About J-Learning

J-Learning is your how-to guide for hyper-local community media.

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J-Lab Staff

Jan Schaffer, Executive Director | E-mail: jans AT j-lab DOT org
Jan Schaffer, former Business Editor and a Pulitzer Prize winner for The Philadelphia Inquirer, is executive director of J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism and one of the nation’s leading thinkers in the journalism reform movement. She left daily journalism in 1994 to lead pioneering journalism initiatives in the areas of civic journalism, interactive and participatory journalism and citizen media ventures. She launched J-Lab in 2002 to help newsrooms use innovative computer technologies to engage people in important public issues. J-Lab is a center of American University's School of Communication. As a federal court reporter, she helped write a series that won freedom for a man wrongly convicted of five murders. The stories led to the civil rights convictions of six Philadelphia homicide detectives and won several national journalism awards, including the 1978 Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal for Public Service. More...

Andrew Pergam Editorial Director | E-mail: andrew AT j-lab DOT org
Andrew Pergam, a recovering broadcast journalist and managing editor, is the Editorial Director of J-Lab. In this role, he works with J-Lab grantees and oversees the creation of new learning tools for professional and citizen journalists. Most recently, he led the strategic growth and editorial operations of NBCConnecticut.com. Before that, he spent years as an intrepid television reporter, whose subjects ranged from high-profile federal corruption trials to tic-tac-toe-playing chickens. Andy earned a master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and serves on the school’s alumni board. As an undergrad, he studied writing and political science at Johns Hopkins University. When not focusing on innovations in journalism, he works on his gourmet cooking skills. In accepting the J-Lab position, he officially abandoned his hopes of making it on the professional tennis circuit. Andy and his wife Jen are natives of the D.C. suburbs.

Anna Tauzin Web & Social Media Editor | E-mail: anna AT j-lab DOT org
Anna Tauzin is J-Lab's Web and Social Media Editor. She is responsible for managing the center's five Web sites, producing video and audio content for distribution and designing in Flash and for print publications. She has a passion for social media as well as First Amendment law and media ethics. Anna is concerned over the lack of independent investigative news organizations around the country but especially in smaller communities. She holds an MA in Journalism from American University and a BA in Mass Communication from Texas State University. Anna is unapologetically Texan and loves music and collections of short stories.

Todd Van Doren Assistant Director of Operations | E-mail: todd AT j-lab DOT org
Todd Van Doren is J-Lab’s Assistant Director of Operations. He graduated from American University with a dual-major Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and International Studies. With a growing appreciation for the role J-Lab plays in new media, Todd’s contribution to the team comes in the form of managing the accounting expertise, working with J-Lab’s affiliate American University’s School of Communication, and maintaining his unofficial office title of “numbers guy.” On his own, he is completing the necessary coursework and preparing to sit for the CPA exam. Todd is a native of Washington State, but has lived in the DC area for the past 5 years.

Hop Studios

Susannah Gardner is a Web designer and developer at Hop Studios (hopstudios.com), an Internet consulting firm with offices in both Pasadena, Calif., and Vancouver, British Columbia. She authored Buzz Marketing with Blogs for Dummies (buzzmarketingblogs.com), which was published in March 2005, and co-wrote two other Internet-publishing guides: Dreamweaver MX 2004 for Dummies and Teach Yourself Visually: Dreamweaver MX 2004. As a graduate of the University of Southern California, Gardner has played many roles in the Annenberg School for Communication – particularly in its online program – and has served as lecturer, director and editor for a variety of projects. She also helped to set up the Web site for the Los Angeles Times as both an electronic editor and multimedia director.

Travis F. Smith is a partner at Hop Studios. Also a graduate of USC, has been a long-time online journalism lecturer in the Annenberg School and had been the Online Journalism Review’s Paris bureau chief. Smith previously helped to run Variety.com and the Los Angeles Times Web site, which he helped to create in 1994. He has spoken on a number of panels regarding blogging, subscription-based revenue models and online journalism. Smith’s avid enthusiasm for the Internet also finds him maintaining at least three blogs, including Unvarnished (hopstudios.com/nep/unvarnished).

Colophon

Gardner and Smith were responsible for all the writing on the site at its launch, in addition to crafting the design and the functionality of the J-Learning site. Hop Studios specializes in content intensive, community-based Web sites, and can be reached via its Web site at hopstudios.com.

The site runs on Expression Engine 1.3, a blog and content management system developed by PMachine that's as flexible as it is affordable. It's also running a custom article rating module developed for Expression Engine by Mitchell Kimbrough of solspace.com. The site content was organized using MediaWiki for internal collaboration and shared editing, and Basecamp for project management. The site is hosted by the good folks at Nexcess.net.