Jason Fry is the author of “The Jupiter Pirates” young-adult space-fantasy series and a longtime “Star Wars” author. He spent 12 years at The Wall Street Journal Online, serving as an editor, columnist and blogs guru, and is a former adjunct faculty member at the Poynter Institute. He lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Published Work
“The Jupiter Pirates” Book Series Space opera in the classic style — ultracool technology, sinister interplanetary intrigue, and thrilling space-battle action. A fully realized future world.’ School Library Journal
“Star Wars Rebels Servants of the Empire: Imperial Justice“ As a new student at Lothal’s Imperial Academy, Zare Leonis does everything it takes to pass as a model cadet. But, secretly he is a hidden spy among Imperial loyalists, determined to discover the truth about his missing sister and to bring down the Empire.
Public Appearance
Jason talks about the first in his Jupiter Pirate series, “Hunt for the Hydra.”
Lynne Friedmann is editor of ScienceWriters magazine, published by the National Association of Science Writers. As a science journalist and educator, she has organized dozens of seminars and conferences on journalism and science communications topics throughout the United States and internationally (Canada, Japan, Qatar). For more than a decade, she has been involved in science journalism training of Latin American reporters. She is a member of the organizing committee of the World Conference of Science Journalists which will take place for the first time in the United States (San Francisco) in 2017.
Published Work
Cross-Border Science Journalism Workshop In April a select group of U.S. and Latin American science writers gathered in La Jolla, Calif. for a Cross-Border Science Journalism Workshop with the goal of improving cross-border science reporting.
Specialized Workshops Benefit Latin American Journalists Journalists from eight countries in Latin America heard from geologists, scientists, physicians, and other earthquake experts about responding to a crisis, with special emphasis on new technologies that provide real-time reporting for international audiences.
Foreign journalists gather in La Jolla for International Media in Danger workshop We take freedom of the press for granted, but in other parts of the world nations struggling for democracy may not share this value. According to IPI (International Press Institute), a global network of editors, media executives, and leading journalists, more than 1,000 journalists have been killed worldwide since 1997.
Public Appearance
Women in Science: 50 Years after “Silent Spring”
A June 2013 public forum addresses the historic barriers and continuing challenges faced by women scientists seeking equal access to training and research opportunities.
Panelists: Science journalist Lynne Friedmann; associate professor of medicine Dorothy Sears, Ph.D., UC San Diego School of Medicine; and physicist Christina Deckard, SPAWAR Systems Center.
Jon Funabiki’s career spans journalism, philanthropy and academia. He is a Professor of Journalism and Executive Director of Renaissance Journalism (renjournalism.org) at San Francisco State University. He joined the university in 2006 to teach and to develop projects that explore promising new forms of journalism and storytelling that serve, strengthen and empower communities. Recent initiatives include the Equity Reporting Project, Michigan Reporting Project, Imperial Valley Youth Storytelling Project and Vietnam Reporting Project.
Funabiki also serves as founding executive director of the Dilena Takeyama Center for the Study of Japan and Japanese Culture (japancenter.sfsu.edu), which sponsors programs to promote improved relations between the United States and Japan.
Funabiki joined the university after an 11-year career with the Ford Foundation, one of the world’s leading philanthropic institutions, where he was Deputy Director of the Media, Arts & Culture (MAC) Unit. Responsible for the Foundation’s multimillion-dollar grant strategies on news media issues, he worked closely with journalists, filmmakers, other media professionals and leaders from research, education, nonprofit and business institutions. As MAC’s deputy director, he worked with Foundation staff and media leaders throughout Asia, Latin America, Africa and Russia.
Prior to Ford, Funabiki was the founding director of San Francisco State University’s Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism, the nation’s first university-based center focused on news media coverage of ethnic minority communities and issues.
Funabiki is a former reporter and editor with The San Diego Union, where he specialized in U.S.-Asia political and economic affairs and reported from East and Southeast Asia. His writings also have appeared in The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, National Civic League Journal and other publications.
A graduate of San Francisco State University, Funabiki was awarded the John S. Knight Professional Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University, where he studied East Asian politics and economics; the Jefferson Fellowship at the East-West Center of Honolulu, where he studied East and Southeast Asian economics; and a National Endowment for the Humanities Professional Summer Fellowship at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he studied the cultural dimensions of U.S. history.
He has been honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism Workshop on Journalism, Race and Ethnicity; the Ethnic Media Champion Award from New America Media; a Special Recognition Award from the Asian American Journalists Association; the Gerbode Foundation Fellowship; and a variety of awards for reporting and writing.
New York Times bestselling author and investigative journalist Caitlin Rother has written or co-authored 10 books, drawing from decades of newspaper experience covering topics ranging from criminal justice, suicide, addiction, mental illness and murder to corruption, incompetence, and waste at City Hall and in Congress. Rother has done more than 100 TV and radio appearances as a crime expert. Her latest book, “Then No One Can Have Her,” and her Kindle short, “A Complicated Woman,” were published in 2015. Her next book, “Love Gone Wrong,” a compilation of intriguing murder cases, will be released in 2016. She is currently working on a political crime book about San Diego’s historic Strippergate corruption case.
Should California Taxpayers Pay for a Killer’s Sex Change? Published August 27, 2015 in Orange Coast magazine. A story about debate over transgender prisoners’ rights to sexual reassignment surgery at taxpayer expense, and specifically Skylar Deleon, who is on California’s death row for murdering three people.
Rother’s latest of 10 books, “Then No One Can Have Her.” Released October 2015. A narrative non-fiction tale about the story behind the Steve DeMocker murder case out of Prescott, Arizona,
Rother’s recent Kindle “short,” “A Complicated Woman.” Released December 2015. A compilation of historic and compelling South Carolina murder cases.
Rother’s most controversial book, “Lost Girls.” Released July 2012. The story behind the rape and murder of San Diego area teenagers Chelsea King (of California’s Chelsea’s Law) and Amber Dubois by sexual predator John Gardner.
S. Lynne Walker is a Pulitzer Prize finalist whose reporting has taken her to Mexico, where she lived for almost 16 years and reported on political, economic, legal and social issues affecting U.S.-Mexico relations.
Walker began her journalism career at the age of 18 when she got her first newspaper job at The Honolulu Advertiser. After graduating from the University of Hawaii, she worked at newspapers in Tampa, Sacramento and San Diego. It was at The San Diego Union-Tribune, while covering California’s agricultural industry for the business section, that Walker became interested in Mexico coverage. She received her first national journalism award — the 1989 Gerald Loeb Award from the UCLA Anderson School of Management — for her four-part series, “The Invisible Work Force.”
Walker did a three-month stint in Saudi Arabia in 1990-91 during Operation Desert Storm as a correspondent imbedded with an Army tank division. A year later, she was hired by Copley News Service as Mexico City Bureau Chief. It wasfrom her base in Mexico City that Walker came to understand the Mexican people and appreciate their rich culture, music and art, as well as the political, economic and social issues that shape their country.
Her coverage of Mexico and Central America won numerous national and international journalism awards. In 1997, she received a National Headliner Award for a 14-part serial narrative that showed the human drama of illegal immigration to the United States. Her coverage took her to remote corners of Mexico: to Chiapas, where she rented a plane to fly into Zapatista-held territory, and to a remote village in the mountains of Oaxaca where she traveled on horseback to report on rural poverty.
In 2004, Walker was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for “Beardstown: Reflection of a Changing America,” her four-part series about a small Illinois town that was transformed by immigration. That same year, she received the American Society of News Editors’ Diversity Award.
Walker received the Maria Moors Cabot Prize from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 2005 for her outstanding coverage of Latin America. In awarding the Cabot Prize judges said, “Among the many correspondents who cover the uneasy relationship between the United States and the countries south of the border, Walker stands out as one of the very few who manages to fully convey the human side of the story. With a natural sympathy for the underdog and a keen eye for detail, and by probing the depths of Latin American culture and society, Walker gives readers an unblemished view of and greater insight into the region.”
Before joining InquireFirst, Walker served for eight years as the vice president of the Institute of the Americas, a nonprofit organization on the University of California, San Diego, campus. There, Walker established the Institute’s regional journalism program, creating an international network of journalists and raising funds to provide them with scholarships to attend week-long journalism workshops that she organized and directed.
Walker continues to travel to Latin America to help colleagues there find new ways to produce in-depth reporting and broaden their audiences. She has conducted Spanish-language journalism workshops in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Bolivia and Argentina.
Published Work
Beardstown / Reflection of a changing America Published November 9-12, 2003 in The State Journal-Register (Springfield, Illinois) BEARDSTOWN – On winter afternoons, in the sliver of twilight dividing day from night, Mayor Bob Walters drove along his town’s quiet streets troubled by the changes he feared were coming. Beardstown was an all-white community of 5,200 people built by German immigrants. No one remembered an African-American ever setting down roots in this Illinois River town. When Mexican immigrants began flowing into the state, they, too, had bypassed Beardstown. Read more…
Exporting a problem/Gang members deported from U.S. take deadly culture to their home countries Published January 16, 2005 by Copley News Service TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras – Marlon Fuentes is a big man at Honduras’ largest penitentiary. His face is tattooed. His talk is tough. He menaces with threatening stares. A gang member from Los Angeles, Fuentes spends his time behind bars impressing Honduran “homies” with stories of his exploits in California. He joined Los Angeles’ 18th Street gang when he was 12, was later arrested for selling dope and brandishing a deadly weapon, then was deported in 1995. Read more…
Mexico peyote site suffers onslaught of tourists, mining Published December 9, 2007 by Copley News Service REAL DE CATORCE, Mexico – Pity the peyote, the legendary cactus whose hallucinogenic powers inspired gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson and an entire generation of hippies. This ground-hugging native of Mexico’s northern desert is in danger of disappearing, a victim of psychedelic tourism, silver mining and greenhouse tomatoes. Read more…
New law propels gay rights in Mexico/Moves boldly with civil unions as nation watches Published March 5, 2007 by Copley News Service SALTILLO, Mexico – Gabby and Ana are in love. So are Marco Antonio and Juan Carlos. Under a sweeping new law allowing same-sex couples to form civil unions, they are planning to turn their love into a legal commitment. Legislators in the dusty northern border state of Coahuila have stunned Mexico by giving same-sex couples property and inheritance rights long reserved for married heterosexuals. Read more…
Public Appearances
Lynne Walker talks with journalist Carlos Fernando Chamorro on the “Esta Noche” news hour in Managua, Nicaragua.
Lynne Walker is interviewed by Bolivian television talk show host Justa Canaviri in La Paz, Bolivia.
S. Lynne Walker is a Pulitzer Prize finalist whose reporting has taken her to Mexico, where she lived for almost 16 years and reported on political, economic, legal and social issues affecting U.S.-Mexico relations.
Walker began her journalism career at the age of 18 when she got her first newspaper job at The Honolulu Advertiser. After graduating from the University of Hawaii, she worked at newspapers in Tampa, Sacramento and San Diego. It was at The San Diego Union-Tribune, while covering California’s agricultural industry for the business section, that Walker became interested in Mexico coverage. She received her first national journalism award — the 1989 Gerald Loeb Award from the UCLA Anderson School of Management — for her four-part series, “The Invisible Work Force.”
Walker did a three-month stint in Saudi Arabia in 1990-91 during Operation Desert Storm as a correspondent imbedded with an Army tank division. A year later, she was hired by Copley News Service as Mexico City Bureau Chief. It wasfrom her base in Mexico City that Walker came to understand the Mexican people and appreciate their rich culture, music and art, as well as the political, economic and social issues that shape their country.
Her coverage of Mexico and Central America won numerous national and international journalism awards. In 1997, she received a National Headliner Award for a 14-part serial narrative that showed the human drama of illegal immigration to the United States. Her coverage took her to remote corners of Mexico: to Chiapas, where she rented a plane to fly into Zapatista-held territory, and to a remote village in the mountains of Oaxaca where she traveled on horseback to report on rural poverty.
In 2004, Walker was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for “Beardstown: Reflection of a Changing America,” her four-part series about a small Illinois town that was transformed by immigration. That same year, she received the American Society of News Editors’ Diversity Award.
Walker received the Maria Moors Cabot Prize from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 2005 for her outstanding coverage of Latin America. In awarding the Cabot Prize judges said, “Among the many correspondents who cover the uneasy relationship between the United States and the countries south of the border, Walker stands out as one of the very few who manages to fully convey the human side of the story. With a natural sympathy for the underdog and a keen eye for detail, and by probing the depths of Latin American culture and society, Walker gives readers an unblemished view of and greater insight into the region.”
Before joining InquireFirst, Walker served for eight years as the vice president of the Institute of the Americas, a nonprofit organization on the University of California, San Diego, campus. There, Walker established the Institute’s regional journalism program, creating an international network of journalists and raising funds to provide them with scholarships to attend week-long journalism workshops that she organized and directed.
Walker continues to travel to Latin America to help colleagues there find new ways to produce in-depth reporting and broaden their audiences. She has conducted Spanish-language journalism workshops in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Bolivia and Argentina.
Latest Work
FigureAfter years of working in the two-dimensional world, Kris has turned his attention to the three-dimensional. This sculpture called “Clive” is his latest creation.
Don Fry, an independent writing coach, has taught more than 10,000 authors to write faster, clearer, and with less agony. He also helps editors edit better, and managers organize better. Don has had two careers, first as an English professor at the University of Virginia and at Stony Brook University, and then in journalism. He headed the writing and ethics faculties at the Poynter Institute, and edited the Institute’s series “Best Newspaper Writing.” Roy Peter Clark and Don, friends for 40 years, collaborated on “Coaching Writers.”
In 1994, Don became an independent writing coach, working with newspapers and technical magazines, radio and television stations, and non-profit organizations. He has spread the techniques of coaching throughout the world, especially in Singapore, Scandinavia, and South Africa. He helped create the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism in Johannesburg.
Don recently published “Writing Your Way: Creating a Writing Process That Works for You“ (Cincinnati: Writers Digest, 2012). This book shows professional writers how to develop their own collection of techniques appropriate to the way they think, rather than following the methods of their teachers, which may not work for them. The second half shows how to create your own writing voice.
For fun, Don creates mechanical sculptures in wood and metal that make viewers rethink classic stories. Don writes fiction for his own amusement, mostly about World War II. His second novel concerns a newspaper that attempts to solve its management problems by hiring a hit man.
Mark Sauer spent 27 years as a reporter and editor at The San Diego Union-Tribune after stints at The Houston Post and at two papers in his native Michigan.
He joined KPBS as senior news editor in October 2010 and currently hosts the KPBS Roundtable, an influential talk show that airs on Fridays on radio and TV.
Sauer’s exposure of the false accusations and prosecutions of several San Diegans for murder, rape and child abuse won many regional and local journalism awards, including the Sol Price Award for Responsible Journalism.
Published Work
The Education of Mr. J. Published April 16, 2008 in San Diego Magazine. The young thug’s shave skull bore a tattoo of a gargoyle holding the severed head of Jesus. He approached in slow motion, swinging his head side to side, muttering expletives. His target, Thad Jesperson, sat motionless in a corner of the jail cell reserved for snitches, gays and child molesters. The ex-teacher’s eyes were wide with terror, his ears ringing with screams from adjoining cells: “Get him! Kill him!” His nightmare—that he would not get back home safely to his family—was playing out. Read more…
Justice Delayed Published June 11, 2010 in San Diego Magazine. His searchlights blazing, Officer Scott Walters pulled up to the Crowe family’s house at the end of a long, T-shaped driveway. He was looking for a prowler, a Charles Manson look-alike who had peered through neighbors’ windows that night and entered one home, asking for a girl named Tracy. Two frightened neighbors had called 911. Read more…
Walter Baranger, former senior editor of news operations at The New York Times, joined InquireFirst as vice president in August 2017.
Baranger has a deep understanding of the challenges facing journalists in Latin America and around the world. During his 27-year tenure at The Times, he logged more than 3 million airline miles traveling to more than 60 countries and nearly all of the U.S. states in support of the Times newsroom.
His accomplishments and awards include The New York Times Publisher’s Award for introducing satellite communications to the newsroom, and an additional Publisher’s Award for designing an online version of the Times Manual of Style and Usage.
Baranger’s departure from The Times came 46 years after he sold his first news story to the Los Angeles Times for $10. Over the decades, Baranger has worked as a reporter and editor at The San Diego Union and Evening Tribune, as a copy editor and columnist at The Press-Enterprise in Riverside and even as a reporter for high school sports at The Orange County Register.
He has covered 13 wars and conflicts, several Olympics, and countless political conventions and special events including the impeachment trial of President Clinton, 9/11, the Oklahoma City bombing and Hurricane Katrina. Baranger was The New York Times Company’s longtime delegate to the International Press Telecommunications Council, and was liaison between the newsroom and major news wire services.
Baranger is a 1986 graduate of California State University, Fullerton. He returned to his alma mater in August 2017, this time as a full-time journalism professor in the College of Communications.
Richard Louv is the author of eight books, including “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder” and “The Nature Principle.” Translated into 13 languages and published in 17 countries, his books have helped launch an international movement to connect children and their families to nature. Richard is cofounder and chairman emeritus of the Children & Nature Network. He has written for the New York Times, the Times of London, Parents Magazine and many other publications, and has appeared on NPR’s Fresh Air, the Today Show, Good Morning America, NBC Nightly News and other programs.
Among other awards, Richard Louv is the recipient of the 2008 Audubon Medal; past recipients have included Rachel Carson, E.O. Wilson and Jimmy Carter. In 2010, he delivered the plenary keynote at the national conference of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and in 2012 was keynote speaker at the first White House Summit on Environmental Education. His ninth book, “Vitamin N,” will be published in 2016. He is currently working on his tenth book, about the evolving relationship between humans and other animals. Married to Kathy Frederick Louv, he is the father of two young men, Jason and Matthew. He would rather fish than write.
“The Nature Principle: Reconnecting with Life in a Virtual Age” “We have created environments that make us sad, fat and unhealthy. Richard Louv has made an insightful diagnosis and offers powerful treatment with the medicine we all need, Vitamin N.” Richard J. Jackson, MD, Chair, Environmental Health Sciences, UCLA School of Public Health
“The Web of Life: Weaving the Values that Sustain Us” In a collection of stories, discussion, and quotations, the author of “Childhood’s Future” examines the interconnections among all people; the links that make up family, community, and more; and the importance of memory and personal stories.
“Fly-Fishing for Sharks: An Angler’s Journey Across America” For three years, journalist Richard Louv listened to America by going fishing with Americans. Doing what many of us dream of, he traveled from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from trout waters east and west to bass waters north and south. “Fly-Fishing for Sharks” is the result of his journey, a portrait of America on the water, fishing rod in hand.
We Need an NRA for Nature Published March 9, 2017 in Outdoor It’s time to build an NRA for nature, an environmental conservation force comparable to the nation’s powerful gun lobby, the National Rifle Association. A force capable of striking fear into the heart of, say, any climate-change-denying politician — Republican, Democrat or Independent. A handful of green groups aspire to that political power, and many have done a good job influencing regulatory policies, but I can’t recall the last time I read about an environmental or conservation group mounting a successful campaign to boot multiple members of Congress from office. Maybe it’s happened, but not often enough. And now the ante is upped. If political candidates aren’t afraid of environmentalism’s political power, what good is environmental activism?
Public Appearance
Richard Louv talks with CTV Canada AM about his book “The Nature Principle.”
