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Roger M. Richards - Editor and Publisher
Roger Richards is the Editor and Publisher of The Digital Filmmaker,
and a documentary video producer with The Drew Carey Project at
Reason.tv Richards also continues
to work as a documentary still photographer.
He began his photojournalism career
in 1979, focusing on political and social themes in the Caribbean, the
civil wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua and then joining the Gamma
Liaison photo agency in 1988. Based in Miami and then Europe, his work
with the agency included the US invasion of Panama, political upheaval
in Haiti, civil war in Croatia and the siege of Sarajevo. He was Multimedia Editor/Producer
for The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Virginia from 2001 to 2007. He is a
former Associated Press photo bureau chief in Bogotá, Colombia, and a
staff photographer at the Washington Times in Washington, DC, from
1997-2000. He is the recipient of numerous awards from the National
Press Photographers' Association, the White House News Photographers'
Association, Pictures of the Year International, the Society of
Newspaper Design, the Society of Professional Journalists and the Virginia
News Photographers Association. He became a digital filmmaker in 1998,
focusing on projects about war in the Balkans. He was awarded the
first White House News Photographers' Association sabbatical grant for video journalism in 2000 and
in 1999 was one of the first graduates of the
famous Platypus Workshop that trains photojournalists how to become
digital filmmakers and video journalists. In 2002 he joined Dirck
Halstead and PF Bentley on the Platypus Workshop faculty.
 Ron
Steinman - Executive Editor
Ron Steinman began his career at 23 at NBC News and spent 35
years at the network. He moved from copyboy to producing
segments and writing for the Huntley-Brinkley Report, first in
Washington and then in New York then on to field producer for
the newsmagazine show Chet Huntley Reports. He produced
documentaries and worked on specials, including space coverage,
before being named NBC's Bureau Chief in Saigon during the
Vietnam War. He also served as Bureau Chief in Hong Kong and
London before returning to New York to oversee the network's
news specials. In 1975 he joined the Today Show where he spent
11 years in a number of senior producing positions in Washington
and New York. After leaving NBC News he worked for 5 years as a
freelance producer for ABC, among other things, he wrote and
produced a series of A&E Biography one hour documentaries on O.J.
Simpson, Malcolm X, Colin Powell, Timothy McVeigh, LBJ, Frank
Sinatra, Nelson Rockefeller, James Earl Ray, and Jim Jones. He
also produced for the Discovery Channel, and the History
Channel. He produced 3 of the highly rated 6 part series for the
Learning Channel on the Vietnam War called The Soldier's Story,
first broadcast in October 1998, and the follow up "Missing in
Action.", which has won a National Headliner Award and an
International Documentary Festival Award. He is also the author
of the book, "The Soldier's Story" published in 1999 by TV
Books, and now by Barnes & Noble, and "Women in the Vietnam"
published by TV Books in July, 2000. The University of Missouri
Press published his memoir "Inside Television's First War: A
Saigon Journal" in October 2002. Steinman has won a Peabody
Award, a National Press Club award, two American Women in Radio
& Television Awards, two Chris Awards and been nominated for
five Emmies. His documentary film, "Luboml: My Heart
Remembers," a Douglas /Steinman Production, aired on PBS' WILW/21
in the New York metropolitan area. His latest film, "My
Grandfather's House: The Journey Home" a feature length
documentary, and a Douglas/Steinman Production, is currently in
release. The film is distributed by
Cinema
Guild.
 Raised
in Newark Ohio, a small working class town east of Columbus, Carmen
Borgia spent his childhood taking things apart: bikes, lamps, lawn
mower engines, telephones, stereos and his car. As a teenager, he
operated a recording studio in his bedroom and hosted tapings for a
fictional radio station complete with town meetings, call-in shows
and commercials. His parents ran an Italian restaurant with a live
piano player who knocked out American standards while the patrons
sang along. While attending the University of California in San
Diego, he became a DJ at the school radio station, KSDT, playing
every genre imaginable, from progressive jazz to punk rock. Borgia
came to music late in college when he wrote and sang, as he says,
very loud, with a rock band called Some Ambulants. He has composed
music and created sound designs for many theatrical productions,
much of it at the Western Stage in Salinas, California. Premieres he
worked on include “East of Eden” and “Something Wicked This Way
Comes.” He also studied jazz guitar years later in Brooklyn. He has
created sound designs and mixed many film and video projects, from
the ragged DIY sonics of DV documentaries to indie film projects.
His mixes have played at the Sundance, Toronto, Tribeca and Berlin
film festivals as well as the Sundance Channel, the Independent Film
Channel and PBS. With a degree in theater design, he is mostly
self-taught, learning sound from books and magazines, and as he
says, “from anyone who knew anything about sound that would talk to
me.” In his day job, he is the chief mixer at DuArt Film & Video in
NYC where he crafts sound for independent film producers of all
stripes.
Dirck Halstead
 Dirck
Halstead is the Editor and Publisher of The Digital Journalist.
Dirck started in photojournalism when he was in High School. At the
age of 17, he became LIFE Magazine's youngest combat photographer
covering the Guatemalan Civil War. (LIFE had no idea how old he
was). After attending Haverford College, he went on to work for UPI
for more than 15 years, covering stories around the world. In 1972
he accepted a contract for Time Magazine, and for the next 29 years
covered the White House for them. In 1992 he played an instrumental
part in the formation of Video News International (VNI), which
started what is now the Platypus movement, allowing still
photojournalists to cross the barrier between print and television.
He has won the NPPA Picture of the Year award twice, the Robert Capa
Gold Medal for his coverage of the fall of Saigon, and two Eisies.
Gene Farinet, an award winning veteran newsman, spent much of his long
career at NBC News as a writer and producer working with Frank McGee,
Ed Newman, John Chancellor and Tom Brokaw, covering space, politics
and special projects everywhere in the world.
 David
Snider
Born in England and raised in Washington, D.C., David Snider
developed a career in documentary photography, website production
and broadcast television. After graduating from the School of Visual
Arts in New York City, David developed a major documentary
photography project called Blindness in America. In 1996, Dirck
Halstead taught David how to shoot video stories; in 1997, they
began to publish The Digital Journalist website. David has
co-produced 3 programs for ABC News Nightline.
 J. Ross Baughman
In 1978, at the age of 23, photojournalist J. Ross Baughman
became the youngest professional ever awarded the Pulitzer Prize,
and was cited for his coverage of the guerrilla war in southern
Africa. While continuing to work that same year as the first
contract photojournalist ever hired by the Associated Press, he
competed against himself with two other nominations: For
infiltrating the American Nazi movement over nine months to uncover
their assassination and bombing plans, and once more for being the
first journalist to ever accompany Palestinian commandoes operating
behind Israeli lines.
Baughman soon went on to become an international lecturer on
journalism ethics, a university professor and founder of the photo
agency Visions, which specialized in long-term, high-risk,
difficult-access investigative photo essays around the world.
Besides covering wars in 11 countries, his work has appeared
everywhere from LIFE to Vanity Fair, Newsweek, TIME, Stern,
Cosmopolitan and Vogue. The life of an investigative photojournalist
has not been all that glamorous for J. Ross Baughman. Since becoming
a professional in 1975, he has been spit upon, shot at, stricken by
encephalitis, had his arm broken by a New York drug dealer, been
lined up for execution by a Neo-Nazi, had his ear drum blown out
during a Palestinian mortar attack in Lebanon, been accused of being
a spy and thrown into Zambian prison for six week. Then he
intentionally placed himself next to a tornado, accidentally in the
middle of an earthquake, and got his leg blown apart by a Bouncing
Betty land mine in El Salvador.
Baughman recently moved back to Virginia, where his family first
settled in the 1730s. He currently serves as Director of Photography
at The Washington Times.
 PF Bentley
Photojournalist/digital filmmaker PF Bentley specializes in covering
domestic and international politics. Bentley is known and respected
throughout the print and broadcast community for earning
unprecedented access to presidential candidates, Heads of State, and
Capitol Hill. He was the first photojournalist to shoot on the House
floor while in session. Bentley was behind the scenes with President
Bill Clinton for his last week in office, Inauguration Day, January
20, 2001, and his last trip on Air Force One to his new life as
“Citizen Clinton”.
Bentley returned to Washington after September 11, 2001 for NEWSWEEK
Magazine to be with U.S. lawmakers behind the scenes on Capitol Hill
in the wake of the terrorist attacks and Anthrax crisis. Included in
this coverage was his widely acclaimed photograph of President Bush
in prayer before speaking to a Joint Session of Congress on
September 20.
He has covered every U.S. presidential campaign and photographed
every serious presidential contender since 1980 including Ronald
Reagan, George Bush, Bob Dole, Michael Dukakis, Walter Mondale,
Geraldine Ferraro, Jesse Jackson, John Glenn, Al Gore, Dick
Gephardt, Pat Buchanan, Bill Bradley, and Bill Clinton. Bentley's
skill at getting close to his subjects without intruding on the
events being recorded earned him several first place awards in the
campaign category from the University of Missouri School of
Journalism prestigious Pictures of the Year Competition. He won his
fifth and sixth First Place Picture of the Year awards in March of
1997. Bentley was awarded top honors for his coverage in 1984 of
John Glenn's presidential bid, in 1988 for Dan Quayle's vice
presidential campaign, 1992 for Bill Clinton's winning campaign, in
1995 for Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America" and twice in 1996
for his coverage of Bob Dole's final presidential run. This year
Bentley won yet another POY award for his coverage of President
Clinton’s Final Days in Office. He has been a Special Correspondent
for TIME Magazine and has been published in the New York Times
Magazine, The Washington Post and in newspapers and magazines around
the world.
Bentley has also traveled extensively throughout the world capturing
on film some the world's most closely followed political events.
During the past few years he has made eight trips to Fidel Castro's
Cuba, and sixteen trips to Haiti to photograph the chaotic and often
deadly ongoing political turmoil. He covered the collapse of the
Noriega regime and the ever-changing political landscape in Panama;
Kim Dae Jung's return to South Korea; and the Christiani campaign in
El Salvador (during which Bentley also spent time in the hills with
anti-government FMLN guerrillas). In addition Bentley, whose
photographs are syndicated worldwide by both TIME Magazine and
through his web site, www.PFPIX.com
has worked in China, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Hong Kong and
most of Europe. He has also been featured in most of the "Day in the
Life" book series.
In January 1992, Bentley began a 10-month assignment photographing
the then presidential hopeful Bill Clinton's campaign. The
best-selling result, CLINTON: PORTRAIT OF VICTORY, published by
Warner Books, received critical praise. During the early part of
1995 he documented Newt Gingrich's first 100 days in office for
TIME. His latest book, NEWT: INSIDE THE REVOLUTION (An Epicenter
Communications book published by Rutledge Hill Press), was based on
that assignment.
In August 2001 he produced and filmed an ABC-TV "Nightline" about
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. This was his third "Nightline"
broadcast.
Bentley grew up in Hawaii and graduated from the University of
Hawaii in Honolulu with a B.Ed. degree in 1975. He is also a member
of the faculty of the Platypus Workshop. When not traveling he
resides in New York and on the Big Island of Hawaii with his wife,
publicist, Cathy Saypol. |
