Barbara is the director of college programming for Poynter. Prior to that, she served as managing editor of Poynter.org. She spent two decades in local media in her hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and in education at her alma mater, Oklahoma State University.

Patrick is a an associate professor & chair of the graduate studies journalism program at the University of Colorado/ Boulder. Patrick's research focuses on media sociology and how shifting notions of “organization” in journalism lead to influence on journalism practice. Patrick's work has been published in numerous journals and he is the author of  Making Nonprofit News: Market Models, Influence and Journalism Practice (Routledge, 2020).

Teri is an associate professor in the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas. She previously worked as a print journalist and multimedia correspondent covering state government, business and enterprise. She is the founder of the Eudora Tiimes News-Academic partnership. Her research focuses on news coverage of U.S. first ladies and women politicians, as well as the U.S. suffrage movement. She is the author of Press Portrayals of Women Politicians, 1870s-2000s.

Traci is the Racial Justice Director for ACLU Massachusetts. A lawyer, journalist, academic, and advocate, Traci most recently served as an Associate Professor in the Communications Department at Simmons University and previously was Chair of the Media Studies Department at St. Michael’s College in Vermont. Her areas of research focus have included First Amendment law and ethics, as well as Race and Gender representation in media. She is a former correspondent and national editor for the Associated Press and holds a JD from Notre Dame.

Christina Smith teaches journalism in the Department of Communication at Georgia College & State University. Before getting her Ph.D. in mass communications in 2015 from the University of Iowa, she worked in the newspaper industry as a daily and weekly news reporter for more than 13 years. As a scholar, Smith’s primary research interests focus on community journalism, specifically the role of journalism in rural U.S. towns, and most recently, news-academic partnerships as journalistic business models