Super Sessions

This year SPJ is offering several large group gatherings on important topics to the journalism community. These sessions will be the only events happening at the convention in their time slot. There will be nothing running concurrently to them.



Friday, Sept. 5, 9:45 - 10:30 a.m.
Super Session: An Interview with Julia Wallace
Description: A wide-ranging conversation with Julia Wallace, editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and ajc.com. Wallace is one of the top editors in the nation, and is known for her emphasis on innovation, newsroom collaboration, training and initiatives in multimedia. What are the difficulties top editors face in leading newsrooms through challenging times as audiences shift, new business models are being sought and journalism and the job of journalists change?

Wallace was named Editor of the Year by E and P Magazine in 2005. She was named the first female editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2002, the newsroom where she started her career as an intern 25 years ago.
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About Julia Wallace
Julia Wallace is the editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and ajc.com, directing a team of more than 400 talented and creative journalists.

She was named editor in July of 2002, after serving as managing editor for 18 months. During her tenure, ajc.com has grown into one of the most popular newspaper websites in the country, logging more than a billion page views in 2007. She has focused on improving the content of the newspaper — focusing on unique local content, including watchdog reporting and great storytelling.

She was named editor of the year by Editor & Publisher magazine in 2004. The paper was awarded Pulitzer Prizes in 2006 and 2007.

Julia is originally from Rock Island, IL, and graduated from Northwestern University. In 1977, she was an intern in the features section of the Atlanta Journal. She began her career in Norfolk, VA at the Ledger-Star and then the Dallas Times-Herald.

In 1982, she joined USA Today as a reporter and worked her way up to managing editor/special projects. During that time, she worked in news, sports and special projects. She joined the Chicago Sun-Times in 1992 as managing editor. She left in 1996 and joined the Salem (OR) Statesman Journal as executive editor. In 1998, she became managing editor at the Arizona Republic and served two years before moving to Atlanta.

She is a member of the board of directors of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and is chairman of the national advisory board for the Poynter Institute.



Friday, Sept. 5, 3:30 - 4:15 p.m.
Super Session: Martin Fletcher
Description: Martin Fletcher will talk about his thirty-five years as a foreign correspondent: the changes he’s seen in the job, from the days when all journalists needed was a pen and a camera to today, when they are often targets and a flak jacket and hostile-environment training are mandatory. Fletcher has covered the world, but his main interest has been the Middle East, and in particular the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. He’ll talk about his experience with the birth of modern Islamic terrorism in Afghanistan, when he walked across the Hindu Kush with the Mujahideen fighting the Soviets, to America’s fight against those same groups today.
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About Martin Fletcher
Martin Fletcher, NBC News' Tel Aviv bureau chief and correspondent, has covered every event of consequence in the unpredictable Middle East region for thirty-five years. He began his current Tel Aviv assignment in 1982 and took on the additional role of bureau chief in November 1990. He joined NBC News as a cameraman in August 1977, and has also been based in Johannesburg, Paris and Frankfurt.

From his base in Tel Aviv, Fletcher has covered a full spectrum of breaking news developments throughout the Middle East and around the world. In 2003 he won the prestigious Alfred I. du Pont award for his reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which also won him his fourth Emmy and the Overseas Press Club award. He has also reported on the war on terror in Afghanistan, the conflict in Kosovo and, he reported from Berlin when the walls came down and from China in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square massacre. When NATO and American troops were hunting for General Aidid, the Somali warlord responsible for killing 18 American soldiers in Somalia, Fletcher was the only person to find and interview him for NBC Nightly News. He also became the first correspondent to enter Cambodia with the Khmer Rouge guerrillas.

Fletcher has received numerous awards. He received his first Emmy in 1998 for his reporting on the Palestinian Intifada, the second in 1994 for his coverage of Rwanda and the third in 1999 for his Kosovo coverage, his fourth for the second Palestinian Intifada and his fifth for Israel’s war with Hizbullah in 2006. He won the Citation for Excellence from the Overseas Press Club of America in 1994 for his coverage in Bosnia, again in 1988 for his coverage of the first Palestinian uprising and again in 2001 for the second uprising. He was also named Cameraman of the Year by the British Royal Society of Television for his film story about an automobile convoy caught in a minefield, which resulted in the death of the crew's soundman.

Fletcher is the author of “Breaking News,” published in March 2008, and is currently working on his next book, about Israel, whose working title is “The Holy Coast,” with a publication date of 2010.



Saturday, Sept. 6, 9:45 - 10:45 a.m.
Super Session: Richard Boehne
Description: We are at a tipping point in our industry regarding jobs, and in five years there will be big losers and big winners, properties gone or dwindling with others thriving, leaving a landscape we may not recognize today. Join Richard Boehne, president & CEO, E.W. Scripps Co. and a former reporter who covered the media industry, to hear his thoughts about the future of journalism, and why “the wonderful change and chaos and lack of clarity in local media suggests that there's opportunity."
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About Richard Boehne
Rich Boehne, 52, is president and chief executive officer of The E. W. Scripps Company.

Rich oversees all of the Scripps operating divisions and administrative functions, and serves as a director of the company. Prior his appointment to president and chief executive officer, he served as its executive vice president and chief operating officer.

Rich joined the corporate staff in 1988, just prior to the parent company’s initial public offering.

Before moving to Scripps headquarters, he was a business reporter and editor at The Cincinnati Post, a Scripps newspaper, where he spent four years covering Wall Street, the national economy, and developments in the media industry.

He began his media career as a part-time reporter for The Cincinnati Enquirer. He later graduated from college and joined a growing chain of community newspapers. He progressed through that company as the owner, Suburban Communications, purchased and consolidated a number of family-owned publications in the Midwest. It was there that Rich first developed a bipolar love of the business, with equal desire to excel on both the content and business sides of the media industry.

The E. W. Scripps Company was preparing for its coming out party on Wall Street when Rich joined the corporate staff in early 1988 as manager of investor relations, a brand-new function in the 110-year-old enterprise. Scripps went public that summer (at $16) and Rich was charged with building a base of public shareholders who would support the company's long-term mission and be good partners for the Scripps family.

Several years later, Rich became director of all of the company's communication efforts. In addition to investor relations and media relations, he took on responsibility for employee communications and the Scripps National Spelling Bee. He also joined the company's long-range strategic planning and development group, and in May 1995 became a vice president of the corporation.

In 1998, Rich co-founded the Scripps Leadership Institute, a bi-annual program that identifies and provides training for up-and-coming senior-level managers.

He was elected executive vice president in February 1999 and named to chief operating officer in April 2006.

Rich received a bachelor's degree in journalism from Northern Kentucky University in 1981. In 1996, he received the university's annual Professional Achievement Award, and in 2001 was named the university's Outstanding Alumnus.

He and his wife, Lisa Graybeal Boehne, a former newspaper reporter and editor, live in Newport, Ky. They have two sons: Luke, a sophomore at Vanderbilt University in Nashville; and Jake, a high school junior.

Rich and Lisa were co-chairs of the alumni portion of Northern Kentucky University's first major capital campaign. Rich continues as chairman of the Northern Kentucky University Foundation’s major gifts committee.

He also serves on the board of Cincinnati’s Freestore Foodbank and chairs the board’s fundraising/development committee. He is a member of Cincinnati' Commonwealth Club and also serves on the board of Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber.



Saturday, Sept. 6, 2 - 2:45 p.m.
Super Session: Charlayne Hunter-Gault
Description: All her life, Charlayne Hunter-Gault has chartered difficult territory and emerged successful — as a woman, as an African-American and as a journalist; she has become a significant role model. As journalists throughout the country struggle with trying to reinvent themselves and their craft, what advice would she give to those who want to keep fighting the good fight?
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About Charlayne Hunter-Gault
Charlayne Hunter-Gault is currently working as a foreign correspondent for National Public Radio (NPR). She recently left her post as CNN's Johannesburg bureau chief and correspondent, which she had held since 1999, to pursue independent projects.

Hunter-Gault was the chief national correspondent for “The Newshour with Jim Lehrer” on PBS from 1983 to 1997. During her time there, she won two Emmys and a Peabody for excellence in broadcast journalism for her work on the series “Apartheid's People.” She has also received the 1986 Journalist of the Year Award from the National Association of Black Journalists.

Hunter-Gault joined the New York Times in the late 1960s as a metropolitan reporter specializing in coverage of the urban African-American community. She won several awards during her ten years there, including the National Urban Coalition Award for Distinguished Urban Reporting and The New York Times ' Publisher's Award. She has also been published in The New York Times Magazine, Saturday Review, The New York Times Book Review, Essence and Vogue.

Hunter-Gault was born in Due West, S.C., and made civil rights history as the first African-American woman to enter the University of Georgia, where she received a B.A. in journalism in 1962. Her book, “In My Place,” a memoir about her experiences at the University of Georgia, was published in 1992.



Questions about the SPJ National Convention?
Call 317/927-8000 or send an e-mail to convention@spj.org.

2008 SPJ Convention & Journalism Conference
September 4-7, 2008
Atlanta

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