions at The Miami Herald and The Star Tribune in Minneapolis.
  

About The Poynter Institute
The Poynter Institute for Media Studies is an international leader in journalism education, and a strategy center that stands for uncompromising excellence in journalism, media and 21st century public discourse. Poynter faculty teach seminars and workshops at the Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., and at conferences and organizational sites around the world. Its e-learning division, News University, www.newsu.org, offers the world's largest online journalism curriculum in 6 languages, with more than 400 interactive courses and 290,000 registered users in more than 200 countries. The Institute's website, www.poynter.org, produces 24-hour coverage of news about media, ethics, technology, the business of news and the trends that currently define and redefine journalism news reporting. The world's top journalists and media innovators come to Poynter to learn and teach new generations of reporters, storytellers, media inventors, designers, visual journalists, documentarians and broadcast producers, and to build public awareness about journalism, media, the First Amendment and protected discourse that serves democracy and the public good.

Contact
Kim Tobin
Marketing Communications Strategy Manager
The Poynter Institute
[email protected]
727-553-4707

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