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New Hampshire Center for Public Interest Journalism’s West joins INN’s board

By Jules Shapiro, Institute for Nonprofit News | June 18, 2018

Andrew Cunningham/Franklin Pierce University

Nancy West, executive director of the New Hampshire Center for Public Interest Journalism, right, is pictured with InDepthNH.org columnist and consultant Bob Charest.

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By jules, Director of Communications and Marketing |

ORLANDO — June 14, 2018 —Nancy West, executive director of New Hampshire Center for Public Interest Journalism, is joining the Institute for Nonprofit News board of directors as one of three directors elected at INN’s annual meeting.

Along with West, INN member news organizations re-elect Marcia Parker, publisher of CALmatters, and Norberto Santana, publisher of Voice of Orange County.West replaces Lee Keogh, editor-in-chief of NJ Spotlight, who did not seek re-election. The three will each serve two-year terms starting June 2018 and running through June 2020.

Sixty INN members were able to vote for a total of five candidates with three votes each. Other candidates who ran were Tom Gallagher of Religion News Service and Daniel Heimpel of The Chronicle for Social Change.

The INN board has six elected and five appointed members.

Other members of the INN board include: Laura Frank, president and general manager of news at Rocky Mountain PBS, INN board chair; Brant Houston, Knight Chair of Investigative Reporting at the College of Media at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, an INN founder and board secretary; Reginald Chua, executive editor of editorial operations, data & innovation at Thomson Reuters and board treasurer; appointed members Neal Shapiro, president and chief executive officer of New York public media provider WNET; Bruce Theriault, president and chief executive officer of New York public media provider WNET and Hsiu Mei Wong, management group member at PA Consulting Group; and elected members Anne Galloway, founder and editor of VTDigger.org in Vermont; and Sheila Krumholz, executive editor of the Center for Responsive Politics. More information about the full INN board can be found here.

Nancy West
Executive Director, New Hampshire Center for Public Interest Journalism

Nancy West founded the nonprofit New Hampshire Center for Public Interest Journalism almost three years ago and is the executive editor of its website InDepthNH.org, with a mission to hold government accountable and give voice to marginalized people, places and ideas. West has won many awards for government, business and investigative reporting over the years. Much of her reporting over the years has focused on the criminal justice system, child abuse and mental health. She started out with very little money and InDepthNH.org has steadily gained readers and respect and is now on the verge of figuring out how to bring in enough money to pay people and grow. The need is great here in this news desert. West is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. She is a mother and grandmother and is passionate about always telling truth to power and then hoping for the best.

Marcia Parker
Publisher, CALmatters

Before joining CALmatters more than a year ago as Publisher and Chief Operating Officer, Marcia Parker was Executive Director for Content for Penton Technology, overseeing a dozen tech news sites for business professionals and a thriving content marketing studio. She has consulted on content strategy for a variety of digital media companies and startups and serve as a mentor to several Silicon Valley start-ups and media start-ups at the Matter accelerator in San Francisco.

Parker is also an adjunct lecturer on innovation at Northwestern University’s San Francisco campus, an active member of the Online News Association, and proudly serve on the selection committee for the Stanford Knight Journalism Fellows.

A veteran digital journalist, she previously held leadership roles as Editorial Director for State, a global opinion network in London; West Coast Editorial Director for Patch, where she started and ran 150 hyperlocal news sites in California and Washington state; launch director for CIR’s California Watch state investigative unit, and Managing Editor of the Contra Costa Times newspapers. Parker also taught at and served for several years as Assistant Dean of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, another community she constantly draw on.

Norberto Santana
Publisher, Voice of Orange County

Norberto Santana Jr., is an award-winning investigative reporter with nearly two decades reporting experience, most recently engaging Orange County government institutions and decision makers as the founding publisher of the nonprofit digital newsroom, Voice of OC. As publisher, Santana oversees all newsroom, engagement and fundraising operations and also writes a weekly Opinion column about Orange County government. In 2017, the Orange County Press Club recognized Santana as Orange County’s best columnist.

Before founding Voice of OC in 2009, Santana was a lead investigative reporter for the Orange County Register from 2004-2009, focusing on county government. He’s spent nearly two decades just focusing on local governments across Southern California, previously as a staff writer with outlets such as the San Diego Union Tribune and the San Bernardino County Sun.

Santana began his journalistic career in the early 1990s as an apprentice reporter with Congressional Quarterly in Washington, D.C. covering daily floor action in the U.S. Congress and followed that up with a stint covering the territorial Senate for the U.S. Virgin Islands Daily News. In addition to his experience as a journalist, the Southern California native has a master’s in Latin American Studies, has worked as an elections analyst on National Endowment for Democracy programs across Latin America and was one of the founders of CubaNet.org, a website featuring the work of dissident journalists inside Cuba that has operated since 1995.

About INN:

The Institute for Nonprofit News is a growing national network of more than 160 nonprofit news organizations dedicated to providing investigative and public service reporting. INN was founded in 2009 to foster a new collective of newsrooms serving the public interest. Today it functions as an innovation network, helping members develop new ways to support journalism and engage communities, providing business, technology and leadership support and a framework for collaboration. INN’s work helps newsrooms bring investigative and civic news to more people, hold the powerful accountable and strengthen democracy.

Contact:

For more information, please contact Sue Cross, Executive Director and CEO of Institute for Nonprofit News, at sue@inn.org.

ABOUT JULES

Jules Shapiro directs and leads INN’s marketing and communications strategies. She will expand INN member communications about benefits, services and INN Labs, increase INN’s advocacy for public service news, provide marketing materials for members to use in their own communications and work with subject experts to expand INN’s knowledge-base materials, case studies, member profiles and other communications. Shapiro has held nonprofit leadership positions for more than five years, including director of digital marketing for the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s) in New York, where she helped agencies with social media and negotiated a million dollars annually of in-kind media partnership deals. She most recently led marketing and communications at the East Bay SPCA in Oakland, CA, running digital fundraising initiatives and setting revenue records. Shapiro also served as a digital strategist for Next Generation Fundraising, an agency that partners with public media and other nonprofits on fundraising strategies. When she isn’t helping INN members, she can be found volunteering at animal shelters and pursuing her design communications certificate from UCLA Extension. Shapiro has a bachelor of science degree in journalism from San Jose State University, a master of science degree in publishing from Pace University in New York, and an executive leadership certificate from the American Association of Advertising Agencies. She lives in Los Angeles with her two dogs and one cat and is based out of INN’s Los Angeles office.