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Stephen Engelberg

Stephen Engelberg was the founding managing editor of ProPublica from 2008–2012, and became editor-in-chief on January 1, 2013. He came to ProPublica from The Oregonian in Portland, where he had been a managing editor since 2002. Before joining The Oregonian, Mr. Engelberg worked for The New York Times for 18 years, including stints in Washington, D.C., and Warsaw, Poland, as well as in New York. He served for 9 years on the Pulitzer Prize Board.

Mr. Engelberg’s work since 1996 has focused largely on the editing of investigative projects. He started the Times’s investigative unit in 2000. Projects he supervised at the Times on Mexican corruption (published in 1997) and the rise of Al Qaeda (published beginning in January 2001) were awarded the Pulitzer Prize. During his years at The Oregonian, the paper won the Pulitzer for breaking news and was a finalist for its investigative work on methamphetamines and charities intended to help the disabled. He is the co-author of “Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War” (2001).

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Mike Reilley

Mike is a senior lecturer at the University of Illinois-Chicago and founder of JournalistsToolbox.ai, a free website featuring AI tools and training videos. He’s the author of two books: “Data + Journalism” (Routledge, 2023) and “Journalist’s Toolbox Handbook” (Routledge 2024).

Mike spent seven years teaching Google News Initiative and other digital and AI-driven tools to more than 14,500 journalists and educators in 425 trainings in 41 states. He also is co-founder and trainer with Penny Press Digital LLC, a consulting and training company that has several clients, including Gannett. When he’s not doing training, he teaches data and multimedia journalism at UIC, where he is a full-time faculty member.

A former reporter at the LA Times and web editor at the Chicago Tribune, Mike served for 13 years as a faculty member at Northwestern, Arizona State University and DePaul University, teaching digital journalism to hundreds of students and professional journalists. An early adopter of the web, he is one of the 11 founding editors of ChicagoTribune.com.

He holds journalism degrees from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (undergrad) and Northwestern University (master’s). Mike also runs the Chicago data-driven news site, The Red Line Project (redlineproject.news). Twitter: @itsmikereilley @journtoolbox | Email: mikereilley1@gmail.com

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The Paid Readership Imperative on March 22 – Building subscribers and holding onto them

The New England Newspaper and Press Association (NENPA) and the Northeast Association of Communication Executives (NEACE) are collaborating on a special, two-part program at NENPA’s spring convention in Waltham on March 22.

The Paid Readership Imperative brings together experts on building and retaining online subscribers led by Tim Griggs, founder and CEO of Blue Engine, a company successfully working with publishers to grow digital business.

Griggs is the former head of revenue products at The New York Times, a former publisher at the Texas Tribune, a former coach with the Media Transformation Challenge at Harvard University, and the Knight-Lenfest Newsroom Initiative at UNC-Chapel Hill. Griggs also led the Table Stakes program for commercial television at Arizona State University, he was the co-creator of the American Press Institute’s Better News hub and co-author of Table Stakes: Getting in the Game of News. Griggs will offer best practices in subscription sales and retention during the first half of the program.

Following his presentation, John Harrison, vice president of Customer Experience at Wallit, a software company providing e-commerce and customer management services for digital publishing, will lead a discussion among New England newspaper executives on what is working at their operations. Harrison is on NEACE’s board of directors and will facilitate a discussion that will also include fellow NEACE board member Gary Lavariere, chief revenue officer at The Berkshire Eagle, Tim Dwyer, publisher of The Day in New London, Conn., Jim Falzone, publisher for CNHI’s North of Boston Media Group, and Allie Ginwala, audience engagement editor at the Concord Monitor.

They will discuss the success of their paywalls, audience building, and other strategies in helping to grow subscription revenue

NENPA’s spring convention is scheduled for March 22-23, 2024, at the Westin Waltham Boston in Waltham, Mass. This program is slated for 1 p.m. Plan to join us for this interactive session where you’ll learn new strategies being implemented at news organizations around New England. We will also break into roundtable discussions to delve deeper into solutions.

We are extending NENPA-member pricing to NEACE members so they can register using the NENPA member options for Individual or Group Registration on the registration form. If you have any issues with registration or questions about the program please contact, Tara Cleary at t.cleary@nenpa.com.

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Jim Falzone

Jim Falzone is the publisher of the seven newspapers that comprise North of Boston Media Group in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. In addition, he serves as vice president of production for parent company CNHI, LLC, and is president of the Northeast Association of Communication Executives.  Before working at North of Boston Media Group, Falzone held editorial, ad production, and operations roles at Gannett newspapers in upstate New York.

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John Harrison

John Harrison is a digital publishing industry professional with over 20 years of experience in product management, marketing, and sales. He is VP of Customer Experience at Wallit, providing publishers subscription management and web content paywall services to help capture revenue from digital and print products.

Previously, while at Tecnavia, he helped news publishers implement new e-edition digital reader platforms, websites, apps, and paywalls. John was also the Worldwide Director of Marketing for Agfa’s Systems unit based in Mortsel, Belgium, where he led the development and introduction of the industry’s first PDF-based, pre-press workflow system. John is a board member of NEACE.

Earlier in his career, John handled product management and marketing of pioneering systems in ad typography, technical documentation, pagination, digital type fonts, imagesetters, color management, and screening.

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Support Student Press Freedom Day On Feb 22

The sixth annual Student Press Freedom Day is Feb. 22. It is an opportunity for us all to recognize the increasingly critical role student journalists play in our communities, but also to support the student press through legislation, legal and educational resources, and mentorships.

Justin Silverman of the New England First Amendment Coalition and Josh Moore at the Student Press Law Center are co-writing a forthcoming op/ed your publication can run in celebration of Student Press Freedom Day. NENPA will distribute the op/ed through our email lists on Feb. 16, 2024.

Student Press Freedom Day is an initiative by the Student Press Law Center where students, advisers and press freedom groups work together to:

  • Raise awareness of the vital work of student journalists
  • Highlight how censorship threatens that important work, and
  • Empower student journalists to take action to restore their First Amendment Freedoms.

Each year, Student Press Freedom Day grows in scope as more students write op-eds, create videos, host events, tell their stories and build momentum for New Voices campaigns in their state.

The theme for Student Press Freedom Day 2024 is Powerfully Persistent.

Learn more about Student Press Freedom Day

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Gary Lavariere

Gary Lavariere is a forward-thinking leader who possesses a wealth of knowledge relative to data and digital strategies that drive success. He is currently the Chief Revenue Officer overseeing the business unit at New England Newspapers, Inc. (NENI). In his seven years as a media executive at NENI & the Las Vegas Review-Journal, he has quickly risen to a leadership role and is highly regarded in the industry.

He is a firm believer that the future for media will be driven by the digital subscription business. To that end, he engages deeply in development of lifecycle journeys, digital funnel development, data-driven campaign management, and constant testing to improve conversion and engagement rates.

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Allie Ginwala

Allie Ginwala has been the audience engagement editor for the Concord Monitor since March 2021. She manages the opinion section and oversees various community and audience engagement initiatives including the Monitor’s reader advisory board, annual Impact Report, the News for Your Neighbor program, and an opinion writing workshop series.

A New Hampshire native, she graduated from UNH and has written for several New Hampshire publications, including The Hippo Press and Keene Sentinel. Before joining the Monitor, she earned her master’s degree from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, and coordinated The Open Newsroom, an initiative in NYC to make local news more collaborative.

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Tim Griggs

Tim is the founder and CEO of Blue Engine Collaborative, a coaching and consulting organization that has helped thousands of publishers around the globe generate hundreds of millions of dollars in incremental revenue to support good journalism. Tim understands the power that comes from a helping hand in the face of needed transformational change. He’s the former head of revenue products at The New York Times, where he was responsible for growing the digital subscription business and all other digital revenue products. In his 15 years with The New York Times, he also served as director of strategic planning and was the executive editor of a local NYT-owned newspaper in Wilmington, N.C. He’s also served as publisher of the Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan startup based in Austin, Texas.

Tim is a former coach in the Media Transformation Challenge at Harvard University and the Knight-Lenfest Newsroom Initiative at UNC-Chapel Hill; former program lead for the Table Stakes for commercial television program at the Cronkite School at Arizona State University; co-creator of the American Press Institute’s Better News hub; and co-author of Table Stakes: Getting in the Game of News.

He’s a recovering Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu addict and hopes to make his children laugh at least once per day.

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Timothy Dwyer

Timothy Dwyer is the president & publisher of The Day.

Dwyer began his career at The Boston Globe while a student at Northeastern University. Upon graduating from Northeastern with a degree in history, The Globe hired him as a staff writer. After seven years at the Globe covering everything from cops to politics, Dwyer joined the staff of the Philadelphia Inquirer. He received the George Polk Award for national reporting, along with colleague Robert Frump, in 1983 for a series of investigative stories on the U.S. maritime industry.

He was a national reporter based in New Orleans and a foreign correspondent based in London while at The Inquirer before joining the sports staff as a general assignment reporter. He served as deputy sports editor, a general sports columnist and sports editor. His work has appeared in The Best American Sports Writing literal anthology. Dwyer covered three Winter Olympics games, the World Series, the Super Bowl, the Stanley Cup Finals, the NBA playoffs, the NCAA basketball tournament, the Ryder Cup, the America’s Cup and World Cup skiing.

After 20 years at the Inquirer, he became a metro reporter at The Washington Post. Dwyer covered President Bush’s second inauguration, Hurricane Katrina, the Virginia Tech massacre, and the trial of the only terrorist convicted in connection with 9-11, Zacarias Moussaoui.

He became Executive Editor of The Day in July 2007, and President and Publisher in February 2019.

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