Faculty
Mike De Sisti
Mike De Sisti is a photojournalist / multimedia specialist at The Post-Crescent in Appleton, Wisc. He joined the P-C staff in 1998 as a still photographer and began shooting video on his consumer video camera in 2002 for the newspaper's website. He eventually convinced the company to invest in professional video equipment and send him to the Platypus Workshop in 2005.
Mike is an award-winning still photographer as well as being recognized for his self-created video blog, Real to Reel, which was given an honorable mention in this year's 2007 NPPA Best of Photojournalism contest for smaller affiliated sites. At a smaller circulation newspaper, he has tackled the challenges that come with convincing editors and publishers to invest the time, resources and money in committing to a greater online multimedia presence.
Before transferring to Wisconsin, Mike grew up in the Chicago area. He lives in Appleton with his wife, Carol.
Julie Jones
Julie Jones is an award winning television journalist and digital media scholar. Julie began her photojournalism career at KIVA-TV in Farmington, New Mexico as a general news photographer in 1982. After 22 years, she left as special projects producer and photojournalist at ABC15 in Phoenix to pursue her doctorate degree at the University of Minnesota. Julie’s professional work earned her numerous Rocky Mountain Emmys, National Press Photographers Association, and Arizona Press Club awards. In addition, she was twice NPPA’s Region 10 Photographer of the Year, earned three Emmys for Photojournalistic Enterprise and was Arizona Press Club’s Photographer of the Year.
She has also spoken and taught at key NPPA and Poynter workshops including the NPPA’s Flying Short Course, Airborne TV Seminar, the Women in Photojournalism and the Poynter Institute’s National Writers Workshop and Advanced TV Reporting.
Julie’s doctoral research is centered on citizen producers and how this phenomenon intersects with traditional news media. Her dissertation, to be completed in 2008, investigates the connection between individual’s self-concepts and the videos they produce and post on sites such as YouTube, Yahoo Video, and other social media sites.
Regina McCombs
Regina McCombs is a multimedia producer for StarTribune.com in Minneapolis-St. Paul. She arrived there after 13 years as a television producer and photographer at KARE-TV, the NPPA-winning powerhouse in the Twin Cities.
Winner of numerous Best of Photojournalism and Pictures of the Year International awards for multimedia storytelling, she is a regular speaker around the country, talking about finding new ways to tell stories on the Web, especially with video.
For StarTribune.com, she shoots and edits video stories, creates audio slide shows, produces major projects and trains staff in creating multimedia for the Web. She's also taught classes in online journalism and TV news at the University of Minnesota, where she finished her master's degree.
Her most recent project was "A nation torn: Liberians in Minnesota" (www.startribune.com/liberia).
Nora Paul
Nora Paul 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 author of Computer Assisted Research: A guide to tapping online information, 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, and co-authored with Kathleen Hansen, Behind the Message: Information Strategies for Communicators.
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 1978 and has been accessing, studying, and explaining the electronic delivery of information ever since.
Ken Speake
Ken Speake told stories on television for more than 37 years.
He started telling stories at KARE 11 in 1979, when it was still WTCN. He cut his teeth in the business at WKBT-TV, WKBH Radio in La Crosse, Wisconsin, beginning in 1969. He also worked at WJIM TV in Lansing, Michigan and KUTV in Salt Lake City, Utah. He received his B.S. Degree in English and Speech from Iowa State University in 1969. During college, he worked at KMEG TV in Sioux City, Iowa, WOI-TV in Ames, Iowa and several radio stations.
Ken is not an awards seeker, but he won drawers full of them. He's proudest of the IRIS award he received in 2000 from the National Association of Television Programing Executives. It's an award for on-camera performance, which was unexpected, because Ken generally disregards standups. He figured with only 90 seconds to tell a story, he needed all that time to show viewers pictures of the subjects of the story. He also kept a regional EMMY he won for the 1995 piece, "Daisy the Goose," which, since his retirement February 16, "went viral" on the internet (check it out -- on your favorite search engine, enter "Daisy the Goose"). There's a regional Emmy Speake won in 2005, for a piece about precocious pianists. He treasures the silver medal he won at the New York Film Festival in 1984, for the first story he shot at KARE, about eight-year-old Derek Geiser, whose arm was wrenched off in a farm accident, and reattached at North Memorial Medical Center.
Ken and Donna, who married in 1967, have three children, Chris, Mike and Tim. Ken loves to read, listen to music and the sounds of nature, watch birds, ride bike, and paddle and carry a canoe.
Joe Weiss
Joe Weiss has worked as a photojournalist, multimedia reporter, designer, programmer, producer and editor in print and online media since 1996. He is currently a freelance interactive producer and the developer of Soundslides, a multimedia authoring application.
Previously he was an interactive producer at The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., the director of photography at The Herald-Sun in Durham, N.C., and worked for MSNBC.com as a multimedia producer in Redmond, Wash.
His multimedia reports have garnered national and international recognition including an Online Journalism Award from the Online News Association and two Digital Edge awards from the NAA and a Gold medal in the Society for News Design's Interactive Design competition.
He has judged several awards including the Pictures of the Year International, Society for News Design's Interactive Design Awards, and the Online News Association's Online Journalism Awards. Weiss frequently speaks at seminars and workshops concerning the integration of photojournalism, audio reportage and multimedia technology.
Additional faculty will include:
Jim Gehrz - Photographer, StarTribune, 2006 NPPA Photographer of the Year
Brian Peterson - Photo Coach, Star Tribune
Jenni Pinkley - Multimedia Producer, Star Tribune
Ken Speake - Master storyteller and former KARE-11 reporter