Who's Who

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Nora is the inaugural director of the Institute for New Media Studies. She came to the University of Minnesota in July 2000 after nine years at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, Florida. At the Poynter Institute she led the programming efforts in the areas of news library management, computer-assisted research, and new media leadership. Prior to the Poynter Institute, Nora was the Editor, Information Services at the Miami Herald from 1979-1991 where she developed one of the early full-text electronic archives for news, brought in computer-assisted research, and created a fee-based news research service for the public.

Nora is the co-author, with SJMC colleague Kathleen A. Hansen, of Computer Assisted Research: A guide to tapping online information and Behind the Message: Information Strategies for Communicators., co-author, with Margot Williams, of Great Scouts: Cyberguides for Subject Searching on the Web, editor of When Nerds and Words Collide. Reflections on the Development of Computer Assisted Reporting.

She was instrumental in bringing the journalism think tank New Directions for News to the University of Minnesota and served as their interim director. She was on the board of the Online News Association, the American Press Institute's New Media Initiative, and the University of South Carolina IFRA Newsplex project and is currently on the board of the World Press Institute and Intermedia Arts.

She has an MLS from Texas Women's University and, after college, founded one of the first information brokerage services. She got her first modem in 1977 and has been accessing, studying, and explaining the electronic delivery of information ever since.

Click here to see Nora's collection of newspaper postcards.