Scripps Days at Hampton

Our speakers and panelists at Scripps Career Days

Here is a list of speakers and panelists for Scripps Career Days at Hampton University.

· Candace Anderson, director of human resources, The E.W. Scripps Company Television Division

· Mizell Stewart III, editor, Evansville Courier & Press

CANDACE ANDERSON, director of human resources for The E.W. Scripps Company’s television division, leads change management, employee relations, workforce planning and organizational design strategies at Scripps’ 10 stations. A member of the Society of Human Resources Management, she holds a PHR certification and a bachelor’s degree in media arts from the University of Arizona-Tucson. In 2006, Candace moved to Cincinnati to work in the corporate office after spending six years as the human resources leader at Scripps-owned KNXV-TV in Phoenix.

JODY BECK has been director of the Scripps Howard Foundation Semester in Washington Program since 2003. From 2001 to 2003, she was a lecturer at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, teaching print and broadcast reporting. Before that, she taught journalism at several other universities in the Washington area. In her journalism career, she worked as an assignment editor for WRC-TV in Washington for 16 years. She covered Virginia and other beats, and for several years was in charge of planning the next day’s coverage and coordinating coverage of elections and other major news events. She went to WRC from The Washington Star, which went out of business in 1981. At the Star, Jody was the Arlington-Alexandria bureau chief, a copy editor and reporter. She covered the Virginia General Assembly, Fairfax County, Va., the District of Columbia school system and several other beats. In her first job at the Star, Jody was a dictationist, typing stories dictated by reporters on assignment and on deadline. She became a reporter trainee and reporter after that. Jody holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a master’s degree from the University of Maryland, both in journalism.

DREW BERRY was vice president and general manager at Scripps’ Baltimore television station, WMAR, from 1996-2006, leaving the position to found Drew Berry & Associates, a news talent agency, and teach at the Scripps Howard School of Journalism and Communications at Hampton University. With more than 25 years in broadcasting, the bulk of his experience has been in the country’s top five markets. Drew has been a guest faculty member at the Poynter Institute, a Scripps Howard Foundation trustee and a member of the inaugural class of the Scripps Leadership Institute. A native Texan, Drew grew up in Dallas and earned a bachelor’s degree in radio, television and film from the University of Texas at Austin. He and his wife, Brenda, have three grown children.

LANA DURBAN SCOTT was named director of news strategy and operations for The E.W. Scripps Company’s television station group in 2007. She coordinates plans for special and investigative reports, while managing a system of sharing resources and best practices across the 10 television stations in the Scripps group. Lana began her journalism career in 1993 while still a student at John Carroll University, working on the assignment desk at Scripps’ Cleveland TV station, WEWS. She soon moved to sports, holding positions of increasing responsibility before being named the station’s sports director in 1999. She joined the daily news operation at WEWS in 2001 as senior executive producer and four years later was named special projects executive producer. Lana has a bachelor’s degree in communications from John Carroll and has won a regional Edward R. Murrow Award, two regional Emmy awards and two Ohio Associated Press Awards. Last year, she was instrumental in founding MultiMedia Journalist University that offers a week of intensive training to all newsroom staff members at Scripps broadcast outlets.

DAVID FRANCOIS is director of new media at WFTS-TV in Tampa, where he has lived for the past three-plus years. The first intern he supervised at WFTS was from the Scripps Howard School at Hampton. A self-described news and tech junkie, he’s always looking for new ways to use technology and the Internet to tell better stories about his community. Last year the Associated Press of Florida awarded its top Web award to WFTS. David grew up in northern Virginia and graduated from James Madison University.

DANITA HARRIS anchors the 6 and 11 p.m. news at WEWS in Cleveland. She was the first woman and first African American to host the station’s “Academic Challenge,” one of the longest running locally produced shows in television history. Earlier in her career, Danita worked at Black Entertainment Television in Washington, D.C., as a producer in news, sports, music and entertainment. She was previously a columnist for Blessings Magazine as well as Connection, The Good News Magazine, a Christian publication. Danita has received national recognition for her volunteer work, has served as a guest host on ABC’s “The View,” and has interviewed talk show host Oprah Winfrey. She and her husband, Brad Pratt, have recently started a church called “Fresh Wind Ministry” to encourage spiritually healthy lives. Danita is a graduate of the University of Maryland in College Park, where she majored in broadcast journalism.

ROBYN HILDAL, a Scripps veteran of 15 years, currently provides guidance and support to the organization with regard to attracting, recruiting, hiring, retaining and developing a highly skilled, diverse workforce. Previous to this role, Robyn served as a human resources generalist for Scripps corporate office and as a human resources business partner for the company’s television station group. A graduate of Wittenberg University and the University of Cincinnati, Robyn’s earlier career includes nine years in human resources at PNC Bank and five years as a special education teacher. Robyn and her husband, Rick, have twin daughters who are college freshmen, one at the University of Mississippi and the other at the University of Montana.

NICK HOLLENSBE is the manager of online video initiatives for The E.W. Scripps Company. Since joining Scripps in 2007, he has directed the online video strategy for the Scripps Online Newspapers group by guiding production, deployment and monetization of video at Scripps operating units. He specializes in online video, Web development and motion graphic design. In 2005, he joined the Scripps-owned Naples Daily News in Florida. He served as the senior video producer, which marked one of the first times a newspaper staffed such a position. While in Naples, Nick completed a number of innovative, award-winning online video projects, including a new video platform, a daily newscast, video special sections and online/broadcast commercial videos. Prior to joining Scripps, he produced innovative editorial and commercial projects as the lead of NDN Productions in Florida. He also led the production of national and international corporate projects as a producer for Eagle Entertainment (now Favorite Color) in upstate New York. Nick holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the University of Kansas.

JACK LAIL is director of news innovation at the Knoxville News Sentinel, with responsibility for overseeing the company’s editorial digital strategies and efforts. He has been involved in online media for 15 years, leading a team that launched knoxnews.com and the site now called govolsxtra.com in the mid-1990s. The sites have won numerous national awards over the years for excellence in digital journalism, including a 2009 breaking news award from the Online News Association and a first place for general excellent in the Inland Press Association’s New Frontier Awards. A graduate of East Carolina University, he has been a newspaper journalist for 33 years – 26 of those at the News Sentinel, where he held a variety of roles before taking a leadership role in the company’s online efforts. His wife, Amy McRary, is a feature writer for the News Sentinel. They have two grown sons.

SUE PORTER joined The E.W. Scripps Company 33 years ago as a reporter at The Cincinnati Post, where she went on to become editor of its Valley Edition. Prior to joining the Scripps Howard Foundation in 2005, she was editor of Scripps Howard News and executive producer of Scripps Howard News Video. Before Scripps, Sue was the editor of a group of weekly newspapers in suburban Cincinnati and prior to that was a reporter and section editor at the daily Crescent-News in Defiance, Ohio, where she attended Defiance College. She is a board member of the national Society of Professional Journalists Foundation and previously served as the organization’s president. Sue serves on journalism advisory boards for Ohio University, the University of Cincinnati and Iowa State University. She is a former Scripps Howard Foundation trustee and recipient of its William R. Burleigh Award for Distinguished Community Service. She and her husband, Jim, have three daughters and five grandchildren.

LEE ROSE is corporate communications manager for The E.W. Scripps Company, where the majority of her time is focused on internal communications and media relations. While at Northern Kentucky University, Lee worked on the student newspaper and at The Cincinnati Enquirer. Since earning her bachelor’s degree in journalism, she’s written and designed countless publications – even cereal boxes; managed crisis communications; and developed communication strategies for acquisitions, reorganizations, human resouces programs and national campaigns. Lee, who was named NKU’s Outstanding Young Alumnus in 2000, earned a master’s degree in management from Indiana Wesleyan University in 2006.

KEENAN SMITH is the morning/noon weekday meteorologist at Scripps station WPTV in West Palm Beach, Fla. He graduated from Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., and later earned a dual master’s degree in domestic policy and urban and regional planning from Princeton University. He studied meteorology at Penn State, the College of DuPage, Portland State and Oklahoma State. A native of Philadelphia, Keenan’s first job in television was at WGAL-TV the dominant station in Lancaster, where he started as an intern and a few months later was anchoring cut-ins overnight. Keenan left Lancaster to take a job behind the scenes with NBC News in New York City, where he worked for Dateline NBC and NBC’s New York News Bureau. Keenan return to on-camera work as a reporter/anchor at WZBN in Trenton, N.J., and Raleigh, N.C., and later as a reporter/news and weather anchor in Peoria, Ill. Prior to joining Scripps he worked at WGN in Chicago. Keenan has been honored by the Illinois Associated Press for investigative reporting, and has been elected to full member of the American Meteorological Society. He holds the AMS Seal of Approval. In 2005, Keenan was nominated for a Midwest Regional Emmy. Keenan and his wife, Jamila, are the parents of one son.

MIZELL STEWART III is the editor of the Evansville (Ind.) Courier & Press and courierpress.com. He also hosts two public affairs programs on WNIN-TV in Evansville, “Newsmakers” and “Lawmakers.” Mizell has been an editor, managing editor, local news assigning editor and award-winning reporter at several newspapers, including the Akron Beacon Journal, the Tallahassee Democrat, the Dayton Daily News and the Springfield News-Sun. He also helped lead the team at The Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss. that won the 2006 Pulitzer Gold Medal for Public Service for coverage of Hurricane Katrina. Mizell is a board member of the American Society of News Editors, the Evansville African American Museum, WNIN public broadcasting and the Board of Visitors at the University of Evansville. He is a journalism graduate of Bowling Green State University and completed the Advanced Executive Program at the Media Management Center of Northwestern University.

January 27, 2010 at 8:22 am scrippsdays Leave a comment