The following are some of the people who will be participating in the Public Conversation on Web Journalism conference at the University of Tennessee on April 3-4, 2008. You can find a schedule of events for that conference here.

Channing Dawson

Channing Dawson is Senior Vice President of New Ventures for Scripps Networks. He is instrumental in Scripps Network's development of new media applications (including broadband, video-on-demand and interactive television), strategic partnerships and other ventures. Prior to this position, he was Vice President of New Media for Home & Garden Television (HGTV). In that position, he was responsible for developing and operating ancillary business and services tied to the network, as well as developing a line of online extensions of HGTV. Dawson has extensive experience in both the media business and the home category. Prior to joining HGTV, he served as director of Communications for The New York Times Company's (now Gruner + Jahr's) American HomeStyle Group, overseeing the marketing of American Homestyle magazine and its family of ancillary publications. He also served as editorial director for HOME Magazine, editor of The Practical Homeowner, and assistant editor of Sunset Magazine. He has also developed a half-dozen custom publications.

Randy Neal

Randy Neal is a small business owner and software entrepreneur with over 25 years experience in software and technology for the financial services industry. In his spare time he operates KnoxViews.com, a widely read East Tennessee community blog. More recently he launched BlountViews.com, a hyper-local community blog that covers local government and politics in Blount County, Tennessee, and TennViews.com, a state-wide group blog covering liberal/progressive politics in Tennessee. He also helped launch RoaneViews.com, a hyper-local community blog covering public affairs in Roane County, Tennessee. Randy also writes for Facing South, the online blog publication of the Institute for Southern Studies, a progressive think tank in Durham, NC.

A native of South Knoxville, Randy moved to Florida for many years where he worked as a software company executive. After starting their own company, Randy and his wife Michele moved back to East Tennessee where they experienced a bit of "reverse culture shock." This led to the creation of the infamous "South Knox Bubba" blog in 2002, where frustrations with local media, government, and so-called conservative "good old boy politics" were aired.

During this time, Randy founded the "Rocky Top Brigade," a loosely disorganized bi-partisan coalition of Tennessee bloggers dedicated to the pursuit of "truth, justice, and a good single malt Scotch whisky for around $20." This endeavor was later resurrected by the Knoxville News Sentinel as the Knoxville Blog Network. After a brief hiatus in 2005, the South Knox Bubba blog was rebranded and relaunched as the more respectable KnoxViews.com, a virtual town hall for discussing East Tennessee politics and culture from a liberal/progressive point of view. Founded in January of 2006 with the idea of promoting citizen journalism and civil debate of public affairs, KnoxViews.com has attracted authors and participants from a variety of backgrounds including public officials, the media, and experts on a wide range of topics, making for lively discussion of government, politics, life and culture from an East Tennessee perspective.
 

George Daniels

George L. Daniels is an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Alabama. After spending eight years in the television newsroom working as a producer at stations in Richmond, Virginia; Cincinnati, Ohio; and Atlanta, Georgia, Daniels moved from the newsroom to the classroom.  His research on diversity issues in the media workplace and change in the television newsroom has appeared in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Journalism & Mass Communication Educator and The Journal of Radio Studies. Today he enjoys talking about convergence and multimedia journalism as he reflects on his own career as not only a broadcast journalist, but one who worked briefly as a freelance newspaper writer and updated a local TV News Web site.  He is a cum laude graduate of Howard University and holds graduate degrees from Grady College of Journalism & Mass Communication at The University of Georgia.

Bob Benz

Bob Benz, 45, is a partner with Maroon Ventures, a professional services firm that connects emerging business opportunities with media companies to help them execute in local markets. Before joining Maroon Ventures, he served as vice president of interactive media for Scripps newspapers. He spent 10 years in newsrooms before helping to launch the Rocky Mountain News Online in 1995. It was all Internet from there. His team in Knoxville helped Scripps sites win numerous online awards, and he led Scripps' newspaper sites to profitability in 2002. Revenue and cash flow increased substantially in each subsequent year. He holds a BA from Edinboro University in Pennsylvania and an MA from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Katie Allison Granju

Katie Allison Granju is Online Producer at WBIR.com, home of the top-rated Gannett/NBC-TV affiliate in Knoxville, TN.  In the past three years, WBIR.com has won multiple Best of Gannett, AP and SPJ awards. Katie has also been nominated for a regional TV Emmy as producer for WBIR's "Our Stories" series. Prior to joining WBIR, Katie was an online producer with NYC-based Oxygen Media. She is a frequent contributor to a variety of online and print publications, including Salon.com, Babble.com, the New York Times, HGTV.com, Cooking Light, PARENTING, the Chicago Tribune, and more. She is the author of "Attachment Parenting" (Simon and Schuster) and a contributor to several literary anthologies. She maintains two blogs at www.katieallisongranju.com and www.knoxvilletalks.com

Steve Klein

Steve Klein As a college instructor and program coordinator, cross-platform media consultant and sports content specialist, Steve brings solid journalism credentials and values, the ability to work and communicate with people, and a vision for the industry to his professional and academic work. Steve has taught at the university level for 18 years, the past eight at George Mason University, where he coordinates the Electronic Journalism minor and oversees the Journalism concentration in the Department of Communication. Steve also gives online writing workshops for industry and government clients. He has been online sports editor of USA TODAY; sports editor of the Stamford (Conn.) Advocate, Cleveland Plain Dealer and Lansing State Journal; and was co-founder of SportsEditor.com, an online organization for sports media.

Ken Knight

Ken Knight is an online community producer at The Tampa Tribune. He is a former multimedia coordinator at The News Center, home of the Tribune, TBO.com and WFLA, News Channel 8. He has spent much of his professional career at the Tribune, where he has been a reporter, copy editor, page designer and editor. Ken earned a bachelor's degree in broadcast news at the University of Alabama, where he also completed course work toward a master's degree. An Alabama native, Ken also is the Region III director for the National Association of Black Journalists.

Jack Lail

Jack D. Lail is managing editor/multimedia for The Knoxville News-Sentinel.

He directs the News Sentinel's online content efforts, which include knoxnews.com and govolsxtra.com.

The sites have won numerous awards including in 2008, a New Frontier Award from the Inland Press Association and three Digital Edge (Edgie) awards from the Newspaper Association of America.

Lail has over 31 years of experience in the newspaper industry, has been at the News Sentinel for 24 years and has been involved in online news for 14 years.

He's still figuring out what he's doing.

Lauren Spuhler

Lauren Spuhler is an online producer for knoxnews.com, the Web site of the Knoxville News Sentinel.

In this role, she's been responsible for creating Web-only content, coordinating with the print side on Web components, updating the site with breaking news and assisting knoxnews.com customers.

She's been part of a team who has won numerous awards, including three Digital Edge Awards this year.

Spuhler has a Master's in multimedia journalism from Northwestern University and bachelor degrees from Syracuse University.

This spring, she's teaching Journalism and Electronic Media 222.

Knight Stivender

Knight Stivender is Director of Online Content for The Tennessean in Nashville. She oversees content for Tennessean.com and its sister sites, including TennesseeGreen.com, NashvilleShopping.com, TuneInMusicCity.com, MusicCityMoms.com, TennesseanTravel.com and NashvilleRage.com.

She began her journalism career as a reporter and editor for the University of Tennessee's Daily Beacon, which led to internships and, later, full-time jobs at The Tennessean. She has been a reporter, columnist, community news editor, section editor and digital editor.

She is married to Andy Fleenor, a math teacher and former Daily Beacon editor-in-chief. They have a daughter, Lily, who would be a fantastic journalist if there is indeed still journalism when she grows up. We have hope there will be, in a number of different forms.

Michelle Ferrier

Dr. Michelle Ferrier is a digital content architect and a scholar-practitioner of digital media. She divides her life between developing and researching online communities and knowledge management. She is a 20-year veteran of both print and online content development.

She manages editorial, technical, design and marketing functions for MyTopiaCafe.com and is a lifestyle columnist for the Daytona Beach News-Journal. She is a former research associate in the digital media department at the University of Central Florida where she led the development of a digital media core curriculum for central Florida community colleges with a consortium of faculty partners.

Michelle also works as a consultant on online learning and knowledge management initiatives with higher education and corporate entities.

She is interested in the intersection of journalism, technologies, communities, art and advocacy. A prototype of her dissertation research can be found at www.digitalstoryquilt.com.

Chip Scanlan

Christopher "Chip" Scanlan is senior faculty in writing, director of the National Writers Workshops and Journalism Advisor to News University at The Poynter Institute, a school for journalists in St. Petersburg, Fl. He produces "Chip on Your Shoulder," a Poynter blog devoted to writing advice, and teaches print reporting and writing, beat reporting, interviewing for print and radio, time management and productivity. Since 2006, he has added online and cross-platform reporting and writing to his teaching portfolio. As a consultant, he has led workshops around the United States and Europe; most recently, Chip focuses on teaching online writing at newspapers and Yahoo!.

Chip graduated with an English degree from Fairfield University and a M.S. from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. He served in the Peace Corps in West Africa. His journalism career began at a small daily paper in his native Connecticut and led to the Providence Journal, St. Petersburg Times and the Washington Bureau of Knight Ridder Newspapers. During his two decades as a reporter he won 16 regional and national awards, including the Barnet Nover Award for Congressional reporting and a Robert F. Kennedy Award for International Reporting for a series exposing hazardous exports from the U.S. to the developing world.

He joined Poynter in 1994 as director of writing programs. From 1994-2000, Scanlan edited the Best Newspaper Writing series and led the Institute's six-week reporting fellowship for college graduates. He co-edited "America's Best Newspaper Writing" (Bedford/St. Martins).

Since 2001, he has focused on distance learning, advising the NewsU staff and collaborating with them to create courses on leads, interviewing, revision and "Writers @ Work," a four-week course on the process approach to reporting and writing.

Chip maintains an active writing life. His articles, essays and fiction have appeared widely, included in The New York Times, National Public Radio, The American Scholar, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Mississippi Web Review, The Washington Post Magazine, Redbook and Salon.com. Two chapters from a memoir-in-progress about his three generations of flawed Irish-American fathers were finalists in the "Best American Essays" 2003 and 2004.

Chip's busy these days revising his intro to journalism textbook,  "Reporting and Writing: Basics for the 21st Century " for Oxford University Press.

Chip and his wife, Katharine Fair, have collaborated on two serial novels, "Mystery @ Elf Camp" and the "The Holly Wreath Man," both distributed by Universal Press Syndicate and published in more than 60 newspapers and web sites in the U.S., Canada and Australia. "The Holly Wreath Man" came out in hardback in 2005 and was optioned for television. The couple lives in St. Pete Beach, Fl. and are the proud parents of three daughters. Occasionally, Chip gets the remote.

Adam Bryant

Adam Bryant is May 2006 graduate of the University of Tennessee, where he earned a B.S. in journalism and electronic media, with a concentration in magazine journalism and an English minor. Upon graduating, he moved to New York to pursue a career in magazine publishing. After a short fact-checking internship at Popular Mechanics, Adam was hired as an assistant editor at Maxim Online, contributing to Maxim.com, Stuffmagazine.com and music Web site Blender.com while also writing/editing Maxim.com's entertainment reviews. He recently joined the staff at TV Guide Online, where he serves as an associate editor, contributing daily to the site's news blog and conducting feature interviews. While at UT, Adam was a founding editor of Scoop magazine, interned at the Knoxville News Sentinel, was awarded the Alex Haley/Playboy Interview scholarship in 2005 and was named the School of Journalism and Electronic Media's 2005-2006 Ernie Pyle Journalism Student of the Year. He and his wife Jennifer currently live in the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn. 

Harry Montevideo

Harry Montevideo is the publisher of The Red and Black in Athens, Ga. He graduated with a BS/BA degree in marketing from the University of Florida in 1978. After serving as the student accountant for the independent student newspaper, The Alligator. He continued a career in college newspapers after graduation, by serving as business manager and advertising director for the 28,000 circulation daily. He became The Red and Black student newspaper's third full-time manager in 1983. In August of 1993, he was named publisher of The Red and Black.

Approaching 25 years with The Red and Black, revenues have increased to more than $1.5 million/year, salaries to student staffers have tripled, and manual typewriters have made way to a state-of-the-art computerized desktop publishing system based on Adobe CS3 publishing software. The independent newspaper is also housed in a recently constructed, 10,000 sq. ft. building a short walk from campus.

Among other awards, the paper was consistently voted the best college newspaper in the state by the Georgia Press Association. In 1990, The Red and Black received its highest honor ever when the Society of Professional Journalists voted it the nation's "Best All Around Non-Daily Student Newspaper". In the fall of 1992 the paper moved back into the "big leagues" of college newspapers by once again publishing five days-a-week. The Red and Black has won the SPJ Region 3 Mark of Excellence award 8 of the last 10 years.

Montevideo has been an active member of College Media Advisers, College Newspaper Business and Advertising Managers (CNBAM) were he served as vice president and president for the national organization in 1982 and 1983 and is currently president-elect of the Western Association of University Publication Managers (WAUPM).

Jim Miller

Jim is a doctoral candidate in journalism at the University of Tennessee and just a few months away from finishing his dissertation on issues related to the college student press. Jim has been on academic leave from Harding University in Searcy, Ark., for three years, and he will return to the private liberal arts institution in fall 2008. Before beginning his pursuit of a doctorate, Jim had worked with student journalists for six years as student publications adviser and instructor of communication at Harding. The student newspaper and yearbook he advised each won national awards from the Associated Collegiate Press and the Columbia Scholastic Press Association. Jim continues to serve as a freelance writer and editor for professional publications in Arkansas and Tennessee.

Whitney Rhodes

Whitney Rhodes is a student at George Mason University. She served as online managing editor for Mason's traditional print publication, Broadside. This semester she broke apart from Broadside and started a new daily news/convergence website called Connect Mason (www.connect2mason.com). The site offers breaking news, multimedia packages and user-generated content for the Mason community. She will graduate this summer with a BA in communication, focus in journalism.

Lyn Lepre

Dr. Lyn Lepre is an associate professor at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY. She teaches courses in journalism, including news and magazine writing, editing, literary journalism, and magazine production. She currently is serving on a curriculum committee tasked with revamping the journalism major, which will have as a main focus online news.
 

Patrick Beeson

Patrick Beeson (patrickbeeson.com) is a project manager with The E. W. Scripps Company in Knoxville, TN. He's as comfortable debugging code as he is reporting, shooting a Webcast or blogging. Patrick began his career in journalism on the wrong foot by majoring in public relations at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC. Seeking to hone his writing ability, he earned his Master's from the University of Alabama with a focus in journalism. Only in bytes, not ink. He has worked for a variety of media including tuscaloosanews.com, equipmentworld.com, roanoke.com and the predecessor to TNJN.com, the award-winning datelinealabama.com.