Speakers

Craig Aaron leads all Free Press program, advocacy and public education efforts. He works in the Washington office and speaks regularly on media, Internet and journalism issues. His commentaries have been published in the Guardian and the Huffington Post, and he blogs at both SavetheInternet.com and StopBigMedia.com.

Craig is a frequent guest on talk radio shows across the country and is quoted often in the national and local press. Before joining Free Press, he was an investigative reporter for Public Citizen’s Congress Watch, where he helped create and launch WhiteHouseForSale.org. Craig was also managing editor of In These Times magazine. He edited the books Appeal to Reason: 25 Years In These Times and Changing Media: Public Interest Policies for the Digital Age.

Joaquin Alvarado is senior vice president for Digital Innovation for American Public Media and Minnesota Public Radio (APM|MPR). He was formerly senior vice president for Diversity and Innovation at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), where he led successful initiatives in broadening the reach and diversity within public media. Prior to joining CPB, Alvarado was the founding director of the Institute for Next Generation Internet (INGI), which launched in 2005 from San Francisco State University. During his time leading INGI, the group developed the Digital Media Advisory Council and Digital Sister Cities initiatives, enabling communities across the globe to connect and further advance digital growth, diversity and economic development.

Joshua Breitbart is Senior Field Analyst for the Open Technology Initiative of New America Foundation, Joshua learns how people adopt new technologies and participate in discussions of telecommunications policy. He directs this knowledge into the Initiative's efforts to strengthen broadband deployment, adoption and utilization. Prior to joining New America, Josh was the Policy Director for People's Production House, which provides media education in New York and Washington, DC. He was formerly the Communications Director for Media Tank in Philadelphia, PA, and, from 2002-2007, was an organizer of the Allied Media Conference, based in Detroit, MI. He has extensive experience in participatory media, serving as Consulting Editor for Clamor Magazine from 2002-2005 and co-founding Brooklyn's Rooftop Films in 1998.

Farai Chideya has combined media, technology and social justice during her 20-year career as an award-winning author and journalist. She is a contributor to the nationally syndicated public radio show, The Takeaway, as well as to other outlets, and she is a frequent lecturer and consultant on digital media strategy at corporations, universities and nonprofits. From 2006 to early 2009, she hosted NPR’s News and Notes, a daily national program about African-American and African diaspora issues. She and the teams she has worked with have won awards including a National Education Reporting Award, a North Star News Prize, and a special award from the National Gay and Lesbian Journalists Association for coverage of AIDS.

She has written three nonfiction books: Trust: Reaching the 100 Million Missing Voters; The Color of Our Future; and Don’t Believe the Hype: Fighting Cultural Misinformation About African Americans. She is also the author of the novel Kiss the Sky.

Jessica Clark directs the Center for Social Media’s Future of Public Media project, and is a Scholar in Residence at American University’s School of Communication. She is a Knight Media Policy Fellow at the New America Foundation, and is also the co-author of Beyond the Echo Chamber: Reshaping Politics Through Networked Progressive Media, (The New Press, 2010).

Mignon L. Clyburn was nominated as a member of the Federal Communications Commission on June 25, 2009, and sworn in on August 3, 2009. Commissioner Clyburn has a long history of public service and dedication to the public interest. Prior to her appointment to the FCC, Ms. Clyburn served for 11 years on South Carolina’s Public Service Commission (PSC) as the representative for the state’s sixth district.

During her tenure at the PSC, Commissioner Clyburn participated in numerous national and regional state-based utility organizations. Most recently, she served as chair of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners’ (NARUC) Washington Action Committee and as a member of both the association’s Audit Committee and Utilities Market Access Partnership Board. Commissioner Clyburn is also a former chair of the Southeastern Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (SEARUC).

Commissioner Clyburn was elected to the South Carolina PSC following 14 years as the publisher and general manager of The Coastal Times, a Charleston-based weekly newspaper that focused primarily on issues affecting the African-American community.

Malkia A. Cyril is the Executive Director and founder of the Center for Media Justice. With more than 15 years’ experience as a community organizer, strategist, and communications expert, Malkia has worked with organizations such as the Applied Research Center, We Interrupt This Message and the Community Organizing Team, and has partnered closely with Consumer’s Union, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the Media and Democracy Coalition, Public Knowledge, the Media Access Project and Free Press. Malkia has led dozens of community campaigns and is the author of numerous essays and articles on media, marginalization and movement-building.

Malkia is the recipient of several awards including the Media Leader award from the Alliance for Community Media and the Emerging Leader award from the Media That Matters Film Festival.

Amalia Deloney is a Guatemala-born activist, cultural worker and former Senior Fellow with the Main Street Project. Amalia is a board member of Minneapolis organizations the Headwaters Foundation for Justice, and a longtime member of the Social Change Fund Grants Committee of the Headwaters Foundation. Nationally, Amalia is a board member of the Indigenous Women’s Network, Progressive Majority’s Racial Justice Advisory and the Media Democracy Coalition. She also serves as a field representative for the American Indian Treaty Council and has participated in UN meetings such as the Working Group on Indigenous Populations and the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. For the past two years, she has been on the steering committee for the Midwest Social Forum, and was a member of the Indigenous Advisory Committee for the 2006 US Social Forum.

Amalia has over 15 years of experience in community and cultural organizing and community education. Her specific focus includes human rights and anti-racism education, cultural rights, the production of knowledge and movement building.

Susan DeSanti is currentlythe Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal TradeCommission, a position she also held from 1995-2001 From 2001-2006 she was Deputy General Counsel for Policy Studies at the FTC. In those positions, she has organized hearings and written reports about diverse topics including health care competition, patent reform to better incorporate a competition perspective, and new competition issues in the 21st century. Her current projects include a study and workshop concerning changes in the news media in response to the Internet age. She was a primary author of the FTC/DOJ Competitor Collaboration Guidelines. She served as Senior Counsel to the Antitrust Modernization Commission and was a primary author of the AMC’s report. In addition to her time in government, she was a partner at Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal from 2007-2009, and previously was a partner at Hogan & Hartson.

U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1992. He is a senior member of the Appropriations, Commerce and Energy committees. He also serves as Chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee and the Democratic Policy Committee and the Senate's Subcommittee on Aviation Operations, Safety and Security.

Senator Dorgan was raised in the southwestern North Dakota town of Regent. At age 26, he became North Dakota's youngest-ever constitutional officer when he was appointed State Tax Commissioner. He was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1980, where served six terms.

Senator Dorgan is the author of the New York Times bestselling book Take This Job and Ship It: How Corporate Greed and Brain-Dead Politics Are Selling Out America and the newly released book Reckless: How Debt, Deregulation, and Dark Money Nearly Bankrupted America (And How We Can Fix It!).

David Fanning has been executive producer of FRONTLINE since its first season in 1983. In 2010, after 27 seasons and more than 530 films, FRONTLINE remains America's longest running investigative documentary series on television. Fanning — recently awarded the 2010 Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism — began his filmmaking career as a young journalist in South Africa. His first films, Amabandla AmaAfrika (1970) and The Church and Apartheid (1972), dealt with race and religion in his troubled homeland. He came to the United States in 1973 and began producing and directing local and national documentaries for KOCE, a public television station in California.

Under Fanning's stewardship, FRONTLINE has enthusiastically embraced the Internet. In 1995, FRONTLINE developed one of the first deep-content Web sites, putting interviews, documents and editorial materials online. There are now more than 85 hours of documentaries streamed on the series' Web site, one of the largest of its kind.

In 2001, Fanning's initiative to bring more foreign stories to American audiences led to the creation of FRONTLINE/World. Like its counterpart series, FRONTLINE/World is committed to its Web site (www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/), offering original Web-exclusive video and reporting by graduate journalism students and an international network of correspondents.

William D. Freedman is Associate Chief of the Media Bureau at the Federal Communications Commission. Most recently he has been an integral part of the team working on the agency’s Future of Media & Information Needs of Communities in a Digital Age initiative, a broad-based fact-finding project. This investigation will culminate in a set of recommendations designed to update our country's media policies and laws to ensure that all Americans receive the information, educational content, and news they seek. Before coming to the Commission, Mr. Freedman was a partner at Morrison & Foerster, LLP, practicing in the area of telecommunications. He has more than 25 years of experience in communications law, both as an attorney with the Commission and in private practice. Mr. Freedman, a former broadcaster, began his career at the FCC, where he served as an attorney with the Broadcast Bureau's Facilities Division and Hearing Division, and, subsequently, with the Office of General Counsel. During his over 20 years in private practice, he represented a broad range of broadcast, cable, wireless cable, wireless, common carrier, Internet and other communications clients. He also served for over six years as a member of the Cable Communications Advisory Committee of Montgomery County, Maryland. Mr. Freedman received a B.S. in Business Administration from Boston University and a J.D. from the College of Law of the University of Cincinnati.

Garlin Gilchrist II is the Director of New Media at the Center for Community Change, a national nonprofit dedicated to providing technical assistance and support to community-based organizations in disadvantaged communities throughout the U.S. He joined the Center in 2009.

Garlin's passion for advocacy, technology and policy guide his actions as a professional, an organizer and a public servant. Connecting new media and grassroots organizing is the cornerstone of Mr. Gilchrist's work.

During the 2008 presidential election season, Gilchrist served as the Social Media Manager for the Barack Obama campaign in Washington. In 2005 he co-founded and contributes to The SuperSpade: Black Thought at the Highest Level, one of the nation's leading Black political blogs. Mr. Gilchrist co-founded blacknetaction, a strategic collective of Black bloggers and online activists who coordinate online campaigns across the country. As a member of the New Organizing Institute's Trainers & Speakers Bureau, Gilchrist has taught activists, candidates and campaign staffers across the country how to best utilize new media in their work. Garlin is also a Fellow and Senior Policy Analyst for Technology with the Northwest Progressive Institute, a netroots-powered strategy center working to advance the common good through ideas and action.

Throughout her career, Jehmu Greene has skillfully worked with the media to build powerful social justice movements. Greene is president of Women’s Media Center, a non-profit organization devoted to making women visible and powerful in the media. Through advocacy campaigns, media and leadership training, and original content, Women’s Media Center amplifies women’s voices and changes the national conversation.

A frequent commentator on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News, Greene previously headed Rock the Vote, the largest youth voter registration group in the country. Under Greene’s leadership, Rock the Vote’s membership grew from 1,500 to more than one million. A native of Austin, Greene got her start in Texas politics, including an early stint with Governor Ann Richards’ campaign in 1994. Greene later played key roles at both the Center for Policy Alternatives and the Democratic National Committee. She was an adviser and national surrogate for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, and has worked on more than 20 political campaigns at local, state and national levels. The recipient of numerous awards from organizations including Essence Magazine, the National Conference for Community and Justice, the National Council of Research on Women and others, Greene serves on the Board of Directors of Green Media Toolshed.

Alberto Ibargüen is president and CEO of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Ibargüen is the former publisher of The Miami Herald and of El Nuevo Herald. He studied at Wesleyan University and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He practiced law in Hartford, Conn., until he joined The Hartford Courant, and then Newsday in New York before moving to Miami. Ibargüen is chairman of the board of the Newseum in Washington, D.C., a museum dedicated to free speech and a free press. He is a member of the boards of PepsiCo, AMR Corp., ProPublica and the Council on Foreign Relations. He has also served as board chair of PBS.

Maxie C. Jackson III serves as President & Chief Executive Officer for the National Federation of Community Broadcasters (NFCB).

Previously Jackson was Senior Director Program Development at New York Public Radio (WNYC) involved in strategic planning for national and local programming, outreach and audience development efforts and new media and marketing initiatives. He was intimately involved in the launch of national morning news program “The Takeaway,” and in developing community engagement strategies and a new evening drive program for WNYC.

Throughout his public radio career, Jackson has served on national (CPB, PRX, NPR, BBC and PRI) committees impacting public radio funding, technology, recruitment and programming. Currently, he is a member of the Development Exchange, Inc. Board of Directors, Association of Independents in Radio's Maker’s Quest 2.0 Talent Committee and Public Radio International’s Program Director Advisory Group. He also served on the executive boards of Eastern Region Public Media and the African American Public Radio Consortium.

Ellen S. Miller is the co-founder and executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington-based, non-partisan non-profit dedicated to using the power of the Internet to catalyze greater government openness and transparency. She is the founder of two other prominent Washington-based organizations in the field of money and politics — the Center for Responsive Politics and Public Campaign — and a nationally recognized expert on transparency and the influence of money in politics. Her experience as a Washington advocate for more than 35 years spans the worlds of non-profit advocacy, grassroots activism and journalism.

Andrew Noyes joined Facebook in 2009 after covering Capitol Hill, the White House, federal agencies, nonprofits, and think tanks as a member of the Washington press corps. In his current role, he nurtures relationships with policymakers, the press and the public and explains how the social networking giant helps its more than 400 million users share in a more trusted environment; helps makes the world more connected; and drives economic growth.

His areas of focus include expanding digital privacy protection through user control of data; enhancing cybersecurity and online safety; and protecting free speech.
 Previously, Andrew wrote for Congress Daily, Technology Daily, Communications Daily and Washington Internet Daily, where he specialized in intellectual property; Internet governance; antitrust and competition; and privacy and data security. He also launched and authored “Tech Daily Dose,” a popular blog on NationalJournal.com, and was a contributor to National Journal and Government Executive magazines.

Over the course of more than a decade, Andrew also wrote news, business, and human-interest stories for a range of other publications including Washington, Capitol File, DC Magazine, the Baltimore Sun, The Advocate and more. Andrew has also served on the adjunct faculty at American University and has provided commentary for MSNBC, CBS, C-SPAN, National Public Radio, Federal News Radio and other media outlets.

Misty Perez Truedson conducts strategic communications, offline and online organizing and outreach activities to advance Free Press’ legislative and movement building initiatives. She works with community-based organizations, public interest groups, academics and other allies to encourage participation in Free Press campaigns and events, with a particular focus on the SaveTheInternet.com campaign. Before joining Free Press, Misty was the statewide grassroots organizing coordinator for Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts.

James Rucker is co-founder of ColorOfChange.org and serves as its executive director. ColorOfChange.org exists to strengthen Black America's political voice. Our members are united behind a simple, powerful pledge: We will do all we can to make sure all Americans are represented, served and protected — regardless of race or class. James previously served as director of grassroots mobilization for MoveOn.org Political Action and Moveon.org Civic Action, developing and executing fundraising, technology and campaign strategies. Prior to joining MoveOn, James worked in the software industry in San Francisco and has provided coaching and technology consulting for other startup ventures.

Josh Silver oversees all Free Press programs, campaigns, fundraising and special projects. Josh, who co-founded Free Press in 2002 to engage the American public in media policy, speaks and publishes widely on media and technology issues. Josh was previously campaign manager for the successful Clean Elections in Arizona ballot initiative; director of development for the cultural arm of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.; and director of an international youth exchange program. Josh has been profiled in the Wall Street Journal and featured in outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Newsweek, Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, Salon, C-SPAN and NPR. He co-authored a chapter of the book Changing Media: Public Interest Policies for the Digital Age.

Josh Stearns conducts strategic communications, organizing and online outreach activities to advance Free Press initiatives. He works with community-based organizations, public interest groups, academics and other allies to encourage participation in Free Press campaigns and events. Prior to joining Free Press, Josh provided communications consulting to a range of nonprofit organizations, and was a policy and communications associate for National Campus Compact.

John Tate is director of policy and strategy at the BBC. His team's policy work supports the BBC's main regulatory relationships, including with the BBC Trust and Ofcom, while its strategy work generates analysis and insight on BBC activities.

Before joining the BBC, John was a management consultant with McKinsey & Company and subsequently with PA Consulting Group, where he specialized in strategy development and implementation. John joined McKinsey from his first job after leaving university, as head of research for the European Foundation.

Between McKinsey and PA, John worked in, and went on to run, the Opposition Policy Unit, working with the Shadow Cabinet and writing various published reports including The Children Left Behind, No Child Left Behind, Unskilled Labour and The Drivers of Regulation series. John also edited the 2005 book What's Right Now, with contributions from leading MPs and commentators.

Joe Torres works closely with the policy and research staff to create Free Press' legislative agenda, lobby in Washington, D.C., and in the states, and build new coalitions that broaden the base of the media reform movement. Before joining Free Press, Joe worked as deputy director of communications and media policy at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and was a journalist for eight years.

S. Derek Turner oversees research and analysis projects, focusing on the implications of media policymaking decisions on media reform goals. Before becoming research director, Derek was a research fellow on our staff and authored articles in publications such as Business Week and Salon.com. Derek holds a master's degree in public policy from the Goldman School at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was awarded the 2006 Smolensky prize for Outstanding Advanced Policy Analysis.

Jose Antonio Vargas is the technology and innovations editor at the Huffington Post, where he oversees the site’s technology and college sections. Previously, he covered tech and video game culture, HIV/AIDS, and the 2008 presidential campaign for the Washington Post, and won a Pulitzer Prize as part of the team that covered the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech. His 2006 series on HIV/AIDS in Washington, D.C., inspired a feature-length documentary — The Other City — which he wrote and co-produced. It will have its premiere at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival.

The news media's evolution, and the breakdown of barriers between print and broadcast journalism, have guided Vargas’ 12-year reporting career. He's written for daily newspapers (Philadelphia Daily News, San Francisco Chronicle) and national magazines (New York, Rolling Stone) and has appeared on CNN, ABC News and PBS NewsHour.

Policy Counsel Coriell Wright advises Free Press on legal matters related to our policy, research and campaign work; helps to craft our regulatory agenda; and represents Free Press on our issues before the FCC and Congress. Prior to joining Free Press, Corie served as senior counsel and adjunct clinical professor at the Georgetown University Institute for Public Representation in Washington. She earned her bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Michigan and holds law degrees from the American University Washington College of Law and the Georgetown University Law Center.

Deanna Zandt is a media technologist and the author of Share This! How You Will Change the World with Social Networking (forthcoming: Berrett-Koehler, June 2010). Zandt specializes in social media, and is a leading expert in women and technology. She works with groups to create and implement effective Web strategies toward organizational goals of civic engagement and empowerment, and uses her background in linguistics, advertising, telecommunications and finance to complement her technical expertise. She also serves as a technology adviser to a number of organizations, including Feministing, The Girls & Boys Projects and Women Action & The Media. In addition to her technology work, Deanna writes and illustrates graphic stories and comics.