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Urbino Project 2014 | March 28, 2024

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Professors

Program Director & Video Instructor

Steve Anderson

Steve Anderson

Steven D. Anderson, Ph.D. is a professor of converged media in the School of Media Arts & Design at James Madison University. Prior to entering academe, Anderson was the environmental reporter and weekend weathercaster for KCNC television, a network O&O station in Denver, Colorado. He also worked as a news photographer, weathercaster and news reporter at stations in Fresno, California and Fargo, North Dakota. He is an author of a textbook entitled “Exploring Electronic Media: Chronicles & Challenges” (Wiley-Blackwell Publishing). His websites have won top awards from the Broadcast Education Association (BEA Best of Festival) and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC Best of the Web Competition). Anderson is a former President of the Broadcast Education Association (BEA), the association for electronic media professors and industry professionals. He taught video in Urbino in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014, and created the websites for presentation of student work.

Multimedia Reporting

blazer

Linda Blazer (Left)

Linda Blazer is an award-winning journalist whose career has been driven by curiosity and the desire to uniquely portray events and circumstances of the world around us. Linda brings to Urbino multi-faceted experience in researching, interviewing, reporting, newswriting, and collaborating with correspondents, crews and editors as a Network News Field Producer, principally with NBC News, but also with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the Gannett Broadcasting Documentary Unit, and CNN. Her work as a free-lance educational video and TV documentary producer, reporter and writer has earned her a Georgia AP Television Award and Southeast Regional Emmy Finalist Award. Linda launched her career as an “intern” turned reporter/anchor at the NBC-affiliate in Raleigh-Durham, N.C., and has since covered news and feature stories throughout the U.S., in Canada and in Israel. She has experienced the “flip side” of journalism directing Public and Media Relations for Your Dekalb Farmers Market (Atlanta, GA), the American Shakespeare Center (Staunton, VA), and the Staunton Music Festival. She also has professional photography experience. In recent years, Linda’s insatiable curiosity has led to discovering her family roots in Abruzzo, Italy, to studying Italian, and to gaining dual Italian–American citizenship. She enjoys exploring and documenting Italian life and culture and singing in choral groups both in Italy and the U.S.

Bob Marshall

Bob Marshall

Bob Marshall is the veteran reporter, feature writer and columnist whose work at The Times-Picayune earned two Pulitzer Prizes. He was co-author of the series “Oceans of Trouble: Are the World’s Fisheries Doomed?” which won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service and the Sigma Delta Chi Award for Public Service from the Society of Professional Journalists. In 2006 Marshall’s investigations into the engineering missteps that led to the levee failures during Hurricane Katrina were among the stories for which the newspaper was honored with The Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. In 2007 Marshall was co-author of the series “Last Chance: The Fight to Save a Disappearing Coast,” about Louisiana’s coastal erosion problems, which won the 2007 John H. Oakes Prize for Environmental Reporting from Columbia University, and The National Academies of Sciences Communications Award for newspaper and magazine reporting. Today, Marshall covers environmental issues for The Lens, the New Orleans non-profit, nonpartisan public-interest newsroom dedicated to unique in-depth reporting projects. Marshall’s wide-ranging career has included covering professional and college sports, Olympics, and the outdoors beat, as well as working on special environmental projects. In addition to his newspaper work, Marshall’s professional credits include writing for Field & Stream Magazine, Men’s Journal and National Geographic Adventure. He taught reporting in Cagli in 2008 and in Urbino in 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014.

Photography

Susan Biddle

Susan Biddle

Susan Biddle was a Washington Post staff photographer for thirteen years and now freelances for the Post as well as other publications and organizations. She began her career photographing for the Peace Corps and later worked as a staff photographer for the Topeka Capital-Journal and the Denver Post. After five years at the Denver Post she left to become a White House photographer documenting the Presidency for the last year of the Reagan administration and all four years of the George H.W. Bush administration. She began working for the Washington Post in 1996. Prior to that she freelanced and her work has appeared in Time, Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, Life, National Geographic and other publications worldwide. She has participated in various book projects including Day in the Life of America, Day in the Life of Thailand, Hong Kong – Here Be Dragons, Day in the Life of the American Woman and America at Home. She has won awards with White House News Photographers Association and National Press Photographers Association. Susan taught photography in Urbino in 2012 and 2014.

Robert Reeder

Robert Reeder

Robert A. Reeder is currently mentoring graduate photojournalism students at the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, DC. Prior to that he lived and worked in Amman, Jordan and Chisinau, Moldova, photographing political struggles in the former Soviet state while also teaching at the Independent Journalism Center. He retired in 2006 following 16 years at the Washington Post as staff photographer and assistant photo editor, before going on to help start the wildly successful Politico as photo editor/photographer before moving abroad. Since graduating college at Arizona State University he’s worked as a staff photographer in Shreveport, Louisiana; Bremerton, Washington; Chicago, Illinois; Middletown, New York and Washington, DC. His work has been widely published and recognized by White House Press Photographers Association, National Press Photographers Association, as well as other organizations. This was his first year as part of the Urbino Program.

Video

Greg Luft

Greg Luft

Greg Luft chairs the Journalism and Technical Communication department at Colorado State University. His professional work before and during his academic career includes television news reporting and anchoring; documentary, educational, and corporate video production; and freelance video journalism. Before his work in academia, Luft worked in local TV news as a general assignment and investigative reporter, and news anchor in Wyoming, Florida, Oklahoma and Colorado. His independent productions focus on television writing and production, and the behavior of journalists. Greg was named a Colorado State University best teacher in 2013. He also has served in leadership roles for the Broadcast Education Association, College Media Advisors, and the Colorado Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. Greg taught video in Urbino in 2012, 2013 and 2014.

Steve Weiss

Steve Weiss

Steve Weiss is an award winning television anchor, reporter and producer of local and network television sports and news programming who utilizes his experience professionally and in the classroom. Weiss has enjoyed a distinguished broadcasting career of 25+ years as a program producer, host, and analyst for ESPN, TNN, FOX Prime Sports, Outdoor Channel and the Outdoor Life Network. In addition to sports, Weiss has appeared as a national news correspondent on the PBS and CNBC program “World Business Review.” Prior to that, he was a news reporter, anchor and producer for local television stations in Denver, Las Vegas, Shreveport, La., and Pocatello, Idaho. He has won more than 30 national and regional awards for news and marketing presentations including Associated Press, United Press International, National Press Photographer’s Association, PRSA, BMA and 15 Telly Awards recognizing excellence in corporate and cable television production. Steve Weiss is a full-time instructor and the Special Projects Coordinator in the Department of Journalism and Technical Communication at Colorado State University teaching classes in video production, newswriting, corporate multimedia production, professional communication and live event television production. This was his first year as part of the Urbino Program.

Magazine Reporting

Michael Gold

Michael Gold

Michael Gold has been a writer, editor, and manager at award-winning publications, in print and online. He started his career as a reporter at the Bergen County (NJ) Record and the Boston Herald American. He was a founding writer and editor for Science 80, which won three National Magazine Awards while he was there. In 1986, Gold co-founded Hippocrates, now called Health, where he served as managing editor and executive editor. As a consultant for West Gold Editorial, he helped conceive and launch University Business and Dwell magazines as well as Thrive, an online health network produced by Time, Inc. and AOL. Gold has consulted for Inc, PC World, Consumer Reports, Executive Travel, and others, offering management advice, guiding major renovations, and coaching editorial staff. He has served as the editor of Strings magazine, edited several jazz arranging books for Berklee Press, and helped lead the magazine launch projects and online track for the Stanford Professional Publishing Courses. He is the author of A Conspiracy of Cells, a popular, nonfiction account of a scandal in cancer research. He taught in the Urbino Program in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014.

Susan West

Susan West

Susan West is the Executive Editor of the Food & Environment Reporting Network, an award-winning non profit, non partisan newsroom that partners with major media outlets to produce in-depth stories about food, agriculture, and environmental health. With an M.S. in science journalism from the University of Missouri at Columbia, West started her career as a staff writer at Science News and Science 80. In 1986, she co-founded a popular health magazine called Hippocrates (now known as Health and owned by Time Inc.), which won four National Magazine Awards during her tenure. As a principal at West Gold Editorial consulting, she has launched magazines such as Dwell, trained online editors at websites such as BabyCenter, provided strategic guidance to publications from the New England Journal of Medicine to Acoustic Guitar, and conducted workshops for Cooking Light, Southern Accents, and many others. In 2009, she served as the founding editor of the travel magazine Afar, which was named Best Travel Magazine in North America by the Society of American Travel Writers. She has also been the executive editor of Smithsonian magazine and for many years oversaw the magazine launch projects at the Stanford Professional Publishing Course. She directed the 2011, 2012 and 2014 magazine programs. She also directed the app program in 2013.

Promotional Video

Rustin Greene

Rustin Greene

Rustin Greene spent his first career as a television writer/producer/director, earning two Los Angeles Area EMMY awards and three Cable ACE awards. Rusty is now in his second career, teaching in James Madison University’s School of Media Arts and Design. Rusty continues to write and produce, and his programs have earned several awards, including a third EMMY for a NASA education program. Rusty has been a Bridgeforth Endowed Professor, and received the JMU Alumni Association 2006 Distinguished Faculty Award. Rusty has been immersed in international education for many years, directing JMU’s London Study Abroad programs for nine years, and teaching and directing programs in Florence, Montreux, Cairo, and London. Greene taught promotional video in Urbino in 2013 and 2014.

Faculty Fellow

Barry Janes

Barry Janes

Barry Janes works and teaches electronic media theory, programming and technology at Rider University. He has been a producer, director and/or writer of more than 100 video productions, and has advised numerous corporations, non-profit organizations and municipalities. Dr. Janes’ research interests include Broadcast Programming and History, and, most recently, the effective use of computer-based asynchronous technologies in the classroom. He participated in Urbino as a Faculty Fellow. As a Fellow, Janes had regular informal access to the program faculty for pedagogical and theoretical exchanges. In addition, he participated in the program’s video module and become a resource to faculty and students where appropriate.

Italian Language and Culture

Francesca Carducci

Francesca Carducci

Francesca Carducci received her degree in Pharmacy at the University of Urbino. She teaches English and is a lecturer (CEL) in the Department of Modern Literature and Philological-Linguistic Sciences at the University of Urbino. She is a member of the CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) staff of the faculty of Computer Science and teaches in the English master’s program for Italian primary school teachers offered by the Department of Foreign Languages. Fran is originally from Buffalo, New York, and became interested in content-based teaching methodology as a consequence of her scientific background. She has revised and edited scientific articles to be published in English for years, and has created science and math courses in English for Italian students at almost every level. Francesca truly enjoys teaching both on-line and in the classroom and, after more than 20 years of living and working in Urbino, considers herself a bona fide “Urbinate.” She taught Italian language and supervised interpreters in Urbino from 2009 through 2014.