Is there a crisis in world journalism?

Professor Madeleine Atkins

Professor Madeleine Atkins became Vice-Chancellor of Coventry University in September 2004. She studied law and history as an undergraduate at Cambridge University before returning to higher education to complete her PhD at Nottingham University. Following various post-doctoral research positions, she became a lecturer in education management at Newcastle University, developing a keen interest in the use of new technologies to support effective learning.Regionally, she is Deputy Chair of Advantage West Midlands' Council for Innovation and Technology and Deputy Chair of the West Midlands Higher Education Association (WMHEA). 

 Cui Bo

Associate professor of Zhejiang University of Media and Communications, PH.D of Media Studies and postdoctoral fellow of Tsinghua University. Interested in risk society and information management.

 Nick Davies

Nick Davies has been named Journalist of the Year, Reporter of the Year and Feature Writer of the Year for his investigations into crime, drugs, poverty and other social issues. Hundreds of journalists have attended his masterclass on the techniques of investigative reporting. He has been a journalist since 1976 and is currently a freelance, working regularly as special correspondent for The Guardian. He also makes TV documentaries; he was formerly an on-screen reporter for World In Action. His four books include White Lies (about a racist miscarriage of justice in Texas) and Dark Heart (about poverty in Britain). He was the first winner of the Martha Gellhorn award for investigative reporting for his work on failing schools and recently won the award for European Journalism for his work on drugs policy. Flat Earth News was published as a hardback in February 2008. The paperback came out in January 2009 and, in May 2009, won the first Bristol Festival of Ideas book award, to be given annually for a book which "presents new, important and challenging ideas, which is rigorously argued, and which is engaging and accessible." It is now being translated into Thai, Vietnamese, Greek, Dutch and Chinese.

Dr Suzanne Franks 

Suzanne Franks is Director of Research at Kent University's Centre for Journalism. At the start of her journalism career she worked with the BBC as a researcher on documentaries and then joined the Television Current Affairs department, producing programmes such as Newsnight, Watchdog, The Money Programme and Panorama. In the 1990s she left the BBC to start an independent production company, Sevenday Productions, which amongst other things was awarded the first outside contract for the televising of Parliament. She was based in Westminster, responsible for all the coverage from the Lords, Commons and committees until 2001. The company also developed a web business specialising in political coverage and was awarded the first webcasting contract from Downing Street. 

Professor Jeff Jarvis

Jeff Jarvis is an American journalist. In 2006 he became is associate professor and director of the interactive journalism program at the City University of New York's new Graduate School of Journalism. He writes a new media column for The Guardian and hosts its Media Talk USA podcast. Jarvis is the creator of the popular weblog BuzzMachine, which tracks developments in new media and chronicles some of the author's personal obsessions. He gained national notoriety when he wrote about his negative experiences in dealing with Dell Computer's customer support system on the website. He has consulted for the New York Times Company at About.com, where he worked on content development and strategy. Prior to that, Jarvis was creator and founding editor of Entertainment Weekly; Sunday editor and associate publisher of the New York Daily News; TV critic for TV Guide and People; a columnist on the San Francisco Examiner; assistant city editor and reporter for the Chicago Tribune; and a reporter for Chicago Today.

Professor Richard Keeble 

Richard Keeble is a professor of journalism at Lincoln University. He is also a director of the Institute of Communication Ethics and co-edits their quarterly journal, Ethical Space. He has written a number of articles on the journalism of George Orwell and is currently co-editing for Routledge a collection of papers on literary journalists - such as Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, William Hazlitt, Willa Cather, Angela Carter, Truman Capote - called The Journalistic Imagination. He writes for a number websites such as www.medialens.org, www.anti-spin.com, www.stateofnature.org, www.the-latest.com and www.fifth-estate-online.com.uk He is a member of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom and contributes to its journal, Free Press, and he is also a member of the Association for Journalism Education. He has recently given papers at conferences in Sarajevo; Panchgani, India; Piran, Slovenia; Haifa, Israel; Fehervassurgo, Hungary; Kiev, Ukraine and Alushta, Crimea.

Professor Tim Luckhurst

Tim Luckhurst is a Professor of Journalism at the University of Kent.A former editor and deputy editor of The Scotsman. He began his career as a journalist on BBC Radio 4's Today Programme for which he produced, edited and reported from the UK and abroad. Prof. Luckhurst covered the Romanian Revolution and the First Gulf War for BBC Radio and reported on the liberation of Kosovo and the fall of Slobodan Milosevic for The Scotsman. He was the BBC's Washington Producer during the first year of the Clinton presidency and returned to the UK to become a senior member of the team that designed and launched BBC Radio Five Live. He has won two Sony Radio Awards for news broadcasting.He writes about topics including politics, media and motorcycling for newspapers, magazines and websites including the Guardian, Independent, Times, Toronto Globe and Mail, Los Angeles Times and The New Republic.

Kevin Marsh (Chair)

Kevin Marsh became Editor of the BBC College of Journalism in February 2006. One of his first tasks was to establish an online presence for college which launched officially in January 2007. He joined the BBC as a news trainee in 1978 and, after working in Belfast and Birmingham, joined The World At One team in June 1980.The first edition of The World This Weekend, for which he was responsible, coincided with the vote in Parliament to send the Task Force to the Falklands.Kevin then went to work for ITN and, after a short spell on News At Ten, rejoined the BBC as Deputy Editor of The World At One in 1987.He was material in introducing Today presenter James Naughtie to the BBC - as the presenter of The World At One - and relaunching the programme.Among the programme's major successes was a world exclusive interview with Salman Rushdie following the Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa on the author.Kevin was made Editor of PM in August 1989 and moved to edit The World At One in 1993 before bringing the programmes together under a single Editor in 1996.In 1998 he developed and launched Radio 4's Broadcasting House.In addition to editing The World At One, The World This Weekend, PM and Broadcasting House, he produced numerous specials for Radio 4 and has won numerous Sony Awards.He was appointed Editor of Today in November 2002.

Professor Adrian Monck 

Professor Adrian Monck is Managing Director and Head of Communications and Media at the World Economic Forum. The Forum is an independent, international organisation incorporated as a not-for-profit foundation in Geneva, Switzerland. He was educated at Oxford University and London Business School and went on to be an award-winning broadcast journalist with CBS News, ITN and Sky News. His work at Dunblane and in Bosnia received awards from the Royal Television Society, and on Rwanda won the special report gold medal, and overall festival prize at the New York International Festival. From June 2005, he was head of Journalism and Publishing at the Graduate School of Journalism at City University London, where he still teaches.

Dr Fredrick Mudhai Okoth

Fred Mudhai is a Senior Lecturer in Journalism and Global Media/Communication at Coventry University, UK. He has written research papers and memos on ICT and politics as a member of the IT and Civil Society Network of the IT and International Cooperation Program, US Social Science Research Council (2003-2005). At the Tunis (2005) World Summit on the Information Society, he received a Media Award by Panos London and Global Knowledge Partnership. He was also a category runner-up in the 2007 African Information Society Media Award.

 Dr George Nyabuga

Dr George Nyabuga is an award-winning journalist and acclaimed media trainer. Mid this year, he joined The Standard Group in Kenya as the Managing Editor, Media Convergence and has key responsibilities across the Group's multi-media platforms. In mid October, he was appointed, on top of his role as the Media Convergence Managing Editor to be the Managing Editor of the Weekend Editions of the Standard – The Standard on Saturday, and Standard on Sunday. Dr Nyabuga holds a PhD in Politics, History and Media from Coventry University in the UK and a Masters in Online Journalism from Nottingham Trent University. Nyabuga brings wide-ranging hands-on experience as a journalist in Kenya, South Africa and the US. He has taught journalism, media and cultural studies at Worcester and Coventry universities in the United Kingdom. He was a Merit Prize winner at the African Journalists of the Year Awards in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2000 and was in 1997 a Freedom Forum International Journalist-in-Residence Program award winner.

Dr David Pilsbury

David Pilsbury became Pro Vice Chancellor International of Coventry University in September 2008 with broad responsibility for developing overseas partnerships, fostering internationalization of the curriculum and promoting student and staff exchange as part of the university's international strategy. David was previously the founding Chief Executive of the Worldwide Universities Network.Established in 2001, WUN is now recognized as the leading global research alliance.Over 3,500 individuals are involved in a growing portfolio of activities that includes in excess of 70 international communities that have secured more than $40 million in funding for innovative research and educational activities. Prior to his work at WUN David was Head of Research Policy for the Higher Education Funding Council for England - the major higher education funding organization in the UK.

Judith Townsend

Judith Townsend is senior reporter at Journalism.co.uk, where she covers the digital news industry, with a particular interest in media law, regulation, ethics and press freedom. Before hand, she worked as a researcher at Al Jazeera English and as an occasional freelancer. More recently, she was deputy editor at an arts and entertainment magazine in Leeds. She now blogs at FromtheOnline.com and contributes to Global Voices Online, a website for free expression and advocacy. She holds a BA Hons in Archaeology & Anthropology from the University of Cambridge and a postgraduate diploma in newspaper journalism from City University, London.