There are many ways to get involved in the INN community advancing nonprofit news! INN is grateful to our directors and members and to the journalism and philanthropy leaders who contribute their expertise to shape and guide INN programs and best practices for the nonprofit news field.
Below are advisers to INN who are helping us advance nonprofit news and the excellent and inclusive journalism produced by this emerging news media field.
Interested in getting involved? Email Sharene Azimi, Communications Director, at news@inn.org, or directly reach any of the staff liaisons listed below. Advisory groups generally form around specific programs or projects to advise INN’s program directors; some are permanent and others may vary in duration. Task forces are generally ongoing organizations that advise the INN board as well as staff.
Staff liaison: Bia Medious, member network engagement director and Karen Rundlet, INN executive director
John Adams, executive director, Montana Free Press
John is the executive director and editor-in-chief of Montana Free Press, which he launched in 2016. He started his newspaper career as the city government reporter for the Daily Jefferson County Union in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, where he covered the City Hall, police, fire and local courthouse beats. In 2005 he joined the staff of the Missoula Independent in Missoula, Montana, where he worked as a staff reporter covering a wide range of issues including the environment, state politics and local politics. In 2007, the Great Falls Tribune recruited Adams to head its statehouse news bureau in Helena. For the next seven years, John covered state government and politics as the capital bureau chief.
Carroll Bogert, president, The Marshall Project
Carroll is president of The Marshall Project, a nonprofit media organization covering criminal justice that has twice been awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Previously, she was deputy executive director at Human Rights Watch, running its award-winning global media operations. Before joining Human Rights Watch in 1998, Carroll spent 12 years as a foreign correspondent for Newsweek in China, Southeast Asia, and the Soviet Union.
Laura Frank, executive director, Colorado News Collaborative
Laura pioneered collaborative journalism in Colorado as the founder of I-News, the nonprofit investigative news organization that merged with Rocky Mountain Public Media in 2013, the first such merger in the nation. She led the journalism team there for seven years, and now leads COLab, the Colorado News Collaborative, advancing civic journalism through collaboration, engagement and business innovation. She is a Denver native who spent 20 years reporting for newspapers, radio and public television around the country, specializing in investigative reporting and data analysis. She was a founding member of the Institute for Nonprofit News and now serves as its board chair. Her work has won awards in both broadcast and print, and led to changes in laws and lives.
Lorie Hearn, CEO, editor and founder, inewsource
Lorie is the chief executive officer and editor of inewsource, an investigative reporting nonprofit based in San Diego, CA. She is a lifelong news-aholic who started her reporting career writing her GirlScout troop’s newsletter at age 12. High school and college were filled with school newspaper work, and after graduation, she worked as a reporter for newspapers on both coasts. At The San Diego Union-Tribune, when she relinquished her front seat on the world as a reporter, she became an assistant editor, then Metro Editor and finally Senior Editor for Metro and Watchdog Journalism. Her staff was part of the newspaper’s 2006 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. She left the U-T in 2009 to start inewsource, which is recognized nationally and locally for quality and impact. Lorie was a Nieman Foundation Fellow at Harvard in 1994-95.
Brant Houston, Knight Chair professor of investigative reporting at the College of Media, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, INN board director emeritus
Brant holds the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Chair in Investigative and Enterprise Reporting at the University of Illinois. Houston teaches investigative and advanced reporting in the Department of Journalism in the College of Media at Illinois. He also oversees the online newsroom at Illinois, CU-CitizenAccess.org, which serves as a lab for digital innovation and data journalism. Houston became the chair in 2007 after serving for more than a decade as the executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE), a 5,000-member organization, and as a professor at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. Before joining IRE, he was an award-winning investigative reporter at daily newspapers for 17 years. He co-founded the Global Investigative Journalism Network in 2003 and serves as chair of its board of directors. He has taught and spoken about investigative and computer-assisted reporting at newsrooms and universities in 25 countries.
Tasneem Raja, editor-in-chief, The Oaklandside
Tasneem is the editor-in-chief of The Oaklandside and a co-founder of its umbrella nonprofit, Cityside Journalism Initiative. A pioneer in data journalism and local nonprofit news startups, she co-founded The Tyler Loop, a nationally recognized community news platform in East Texas. She was a senior editor at NPR’s Code Switch and at Mother Jones, where the team she led helped build the first-ever database of mass shootings in America. She started her career as a features reporter at The Chicago Reader and The Philadelphia Weekly, and lives in Oakland with her husband, daughter, and two imperious terriers.
Norberto Santana, Jr, publisher, Voice of OC, INN board member
Norberto is an award-winning investigative reporter with nearly two decades reporting experience, most recently engaging Orange County government institutions and decision makers as the founding publisher of the nonprofit digital newsroom, Voice of OC. As publisher, Santana oversees all newsroom, engagement and fundraising operations and also writes a weekly Opinion column about Orange County government. Before founding Voice of OC in 2009, Santana was a lead investigative reporter for the Orange County Register from 2004-2009, focusing on county government. In addition to his experience as a journalist, the Southern California native has a master’s in Latin American Studies, has worked as an elections analyst on National Endowment for Democracy programs across Latin America and was one of the founders of CubaNet.org, a website featuring the work of dissident journalists inside Cuba that has operated since 1995.
Gabriel Schneider, assistant editor, CalMatters
Gabe is an assistant editor at the CalMatters College Journalism Network, as well as the lead editor at The Objective, a non-profit media reporting and criticism publication. His work has been published by outlets such as The Associated Press, MinnPost, Texas Tribune, and Los Angeles Magazine. He grew up in Los Angeles and attended UC San Diego, where he co-founded The Triton, a digital-first, independent, student-run newspaper.
Staff liaison: Emily Roseman, research director & editor
INN’s research team partners with many industry experts and academics to guide its research questions, methods, and reports. Advisors vary by year and by report focus.
Rick Edmonds, leader of news transformation, Poynter
Rick Edmonds is media business analyst for the Poynter Institute where he has done research and writing for the last fifteen years. His commentary on the industry appears regularly on Poynter Online. He also was co-author of the newspaper chapter of the Pew Research Center’s State of the News Media report 2004 through 2014. He is frequently quoted in articles on newspaper economic issues and new business models and has provided comment in the Washington Post, Boston Globe and on numerous NPR reports.
Nicolás Ríos, chief product and education officer, Documented
Formerly Director of Audience & Community, Nicolas has led engagement, research, product development and content creation with a community-driven focus on audience needs from underserved immigrants. Under Nicolás’ lead, Documented has successfully integrated a community-driven model into its DNA and gained national and international recognition along the way. Prior to joining Documented, Ríos interned at Axios and Quartz and worked as a news anchor in CNN Chile, as a producer for VICE and published in BBC, El Mercurio (Chile), The Daily Trust (Nigeria), among others.
Eba Hamid-Rivera, director of audience, Chalkbeat
Eba Hamid-Rivera is Chalkbeat’s first-ever Director of Audience. They have more than 15 years experience as a journalist, news editor, and digital strategist. Before joining Chalkbeat, Eba was an audience editor at The Trace, a senior digital editor at The New York Times and a web editor and copy editor at local newspapers across the United States, including The Wichita Eagle in Wichita, Kansas, and the Sun Herald in Biloxi, Mississippi. In recent years, Eba worked with dozens of local news organizations, national nonprofits and artists as an editor and audience development consultant.
Nicole Rocchio, global news consumer insights product lead, Google
Nicole works on the Google News Initiative specifically on the team that developed a tool called News Consumer Insights, which has been used by thousands of news publishers around the world. The team’s focus is to build data frameworks that provide actionable recommendations to News publishers in order to grow their overall audience value and revenue.
Mc Nelly Torres, editor, Center for Public Integrity
Mc Nelly Torres is an award-winning journalist currently serving as editor at the Center for Public Integrity. Based in South Florida, Torres previously spent three years as an investigative producer for NBC6 in Miami. Prior to that, she worked as a consumer watchdog reporter for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, education reporter for the San Antonio Express-News, government reporter for Morning News in SC and crime and courts reporter for The Lawton Constitution in OK. In 2010, she co-founded Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, the first bilingual digital nonprofit investigative journalism organization in the state.
Steve Dubb, senior editor of economic justice, Nonprofit Quarterly
Steve Dubb is senior editor of economic justice at NPQ, where he writes articles (including NPQ’s Economy Remix column), moderates Remaking the Economy webinars, and works to cultivate voices from the field and help them reach a broader audience. Prior to coming to NPQ in 2017, Steve worked with cooperatives and nonprofits for over two decades, including twelve years at The Democracy Collaborative and three years as executive director of NASCO (North American Students of Cooperation).
Sanjay Jolly, executive director, program on Law and Political Economy at Harvard Law School
Sanjay Jolly is the executive director of the Program on Law and Political Economy at Harvard Law School and a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication. His research examines the politics of information and communication technologies, the relationship between technology and empire, and the implications of transnational information governance for the Global South.
Gabriel Schneider, assistant editor, CalMatters
Gabe is an assistant editor at the CalMatters College Journalism Network, as well as the lead editor at The Objective, a non-profit media reporting and criticism publication. His work has been published by outlets such as The Associated Press, MinnPost, Texas Tribune, and Los Angeles Magazine. He grew up in Los Angeles and attended UC San Diego, where he co-founded The Triton, a digital-first, independent, student-run newspaper.
Staff liaison: Alana Rocha, Director of collaborative and rural initiatives
Ashley Clarke is the engagement editor at The Center for Public Integrity, where she has orchestrated publishing partnerships with large national outlets and facilitated intricate reporting partnerships with smaller local outlets. Ashley received the 2023 INN Nonprofit Newcomer Award. Previously, Ashley worked at NBC4 in Washington as a production assistant and weekend assignment editor. She earned her undergraduate degree at the University of Maryland where she studied Multiplatform Journalism and Arabic.
Nina Ignaczak is the founder, publisher, and editor of Planet Detroit, a digital media startup telling Detroit’s environmental stories. Since its launch in 2019, Planet Detroit has leaned into collaborations. They currently participate in many formal and informal local and national, regional, and local reporting collaborations with INN and others including the Local Media Association’s Covering Climate Collaborative, the NY & MI Solutions Journalism Collaborative, and the Collaborative Detroit Newsrooms Network.
Jeff Kelly Lowenstein is the founder and executive director of the Center for Collaborative Investigative Journalism (CCIJ), which has worked to develop a detailed and nuanced understanding of journalistic impact they apply in their work with journalists from North America, Africa, Europe, South America and Asia. They have played a key role in INN collaborations and have established ongoing republication relationships with outlets in the United States, South Africa, Malawi, Ghana and Nigeria. An investigative journalist, he is also the former Padnos/Sarosik Endowed Professor of Civil Discourse at Grand Valley State University. He was previously the David Laventhol/Newsday Visiting Professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, the database and investigative editor at Hoy Chicago, and president of the Ochberg Society for Trauma Journalism.
Jim Roberts is the contributing editor and former publisher and chief strategy officer of The 74, which examines the issues impacting the education of America’s 74 million children and the effectiveness of the system that delivers it. Over the course of his career in digital, print and television news, Jim engineered multiple collaborations to create more and better content with a partner than the newsroom could alone. Jim spent much of his career at The New York Times, where he held a number of editing roles. He was Editor-in-Chief of Cheddar, where he oversaw reporting and production for Cheddar’s business news and general news broadcasts. Before that, he was executive editor and chief content officer of Mashable, where he helped the millennial-focused outlet grow beyond its startup roots and expand into global news markets.
Matthew Vann is an Emmy nominated, award-winning, Senior Producer for ABC News based in Washington, D.C., where he organizes news coverage for the network’s flagship television broadcast Good Morning America. He is passionate about media content strategy and developing sustainable business models to secure the future of media through high-impact content that opens the door to strategic partnerships, audience growth, and new revenue opportunities. Matthew serves as a faculty lecturer at New York University where he teaches classes on journalism ethics, and the intersection of news, media and politics. He holds an MBA from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, an M.S. from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and earned an undergraduate degree in Journalism and Political Science from the City University of New York at Brooklyn College.
Staff liaison: Alana Rocha, director of collaborative and rural initiatives
Nic Garcia, regional editor, The Texas Tribune
As the regional editor for The Texas Tribune, Nic coordinates state politics and policy coverage from the reporters who live outside of the major metropolitan areas. A native of Colorado, he began his professional journalism career at Out Front, a Denver-based magazine that is one of the oldest LGBTQ news organizations in the U.S. Nic went on to work as a reporter or editor at Chalkbeat, The Denver Post and The Dallas Morning News. Most recently, he was the politics editor at The Des Moines Register. Nic is based in Dallas.
Ernesto Aguilar, executive director of radio programming and content diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, KQED
Born in East Houston, Ernesto Aguilar’s life was transformed by public media. His career has traversed daily newspapers and alternative weeklies to public radio news and program director roles. At KQED, he oversees radio broadcast content and DEI initiatives in the organization’s Content division. Prior to KQED, Aguilar served stations nationwide for five years as executive director of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters. A Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education Fellow, Sulzberger Executive Leadership Fellow, and Public Media CEO/COO Bootcamp graduate, Aguilar has a B.A. in journalism, with minors in sociology and Women’s Studies from the University of Houston. In his spare time, he writes OIGO, a newsletter on public media and Latino audiences.
Maud Beelman, professor, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, Founding Director, Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at ASU
Maud Beelman, a professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, was the founding director and executive editor of the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at Arizona State University, and currently serves as its collaborations editor. During her leadership from 2019 to 2023, Howard Center journalists produced seven national investigations that have been honored with professional or collegiate journalism awards. Maud has been a journalist for more than four decades, working first as a domestic, foreign and war correspondent, and for the last 25+ years as an investigative editor. She has worked across the media spectrum, from large international news organizations to online, nonprofit news outlets. Maud was the founding director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), launched in 1997 as the world’s first cross-border investigative reporting collaborative. She has participated in or led multiple cross-newsroom collaborations and has helped train journalists in the United States, Central America, Europe and Australia. Her work has been honored with numerous journalism awards, including the George Polk, Investigative Reporters & Editors, Society of Professional Journalists, Online News Association and the Overseas Press Club. Maud is a fellow of the Alicia Patterson Foundation and serves as vice president of the foundation’s board of directors.
Lauren Gustus, executive editor, The Salt Lake Tribune
Lauren Gustus became Executive Editor of The Salt Lake Tribune in 2020. The Tribune is the first major metro news organization to become a nonprofit. It achieved sustainability in 2021 under Lauren’s leadership. Lauren co-launched the Great Salt Lake Collaborative in 2022, a group of 17 organizations focused on elevating solutions to the lake’s challenges. And in 2023, she led the transition of The Moab Times-Independent to a nonprofit that is now owned by The Tribune and available free to everyone who lives in Moab. She previously worked for McClatchy as West Region Editor, overseeing 10 news organizations in Idaho, Washington and California, including the flagship Sacramento Bee. Lauren has also served as an editor in Colorado, where her work on transparency contributed to a new law that facilitated greater access to public records, and in Reno, where her team’s work on the housing crisis was recognized nationally. Lauren is a coach in the Media Transformation Challenge at The Poynter Institute, supporting news leaders as they make performance-driven change. Lauren and her husband Zach mostly enjoy coaching their sons’ soccer teams, and always enjoy mountain biking and skiing.
Dianna Hunt, national editor and coach, ICT
Dianna Hunt, the national editor/coach at ICT, formerly Indian Country Today, is a longtime editor and reporter at news organizations large and small. As metro editor of the Houston Chronicle, she directed and edited the Pulitzer Prize-finalist breaking news coverage of Hurricane Harvey. She has also worked for The Dallas Morning News and other newspapers in Texas and Louisiana, and she and her husband owned and operated a weekly newspaper. She served three terms on the board for Investigative Reporters and Editors and now serves on the boards for the Fund for Investigative Journalism, Covering Climate Now, and the Investigative Editing Corps.
Staff liaison: Sam Cholke, manager for distribution and audience growth
Bruce Putterman, CEO and publisher, Connecticut Mirror
Bruce Putterman leads the strategic direction of the Connecticut Mirror, revenue generation, product innovation, reader engagement, and all business operations. He brings to his work deep experience in audience and market research from 20 years in the marketing and advertising industry.
Ariel Zych, former director of audience, Science Friday
Ariel Zych leads the engagement, learning, research, and impact strategies and activities at Science Friday, working to make science exciting, accessible, equitable, and representative to a growing national audience. She brings to her work a background in teaching and experience in working across platforms to investigate questions about news audience behavior.
Brian Hiatt, director of marketing and membership, Mother Jones
Brian Hiatt leads Mother Jones’ efforts to earn the support — donations and magazine subscriptions — of online readers. He brings to the work more than a decade of experience in digital strategy for leading nonprofit organizations.
Alejandra Armstrong, audience engagement editor, Cityside
Alejandra Armstrong amplifies the reporting of Cityside publications Berkeleyside and The Oaklandside and ensures we are connecting with all parts of the communities we serve. She has enjoyed working in different types of media but her passion is local news.
The audience advisory board is assisted in their work by:
Staff Liaison: Courtney Lewis, chief of growth programs
Geoffrey King, Executive Editor, Open Vallejo
Geoffrey King is Open Vallejo’s Executive Editor and the President and CEO of its nonprofit parent corporation, Informed California Foundation. He is a proud native of Vallejo, California.
Julianne Markow, Chief Operating Officer, Voice of San Diego
Julianne is a nonprofit executive with more than 30 years of experience. Her diverse career has spanned a variety of industries–consumer packaged goods, technology, childcare, museums and journalism—and an array of functions—finance, investments, strategy, mergers & acquisitions, customer service and tech support, marketing, and operations. Currently she serves as chief operating officer for Voice of San Diego, a nonprofit local investigative news organization. Julianne manages the business side of Voice, ensuring that the organization has the resources and support structures necessary for continued growth and success.
Maple Walker Lloyd, Senior Director of Development, Block Club Chicago
Maple Walker Lloyd is the senior director of development at Block Club Chicago. She works extensively on their fundraising strategies through philanthropic support, individual donations, events and corporate sponsorships. Previously, she was team coordinator for the Journalism and Media program at the MacArthur Foundation and weekend news anchor for WGN Radio.
Maritza L. Félix, Founder & Director, Conecta Arizona
Maritza is an award-winning freelance journalist, producer, and writer in Arizona. She is the founder of Conecta Arizona, a Spanish-language news service that connects people in Arizona and Sonora primarily through WhatsApp and social media. She is the creator of Cruzando Líneas, a podcast of new border narratives. In 2022, Maritza was named Innovator of the Year by the Local Media Association and received the 2022 Cecilia Vaisman Award for Best Hispanic Multimedia Journalist from Northwestern University and NAHJ. She is a senior fellow in the JSK Community Impact Fellowship program at Stanford and a graduate of the Executive Program in News Innovation and Leadership in Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.
Nichole Dobo, Senior Editor for Audience Engagement, The Hechinger Report
Nichole Dobo manages audience engagement and innovation strategy for The Hechinger Report. In 2021, she was awarded a Knight-Wallace Reporting Fellowship from the University of Michigan. Her work has been published in publications including the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, The Atlantic, High Country News and Slate. She worked at local and statewide newspapers earlier in her career, earning a variety of awards. Dobo, who grew up in rural western Pennsylvania, earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from The Pennsylvania State University.
Schlonn Hawkins, Chief Executive Officer and Publisher, Shelterforce
Schlonn currently serves as the CEO and publisher of Shelterforce, boasting over 15 years of industry expertise. As the former director of Delaware’s Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, she orchestrated impactful strategies, ensuring children in low-income families achieved grade-level reading proficiency for long-term educational success. Schlonn’s stellar career also includes a transformative role at United Way of Delaware, where she pioneered digital storytelling, orchestrated a one-day giving campaign generating over $800,000, and continues to drive millions into the nonprofit sector.
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