Seattle was represented well in the 2016 class of Nieman fellows at Harvard University. Christine Willmsen of the Seattle Times and Seattle-based columnist Monica Guzman both recently completed the fellowship, and they’re ready to share their work with you!
Join ONA in welcoming Monica and Christine home as they lead a discussion about their research and experiences this year. Come prepared to discuss!
More about our speakers:
Monica Guzman is a 2016 Nieman Fellow and Seattle-based journalist who has involved audiences in her work for years. She is a former technology columnist for The Seattle Times, GeekWire, The Daily Beast and the Columbia Journalism Review, and is the author of the 2016 API strategy study “The best ways to build audience and relevance by listening to and engaging your audience.” From 2008 to 2010 she hosted weekly meetups for readers of her geeky news and conversation blog at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, where she was the paper’s first online-only reporter. As vice-chair of the SPJ Ethics Committee, she advocates for closer ties between journalists and the public based on a spirit of collaboration and respect. Monica wrote the closing chapter in the 2013 Poynter book “The New Ethics of Journalism: Principles for the 21st Century,” which argued that cultivating strong self-informing communities is itself a form of journalism, and served as a juror for the Pulitzer Prizes in 2014 and 2015.
During her Nieman year, Monica studied how the roles of journalists might change to better serve a participatory public, and how newsrooms can apply audience-first thinking to strengthen their relevance and grow their revenue. Her research focused on both the challenges the digital landscape presents to the news business and the opportunities that come from approaching news as a public conversation that journalists can learn from, guide, and even lead.
Christine Willmsen is an investigative journalist at The Seattle Times, where she writes about social injustice, government malfeasance, environmental issues and criminal justice. While at Harvard she studied digital innovation and transformation, audience engagement, creative forms of storytelling and women’s leadership.
She was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist in the investigative, public service and breaking news categories and was on the reporting team that won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news. She received an honorary Doctor of Letters from Simpson College and won a National Press Club Award, Scripps Howard Public Service Award, SPJ Sigma Delta Chi Award and Investigative Reporters and Editors Award. Previously, she worked at the Dayton Daily News. Willmsen was a Murrey Marder Nieman Fellow in Watchdog Journalism. The fellowship honors the memory of Murrey Marder, a 1950 Nieman Fellow who helped found the Nieman Watchdog Project.