Bob Ryan retired from full–time duty at the Boston Globe in 2012 following a 44-year career in which he covered the Boston Celtics for 14 years, wrote numerous features and was a columnist for his final 23 years. He has also had a three decade affiliation with ESPN.

He is a recipient of the Curt Gowdy Media Award from the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, and has received many other lifetime citations, most notably the Red Smith Award for lifetime achievement from the Associated Press Sports Editors and a selection`to the National Sports Media Hall of Fame.

He is also a charter member of the New England Basketball Hall of Fame. He covered 11 Olympics (six summer and five winter) and has covered or attended 32 Final Fours. He is the author of 12 books, including collaborations with Celtics luminaries Bob Cousy, John Havlicek and Larry Bird. His autobiography SCRIBE, My Life In Sports, was published in 2014.

Janine Weisman has been an adjunct professor and journalism faculty adviser to the student newspaper at Roger Williams University since 2013. She is an independent journalist after having spent 25 years at The Newport Daily News, including 13 years as editor of the Newport Mercury.

Managing Editor. She joined Journalist’s Resource in 2015 after working as a reporter for newspapers and radio stations in the U.S. and Central America, including the Orlando Sentinel and Philadelphia Inquirer. Her work also has appeared in publications such as USA TODAY, the New York Times and Chicago Tribune. She has received a multitude of national, regional and state-level journalism awards and was named as a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2013 for an investigative series she led that focused on
hazing and other problems at Florida A&M University. Ordway was a 2014-15 Fellow of Harvard’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism. She also serves on the board of directors to the national Education Writers Association. @deniseordway

Charles Sennott is the Founder, Chief Executive Officer and Editor of The GroundTruth Project. He is an award-winning correspondent, best-selling author and editor with 30 years of experience in international, national and local journalism.

A leading social entrepreneur in new media, Sennott started GroundTruth in 2014 and in 2017 launched the non-profit organization’s new, local reporting initiative, Report for America. Reporting on the front lines of wars and insurgencies in at least 20 countries, including the post 9-11 conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq and the 2011 Arab Spring.

Sennott began his career in local news covering cops, courts and municipal government. Sennott’s deep experience reporting led him to dedicate himself to supporting and training the next generation of journalists to tell the most important stories of our time.

Sennott is also the co-founder of GlobalPost, an acclaimed international news website.
Previously, Sennott worked for many years as a reporter at the New York Daily News and then the Boston Globe, where he became Bureau Chief for the Middle East and Europe, and a leader of the paper’s international coverage from 1997 to 2005. Sennott has also served as a correspondent for PBS FRONTLINE and the PBS NewsHour.

He has contributed news analysis to the BBC, CNN, NPR, MSNBC and others. He is a graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.

Sarah Betancourt is reporter who covers immigration for CommonWealth Magazine. Prior to joining Commonwealth, Sarah was a reporter for The Associated Press in Boston, and a correspondent with The Boston Globe and The Guardian. She has written about immigration, social justice, and health policy for outlets like NBC, The Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, and the New York Law Journal. Sarah has broken stories like the cancellation of medical deferred action by USCIS, a protected status that allows sick children and their parents to remain and work in the US legally. She has also covered the connections between Massachusetts businesses and DHS, how databases are used by police departments to procure information on immigrants, and uncovered the spread of an infectious diseases in family detention centers, beginning in the Obama administration.

Sarah received a 2018 Investigative Reporters and Editors Award for her role as researcher for ProPublica in the ProPublica/NPR story, “They Got Hurt at Work and Then They Got Deported,” which explored how Florida employers and insurance companies were getting out of paying workers compensation benefits by using a state law to ensure injured undocumented workers were arrested or deported. Sarah attended Emerson College for a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Communication, and Columbia University for a fellowship and Master’s degree with the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism.

Steph Solis covers state government and immigration for MassLive. She has written about ICE courthouse arrests, efforts to deport sick foreign-born children who had deferred action and the investigation into Registry of Motor Vehicles practices.