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GAYLORD COLLEGEOF MASS COMMUNICATIONS

AND JOURNALISM, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA

spjREGION 88

3/28/15

BestPracticesWelcome to Norman and the beautiful Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Oklahoma. We are excited to sponsor the 2015 Society of Professional Journalists Region 8 conference and we’ve brought a stellar slate of speak-ers to share their wisdom with you. We’ll be highlighting some of the latest trends and issues. Enjoy and pour some great stuff into your head.

JACLYN COSGROVEPresident, Oklahoma Pro ChapterSociety of Professional Journalists

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KATHLEEN MCELROY is an assistant professor in the School of Media and Strategic Communications at Oklahoma State University, primarily teaching journal-

ism and sports report-ing. In December, she received her doctorate from the University of Texas, where she was a Harrington fel-low. Previously she was an editor at The New York Times for 20 years, working in

sports, news, dining and the web. She also worked at The National, Newsday and publications in Texas. She received a master of arts from New York University and a bachelor of arts from Texas A&M.

EVE BYRON joined the National Institute on Mon-ey in State Politics in January 2014 to help implement new communication and outreach activities, includ-ing traditional, social, and mixed media. She works with news organizations, nonprofits, and academics to inform them of the re-porting and research op-portunities provided by the Institute’s in-house staff and new website. She came to the Insti-tute after 30 years as an award-winning investi-gative reporter, honing her skills at newspapers in Colorado and Mon-tana. Byron’s three decades in the news business included a nine-month stint as the Mike Wallace In-vestigative Reporting Fellow with the University of Michigan’s Knight Wallace Fellows program.

PAUL FLETCHER has been publisher and edi-tor-in-chief at Virginia Lawyers Weekly in Richmond, Va., since 1989. He joined the newspaper the previous year as news editor, after practicing law in Southwest Virginia for three years. A graduate of the Washing-ton & Lee University law school, he earned his un-dergraduate degree at the College of William & Mary

and a master’s degree in English from Emo-ry University. Fletcher has been a member of SPJ since 1992 and serves on the SPJ Eth-ics Committee. He is the immediate past president of the Virgin-ia Pro chapter. He has won a number of state and national journal-

ism awards, including honors for editorial, feature and column writing.

JOE WERTZ is an environment and energy policy reporter for StateImpact Oklahoma. He reports regu-larly on energy and environment issues for NPR, has worked as a newspaper editor and reporter in Okla-homa, and is a board member and executive officer at Freedom of Information Oklaho-ma, a non-profit group that works to promote public access to gov-ernment records and meetings. He studied journalism at the University of Central Oklahoma.

KURT GWARTNEY started his radio career in 1977 as a high school junior in his hometown of Pryor. He returned to radio in 2005 after departing from fulltime

journalistic work to help start a small business and attend graduate school. He became the news di-rector at KGOU, the pub-lic radio station licensed to the University of Okla-homa, in 2008. He is the recipient of numerous awards for his reporting work and the former ed-

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8 to 9 a.m. CHECK INBegins at 8 a.m. Saturday. The college is located 395 W. Lindsey Street in Norman. LOBBY

9 a.m.Welcome To The Jungle: The Culture Of Newsroomsby Kathleen McElroy, assistant professor in the School of Media and Strategic Communications at Oklahoma State University and a former editor at The New York Times.ETHICS A ND E XCELLENCE IN JOUR NA LISM FOU NDATION AU DITOR IU M

10 a.m.10-11:30 Follow the MoneyHow journalists can explore campaign finances and write investigative pieces by Eve Byron of the National Institute on Money in State Politics. Drop-ins welcome.GAY LOR D H A LL 2020

itorial director for StateImpact Oklahoma, a collabora-tive public media reporting project. Gwartney is a for-mer board member of Public Radio News Directors, Inc

RACHEL HUBBARD oversees news and pro-gramming at KOSU, the public radio station li-censed to Oklahoma State University. She has worked as KOSU’s state capitol reporter and regularly reports Oklahoma stories for National Public Radio. She learned to be a good storyteller at her great-grandmother ’s kitchen table but also got a degree in agricultural communications from Oklahoma State University.

ALEX CAMERON came to NEWS 9 in 1995 as a general assignment reporter. In 1996, Cameron took on anchoring duties at the station, beginning with NEWS 9 This Morning, and then the weekend evening newscasts in 1998. In 1999,

Cameron began a nearly 10-year-long stint of co-anchoring the 4:00 news, and also reporting daily for NEWS 9 at 5, 6 and 10. In 2009, he started up an investi-gative reporting unit for Griffin Commu-nications, reporting on a variety of uses

of tax dollars. Cameron and his team have won numerous awards for their reporting, including 3 regional Emmys and the Society of Profession-al Journalists’ First Amendment Award. He was recently elected president of FOI Oklahoma, a 25-year-old nonprofit that promotes and educates about openness in government. He anchors News 9 at Noon, in addition to his investigative work. Cameron is originally from New Jersey. He has a

bachelor’s degree from Bucknell University and a masters in journalism from New York University.

Before joining Oklahoma Watch in 2012, DAVID FRITZE worked at The Arizona Republic for 20 years in various positions, including business, metro and na-tional editor, as well as a senior reporter. As a senior editor, he led a team of reporters who produced enter-prise and investigative stories on public money, K-12 and higher education, transportation, public health, immigration and criminal justice. Before joining The Republic, he was a reporter at the Dallas Times Herald and, pre-viously, a writer and editor at Oklahoma Monthly magazine. He grew up in Oklahoma City, received a bach-elor’s degree at the University of Oklaho-ma journalism school and worked for several Oklahoma newspapers. He spent a year in Ecuador on a Rotary Foundation journalism fellowship.

ARNOLD HAMILTON became editor of The Okla-homa Observer in September 2006. A 32-year vet-eran of daily newspapers, Hamilton is a former staff writer for the Dallas Morning News, the San Jose Mercury News, the Dallas Times Herald, the Tul-sa Tribune and the Oklahoma Journal. He earned a bachelor’s degree in organizational behavior from the University of San Francisco and a master’s

degree in political science from Okla-homa State Universi-ty. Inducted into the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame in 2011, Hamilton also is a two-time winner of a Dallas Press Club Ka-tie Award for report-ing excellence. His coverage of the Okla-

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homa City bombing was featured in the 1996 edi-tion of America’s Best Newspaper Writing. In 1997, Hamilton received the Fran Morris Civil Liberties in Media Award from the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Oklahoma.

CAROL COLE-FROWE is an independent journalist specializing in stories about the environment — specif-ically water and wind; science, health, business, food

and travel features. She has written, edited or blogged for several daily Oklahoma news-papers, the New York Times, Bloomberg News, Agence France Presse, SPJ.org, Okla-homaWatch.org, SPJ’s Quill, the Oklahoma Gazette, The Associat-ed Press and national

newspapers, magazines and websites. She won the Carl Rogan Associated Press/Oklahoma News Editors Sweep-stakes award in 2005 and 2008. Cole-Frowe is an adjunct journalism professor at the University of Oklahoma.

CARY ASPINWALL is an enterprise writer for the Tul-sa World. Originally from Boulder, Colo., she grew up in Houston and New Orleans before moving to Okla-homa. She is a graduate of Oklahoma State University. On the World’s enterprise team, Aspinwall writes a mix of investigative sto-ries and features about a wide variety of subjects, including Oklahoma’s corrections system. In 2012, Aspinwall won the Freedom Forum/ASNE award for Dis-tinguished Writing on Diversity, the NLGJA feature writing award and was a Casey Medal finalist for her series “Becoming Katie,” about a trans-gender teen growing up in Bixby. In 2013, she was named the Great Plains Awards Writer of the Year.

GRAHAM LEE BREWER began his career as a journalist covering Oklahoma’s vibrant music scene in 2006. After working as a public radio reporter for KGOU and then Okla-homa Watch, where he covered areas such as immigration and drug addiction, he went on to cover the Oklahoma Senate for eCapitol be-fore joining the Okla-homan in 2013. Brewer has covered a variety of issues for The Okla-homan, including criminal justice, the state prison system and the death penalty. He also lends a hand covering the state Legislature and county elections. Brewer has won numerous local and national awards for his reporting, which has taken him from ancient villages in the deserts of the southwest to summits at the United Nations, from witnessing executions to rid-ing along on cattle drives on the Oklahoma plains. He received a bachelors in journalism from the University of Oklahoma in 2009 and a master’s in 2011.

SEAN MURPHY is the Capitol correspondent in Oklahoma City for The Associated Press. He covers the gover-nor and the Oklahoma legislature, political campaigns and gener-al government. Mur-phy graduated in 1995 from the University of Oklahoma with a jour-nalism degree in news communication and launched his career at the Duncan Banner in southwest Oklahoma covering police, courts and general news. He started covering Oklahoma politics and government in 1998 for Capitol Network News during Republican Gov. Frank Keating’s second term.Murphy went to work for the Norman Transcript in 2001 and later for the newspaper’s parent company,

10-11:30 SPJ Code of Ethicsby National SPJ President-elect Paul Fletch-er. He will discuss the latest in journalism and ethics.GAY LOR D H A LL 2025

10-10:35 Covering Violent Weatherby Kurt Gwartney, former KGOU Radio opera-tions director and a National Press Foundation Understanding Violent Weather fellow; Joe Wertz, Oklahoma’s NPR State Impact team member and Rachel Hubbard KOSU Radio associate director and general manager. Hear from these three public radio reporters who won the national SPJ/SDX large market, network award in radio spot news for their reporting of the 2013 Moore torna-do. Learn how they collaborated to provide meaningful reporting for a national audience that went beyond the sensational in the face of extremely difficult logistical and personal challenges.GAY LOR D H A LL 2030

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10:45-11:30 Covering TV News in Today’s News & Budget World by Alex Cameron, a TV news journalist with KWTV-News 9 investigative team and Phil Cross, an investigative reporter at Fox News Channel 9.GAY LOR D H A LL 2025

10:45-11:30 Podcasting: A How-To Panel featuring Chase Harvick with OETA Channel 13, Stephen Tyler with the “Apologize for the Inconvenience” podcast and Noah T, bedroom musician. Moderated by Michael Cross, KOSU Radio’s host of Morning Edition. GAY LOR D H A LL 2030

 11:30-NoonSPJ Oklahoma Region 8 Luncheon (lunch provided with registration) GAY LOR D H A LL LOBBY/GAR DENS

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Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc., as its Capitol bureau reporter. He joined The Associated Press in 2004 and was named Capitol correspondent at the start of the 2010 legislative session.

CALLEY MCGEHEE HERTH is director of com-munications for the American Heart Association in Oklahoma City. She received her bachelor’s degree in mass media communications, public relations and advertising from Oral Roberts University in 2004. She is currently completing her master’s. de-

gree in strategic com-munications from the University of Oklaho-ma. Herth began her decade-long public relations career with Carovilli Communi-cations in Oklahoma City, working primar-ily with association clients. She enhanced

her event management experience while at Petra Industries in Edmond for six years. Most recently, Herth served as senior communications officer for the Oklahoma Insurance Department before accept-ing her current position with AHA.

ADAM KEMP is an enterprise reporter and videographer for the Oklahoman and Newsok.com. Kemp grew up in Oklaho-ma City before at-tending Oklahoma State University. Kemp has interned for the Oklahoman, the Oklahoma Gazette and covered Oklahoma State football for CBS Sports.

PHIL CROSS is a Fox 25 investigative reporter. Cross joined the Primetime News at Nine eight years ago after working at television stations in Iowa, Kansas and his home state of Missouri. He graduat-

ed summa cum laude from Missouri South-ern State Universi-ty with a degree in communications and psychology. He also studied at the Univer-sity of Cambridge in England. He is work-ing on his master’s degree at Oklahoma City University.Cross has won multiple awards for his reporting, writing and editing. The Oklahoma Associated Press has named his investigative pieces the best in the state and those investigations have led to criminal investigations and changes to police in local and state agencies.

TIFFANY GIBSON has worked for the Oklahoman since August 2011 and is a member of the digital news team. In addition to writing and web ed-iting, she also creates multimedia features

for the website and maintains social media accounts.

MICHAEL MCNUTT is press secretary for Okla-homa Gov. Mary Fallin. Before joining the gov-ernor’s staff in September 2013, he worked near-ly 30 years for The Oklahoman newspaper. He worked more than eight years at the newspaper’s Capi-tol Bureau, with his chief assignments covering the gover-nor and the House of Representatives as well as several oth-er state officials and agencies as well as political campaigns.

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Noon - 12:30 Renowned Oklahoma jour-nalist Joe Hight talks about the 20th anniver-sary of the Murrah Building bombing and the challenges presented by covering tragedy. ETHICS A ND E XCELLENCE IN JOUR NA LISM FOU NDATION AU DITOR IU M

12:30 - 1 p.m. SPJ Region 8 director Eddye Gallagher honors Oklahoma and Texas’ student journalists with the Mark of Excellence Awards. ETHICS A ND E XCELLENCE IN JOUR NA LISM FOU NDATION AU DITOR IU M

1:45-2:20 Tribal Government Reporting moderated by veteran journalist M. Scott Carter, a staff reporter at Oklahoma Watch.GAY LOR D H A LL 2025

 1:45-2:20 First Amendment on College Campuses by Joey Senat, an associate professor at OSU and longtime advocate for Open Records and transparency in government.GAY LOR D H A LL 2020

 

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Prior to that, he served as assistant news editor and assistant city editor for The Oklahoman and worked in the newspaper’s Enid bureau. Before that, he worked for newspapers in Enid, Okla., and Rolla, Mo.

JENNIE MELENDEZ serves as the senior public information representative for the Oklahoma Health Care Authority. OHCA oversees the SoonerCare and Insure Oklahoma programs, covering more than 1 million Oklahomans with affordable health care each year. After graduating from Oklahoma State University with a journalism and broadcasting degree, Melendez began her career as a producer at local CBS affiliate KWTV. She later transitioned into marketing and advertising, spending four years in various leadership roles at the local alt-weekly Oklahoma Gazette. Melendez later completed her MBA at Oklahoma City University with a focus on integrated marketing communication. A news junky at heart, she brings a journalist perspective to her role as spokeswoman for OHCA.

HEIDE BRANDES is an award-winning journal-ist and editor with more than 16 years of experi-ence. She graduated from The University of Central Oklahoma in 1995 with a degree in pro-fessional writing, and spent 12 years as a newspaper reporter and editor. She reg-ularly contributes to numerous state, re-gional and national publications and has been published in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and the New York Times. She is also the Oklahoma corre-spondent for Reuters News Service.

CLIFTON ADCOCK is a native Oklahoman and award-winning journalist who has worked in news-papers for more than a decade. Before joining Okla-homa Watch, he was an investigative reporter at the Oklahoma Gazette, covering Oklahoma City gov-

ernment affairs and is-sues such as campaign financing, health care and water since 2010. From 2006 to 2010, he covered tribal affairs and public schools as a staff writer for the Tulsa World. Previ-ously, he was a re-porter for Great Falls

(Mont.) Tribune, the McAlester News-Capital and the Muskogee Phoenix. Adcock received a bach-elor’s degree in liberal studies from the University of Oklahoma’s Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communications.

M. SCOTT CARTER covers the Oklahoma legisla-ture, state government and policy issues for Okahoma Watch, a non-profit media organization that special-izes in investigative reporter. Carter holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from OU’s Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Commu-nication and an as-sociates degree from Northern Oklahoma College. In 2013, he was named one of the Oklahoma’s top three political reporters by The Washington Post’s blog, The Fix. An award winning journalist, Carter captured three Associated Press-Oklahoma News Editors sweepstakes awards between 2008 and 2012. Carter has also earned state and national awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press, the National Press Photogra-phers Association, the National Magazine Publishers Association and the American Library Association. In 2011 his Young Adult Novel, Stealing Kevin’s Heart was a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award. In 2013, Carter’s second novel, The Immortal Von B., received the Oklahoma Book Award for Young Adult Fiction, the Gold Award for YA fiction from

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1:45-2:20 Freelancing and How to Market Yourself by Carol Cole-Frowe, an award-winning and full-time freelance blogger and veteran journalist and Heide Brandes, an award-winning freelance journalist.GAY LOR D H A LL 2030

2:30 p.m.  2:30-3:30 Covering Executions featuring Cary Aspinwall, an enterprise writ-er for The Tulsa World; Graham Lee Brewer, a criminal justice reporter for The Oklaho-man and Sean Murphy, capitol correspon-dent for the Associated Press.GAY LOR D H A LL 2030

 2:30-3:30 The Professionalization of Information moderated by Kevan Goff-Parker, a longtime award-winning journalist and PR pro for the Oklahoma Department of Human Services’ Develop-mental Disabilities Services division. The panel will feature Michael McNutt, a former longtime journalist/editor and now press secretary for Gov. Mary Fallin; Calley Herth, formerly of the Oklahoma Insurance Department and Jennie Melendez, spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Health Care Authority.GAY LOR D H A LL 2025

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the National Independent Book Publishers Asso-ciation and Foreword Magazine’s Gold Award for Young Adult Fiction.

JOE HIGHT was editor when The Gazette in Colo-rado Springs in 2014 won the Pulitzer Prize for na-tional reporting for its multimedia series “Other Than Honorable.” He was named to the Oklahoma Jour-nalism Hall of Fame in 2013. Before The Gazette, he was The Oklahoman/NewsOK.com director of information and development. Hight served for two terms as president of the Dart Center for Journal-ism & Trauma, an international organization based at Columbia University with offices in London and Melbourne. He authored and co-authored print and online booklets and columns that are still used by the Dart Center, including “Tragedies & Journalists: A Guide for More Effective Coverage.” At The Okla-homan, he was victims’ team leader of the Oklahoma City bombing coverage that won two national SPJ awards, a national Dart Award for Excellence in Cov-erage of Violence and many others.

KEVAN GOFF-PARKER is a longtime journalist, public relations and marketing professional who is a public information manager for Oklahoma De-partment of Human Services developmental dis-abilities division. She has freelanced for many of the state’s major publications, including The Okla-

homan, The Journal Record and the Okla-homa Gazette. Her expertise includes writing, editing and photography, as well as working in pub-lic, media and com-munity relations for numerous employers, including two For-tune 100 companies.

After earning her bachelor’s degree in profes-sional writing from the University of Oklahoma, Goff-Parker worked for several years as a general assignment reporter and arts-and-entertainment writer and critic for The Oklahoman, as the feature

editor and assistant managing editor at The St. Kitts-Nevis Observer in the West Indies and as a business writer for The Journal Record.

NOAH T is a bed-room musician from Tulsa whose music has been licensed commer-cially worldwide. In the last three years, he’s released a full-length in-strumental album, a pop-rock EP and most recently, the

score for the movie “Home, James.” He’s work-ing on a full-length non-instrumental album, a movie score and the podcast “Drinking on Tulsa Time.” Find his music on digital retailers, or di-rectly from NoahTMusic.com, plus find Drink-ing on Tulsa Time on Stitcher and iTunes.

STEPHEN H. GREETHAM presently serves as Ex-ecutive Officer, General Counsel to the Chickasaw Nation Division of Commerce, in which capacity he is manages complex litigation on the Nation’s behalf and works closely with tribal leadership on matters of economic development, resource man-agement and protection, and intergovernmental affairs. He also is an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Oklahoma College of Law, where he regularly teaches federal Indian Water Law. Greetham was formerly a partner in the Nordhaus Law Firm (Albuquer-que, NM), where he served as counsel to several American Indian tribes; he also previously taught federal In-dian tax, and Indian gaming law at the University of New Mexico Law School.

CHASE HARVICK is communications manager for OETA. In addition to managing the station’s social me-dia and digital commu-nity, Chase hosts OE-TA’s Downton Abbey recap podcast, Up With Downton, and is devel-oping one other digi-tal-exclusive content, including The Okie Nerd Geekcast. A fifth generation Oklahoman, Harvick graduated from SWOSU and the University of Oklahoma in the areas of business and international studies. Prior to OETA, he worked in strategic communications for a local consulting group, in the Office of the Oklahoma Secretary of State and in higher education.

DR. JOEY SENAT is one of Oklahoma’s foremost Freedom of Information experts. He has taught me-

dia law at OSU since joining the faculty in fall 1998. Among the other journalism courses he has taught are public affairs re-porting, media style & structure, basic re-porting, censorship, editing and the gradu-ate-level ethics class. FOI Oklahoma Inc.

The blog was selected as one of the Top 10 Best New Blogs in Oklahoma for 2009.

MICHAEL CROSS works as the Morning Edition Host for KOSU. He has been with KOSU since 2008, working as the state capitol bureau chief for seven years as well as KOSU’s student coordinator. He came to KOSU after several years in broad-cast media, working at KTOK, KOKH Fox 25, KOCO Channel 5 and KWTV News 9. Cross has his degree in broadcasting and journalism from the University of Central Oklahoma.

Oklahoma Pro Chapter, Board of DirectorsPresident Jaclyn Cosgrove, The Oklahoman

Board Members Patrick B. McGuigan, CapitolBeatOK.com, City Sentinel; M. Scott Carter, Oklahoma Watch; Carol Cole-Frowe, Independent Journalist; Michael Cross, KOSU;

Kevan Goff Parker, Oklahoma Dept. of Human Services; Kurt Gwartney, American Red CrossDr. Mark Hanebutt, University of Central Oklahoma; Dr. William Hickman, University of Central Oklahoma

Dr. Warren Vieth, Oklahoma Watch

SPECIAL THANKS TO:

Gaylord College of Journalism

and Mass Communications,

University of Oklahoma

Kathy Adams

Robert Cole, art director

The Norman Transcript

Norman magazine

Norman Convention and Visitors Bureau

KOSU

OETA

Oklahoma Today magazine

Slice magazine

Sooner Legends Hotel

Jaclyn Cosgrove

Kevan Goff-Parker

Carol Cole-Frowe

Eddye Gallagher, SPJ Region 8 director

Firehouse Subs

Spenser Davis

Chad Hughes

Dana Branham

Daisy Creager

Matt Trovalli

Kate Bergum

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2:30-3:10 The Changing Models of Journalism by David Fritze, the executive editor at Oklahoma Watch and The Oklahoma Observer Editor Arnold Hamilton.GAY LOR D H A LL 2020

 3:15-4 Covering Live Events discussing the use of social media and online tools to report the news. The panel will feature Tiffany Gibson, an online editor of NewsOK and Adam Kemp, an enterprise reporter for the Oklahoman. Both journalists have covered severe weather, court cases and other breaking news across the Oklahoma City metro.GAYLORD HALL 2020

4 p.m.Conference Concludes and SPJ Oklahoma Board Members hold Budget Meeting.GAY LOR D H A LL 2025