Len Downie, Jr.
Weil Family Professor of Journalism
Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communications
Arizona State University
Leonard Downie Jr., the Weil Family Professor of Journalism at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, is vice president at large of The Washington Post, where he was executive editor from 1991 to 2008.
During his 44 years in The Washington Post newsroom, he was also an investigative reporter, editor on the local and national news staffs, London correspondent, and, from 1984 to 1991, managing editor under then executive editor Ben Bradlee. As deputy Metro editor from 1972 to 1974, Downie helped supervise the newspaper’s Watergate coverage. He oversaw the newspaper’s coverage of every national election from 1984 through 2008. During his 17 years as executive editor, The Washington Post newsroom won 25 Pulitzer prizes.
He received Bachelor’s, Master’s and honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degrees from The Ohio State University. He is the author of five books, including The New Muckrakers, about investigative reporting; The News About the News: American Journalism in Peril (with Robert G. Kaiser), and The Rules of the Game, a novel about journalism and politics in Washington. He is co-author, with Columbia University Professor Michael Schudson, of a major report on the state of the news media, The Reconstruction of American Journalism, published in 2009.
Downie is a founder and current board member of Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc., a member of the board of the Center for Investigative Reporting, and chairman of the board of advisers of Kaiser Health News. He is also a member of the Aspen Institute’s Commission to Reform the Federal Appointments Process.
Tim Anderson
Associate Professor of Journalism
College of Journalism & Mass Communication
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Before joining the faculty staff at the College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Tim Anderson, he spent nine years at New York Newsday, eventually becoming executive news editor, and another nine years at The New York Times, where he served as the news design editor.
Anderson worked for more than 30 years in newspapers in Nebraska, Missouri, Florida and New York. He got his start on his hometown weekly newspaper, the Oakland Independent, and also worked for the Albion News and the Seward County Independent, two other Nebraska weeklies. In addition, he worked for the Lincoln Journal and the Omaha World-Herald in Nebraska, the Kansas City (Mo.) Times, the Fort Myers (Fla.) News-Press and the Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle.
He received his bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and received a master's degree in history from UNL in December 2007.
Kristin Gilger
Associate Dean
Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communications
Arizona State University
Kristin Gilger is associate dean in charge of professional programs for the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.
Before coming to ASU, Gilger served as deputy managing editor for news at The Arizona Republic, where she led a team of more than 100 reporters and editors at the nation’s 15th largest newspaper. She also served as managing editor of The Statesman Journal newspaper in Salem, Ore., and in various editing positions at the Times-Picayune newspaper in New Orleans. She was a reporter and editor in St. Cloud, Minn., and in Charleston, S.C., early in her career.
She also conducts seminars and training sessions on newspaper management, news writing and journalism ethics for professional journalists around the world. She has led sessions for the Associated Press Managing Editors, the American Association of Sunday and Features Editors, the National Writers Workshop and the U.S. State Department.
Gilger received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism from the University of Nebraska. In 1998 she received the Most Distinguished Alumnae Award from the journalism faculty at the University of Nebraska’s Omaha campus.
She won the National Headliner Award for Public Service in Journalism in 1993 for her work editing a year-long project on race relations in New Orleans. She has also won awards from Gannett Co., the Associated Press, Best of the West and the Society of Professional Journalists.
Mary Kay Quinlan
Associate Professor of Journalism
College of Journalism & Mass Communication
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Lincoln native Mary Kay Quinlan is a 1972 graduate of the UNL J-School, where she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Mortar Board and was active in various other campus organizations. She earned a master's degree in journalism at the University of Maryland in 1973 and spent a year as a suburban schools reporter at the Rochester, N.Y., Democrat and Chronicle. In November 1974 she went to work for the Omaha World-Herald Washington Bureau, where she worked for more than 10 years. From 1985 to 1989 she was a regional correspondent for Gannett News Service in Washington, writing for Midwestern newspapers. In 1986, Quinlan served as president of the National Press Club and was elected to the Gridiron Club of Washington.
In the 1980s Quinlan returned to school part time and in 1992 earned her Ph.D. in the American Studies program at the University of Maryland. She taught graduate and undergraduate classes at the University of Maryland College of Journalism where she was a Baltimore Sun Distinguished Lecturer and William Randolph Hearst Visiting Professional.
Quinlan and her family returned to Lincoln in 1996. She has taught reporting and writing courses at UNL since 1999.
Quinlan also is editor of the Oral History Association Newsletter, a thrice-yearly publication of the national professional organization of oral historians. She is also a co-author of "The Oral History Manual," "Native American Veterans Oral History Manual," and "The People Who Made It Work: A Centennial Oral History of the Cushman Motor Works." Quinlan has presented oral history workshops at numerous local, regional and national conferences.