How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age? bios Penelope Abernathy Joaquin Alvarado Penelope Abernathy is Knight Chair in Journalism Joaquin Alvarado is Senior Vice President, Digital and Digital Media Economics at the University Innovation at American Public Media. Alvarado of North Carolina School of Journalism and leads strategic development of APM’s Public Mass Communication. Abernathy, a journalism Insight initiatives, as well as developing models for professional with more than 30 years experience deepening audience engagement, widening digital as a reporter, editor and media executive, became reach and increasing digital revenue growth across all the Knight Chair in Journalism and Digital Media operating divisions. Economics at the school July 1, 2008. Abernathy, a Laurinburg, N.C., native and former executive Alvarado comes to APM/MPR from the Corporation at the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, for Public Broadcasting, where he led successful specializes in preserving quality journalism by initiatives in broadening the reach and diversity helping the news business succeed economically in within public media as Senior Vice President for the digital media environment. Before joining the Diversity and Innovation. Prior to joining the school, she was vice president and executive director CPB, Alvarado spearheaded many key projects and of industry programs at the Paley Center for Media companies furthering new frameworks for public in New York City. As an executive, Abernathy media, education and community leadership in the launched new enterprises and helped increase Internet age. In 2008, he initiated CoCo Studios, revenue at some of the nation’s most prominent news promoting media collaboration and information organizations and publishing companies, including sharing for fiber and mobile networks. Alvarado the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the was the founding director of the Institute for Next Harvard Business Review. At the Wall Street Journal, Generation Internet, which launched in 2005 from she oversaw the international division and reversed San Francisco State University. During his time its declining revenue to profitability in less than a leading INGI, the group developed the Digital year. Media Advisory Council and Digital Sister Cities initiatives, enabling communities across the globe to Before moving to the business side of the industry, connect and further advance digital growth, diversity Abernathy served as a newspaper reporter or and economic development. In 2004, Alvarado editor at several daily newspapers, including the began the National Public Lightpath, advocating Charlotte Observer, the Greensboro News & Record, high-speed fiber optic network as the next generation the Dallas Times-Herald, the Wichita Eagle-Beacon, of the internet with public media, education and the Fayetteville Times and the Laurinburg Exchange. community leadership. Alvarado holds a BA in Abernathy was inducted to the N.C. Journalism Chicano Studies from U.C. Berkeley and an M.F.A. Hall of Fame in 1998 and delivered the Roy H. Park from the UCLA School of Film, Television, and Distinguished Lecture at the school in April 2005. Digital Media and has served on the boards of the California Council for the Humanities, TechSoup North American Agricultural Journalists for his Global and Latino Public Broadcasting. work in Ethiopia on famine and U.S. food aid. He previously worked in the Knight-Ridder Washington Susan Athey bureau, where he won the NAAJ’s top writing award Susan Athey is a Professor of Economics at Harvard in 2005. He began his career with the Saint Paul University. She received her Bachelor of Science (Minn.) Pioneer Press and also reported for the Sioux degree from Duke University and her PhD in Falls (S.D.) Argus Leader and Wichita (Kan.) Eagle. Economics from Stanford University’s Graduate He holds a bachelor’s degree from Concordia College School of Business. She joined the Harvard faculty in Moorhead, Minn., and a master’s degree from the in 2006, after teaching at MIT for six years and University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. at Stanford for five. Her current research focuses on auction theory, the design of auction-based Steve Coll markets, and the statistical analysis of auction data. Steve Coll is President of New America Foundation, She is an expert in several fields of economics — and a contributor to The New Yorker magazine. He including industrial organization, econometrics, and regularly maintains a blog on The New Yorker website microeconomic theory — and has used game theory entitled Think Tank, where he writes primarily on to examine firm strategy when firms have private issues of foreign and public policy, and American information. She advises governments and businesses national security. Previously he spent 20 years as on the design of auction-based marketplaces, a foreign correspondent and senior editor at The and currently serves as a consultant to Microsoft Washington Post, serving as the paper’s managing Corporation in the role of Chief Economist, editor from 1998 to 2004. He is the author of six focusing on online advertising markets. In 2007, books including The Deal of the Century: The Athey became the first female recipient of the Break Up of AT&T (1986); The Taking of Getty American Economic Association’s prestigious John Oil (1987); Eagle on the Street, based on the Bates Clark Medal, awarded every other year to the Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the SEC’s battle most accomplished American economist under the with Wall Street (with David A. Vise, 1991); On age of 40. She is a fellow of the American Academy the Grand Trunk Road: A Journey Into South of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society, Asia (1994), Ghost Wars: The Secret History of and she serves as an elected member of the Council the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, From the of the Econometric Society and the Executive Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (2004); Committee of the American Economics Association. and The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century (2008). Alan Bjerga Coll’s professional awards include two Pulitzer Prizes. Alan Bjerga is the President of the National Press He won the first of these, for explanatory journalism, Club. Bjerga, who grew up on a farm in northern in 1990, for his series, with David A. Vise, about Minnesota, covers agricultural policy for Bloomberg the SEC. His second was awarded in 2005, for his News. In 2009 he won awards from the Overseas book, Ghost Wars, which also won the Council Press Club, the New York Press Club, the Society on Foreign Relations’ Arthur Ross award; the of American Business Editors and Writers and the 2 How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age? Overseas Press Club award and the Lionel Gelber Charles Firestone Prize for the best book published on international Charles M. Firestone is executive director of the affairs during 2004. Other awards include the 1992 Aspen Institute Communications and Society Livingston Award for outstanding foreign reporting; Program. Since his appointment in December the 2000 Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Award for 1989, this Program has focused on the implications his coverage of the civil war in Sierra Leone; and a of communications and information technologies second Overseas Press Club Award for international for leadership, the impact of new technologies magazine writing. Coll graduated Phi Beta Kappa, on democratic and social institutions, and the Cum Laude, from Occidental College in 1980 with development of new communications policy models a degree in English and history. and options for the public interest. He was also the Institute’s executive vice president for policy Rick Edmonds programs and international activities from 1997- Rick Edmonds is media business analyst for the 2000. Poynter Institute where he has done research and writing for the last ten years. His commentary on the Prior to his positions with the Aspen Institute, industry appears in The Biz Blog on Poynter Online. Firestone was director of the Communications He is the co-author of the newspaper chapter in Law Program at the University of California at all six editions of the Project for Excellence in Los Angeles and an adjunct professor of law at the Journalism’s State of the News Media report. UCLA Law School. He was also the first president He is frequently quoted in articles on newspaper of the Los Angeles Board of Telecommunications economic issues and new business models and has Commissioners, which advises the Mayor and City provided comment in the New York Times and Council on all regulatory matters relating to the on numerous NPR reports. He was a co-author cable and telecommunications fields. Firestone’s of Poynter’s EYETRACK 2007 book and has career includes positions as an attorney at the Federal contributed to Best Newspaper Writing anthologies. Communications Commission, as director of At Poynter he has helped coordinate conferences on litigation for a Washington DC public interest law emerging non-profit news alternatives and the future firm, and as a communications and entertainment of advertising. attorney in Los Angeles. He has argued several landmark communications cases before the United Edmonds spent 11 years with the St. Petersburg States Supreme Court and other federal appellate Times organization in various editor and publisher courts. Firestone is the editor or co-author of seven roles, including two years as managing editor of the books, including Digital Broadcasting and the paper’s Tampa edition. Earlier in his career he was Public Interest (The Aspen Institute, 1998) and James Reston’s assistant at the New York Times and a Television and Elections (The Aspen Institute, reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer, where he was 1992), and has written numerous articles on a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in national reporting communications law and policy. He holds degrees in 1982. He earned a BA from Harvard College in from Amherst College and Duke University Law 1969.