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 Executive
Director
J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism
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 (www.J-Lab.org)
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 at the University of Maryland’s College
of Journalism to help newsrooms use innovative computer technologies
to engage people in important public issues. The center now spotlights
new
forms of digital storytelling on www.J-Lab.org.
It rewards innovative practices through the $16,000 Knight-Batten Awards
for Innovations in Journalism. It funds cutting-edge citizen media start-ups
through its New Voices project (www.J-NewVoices.org).
It has also built a web tutorial on how to launch community news sites
(www.J-Learning.org).
J-Lab is the successor to the Pew Center for Civic Journalism, a $14
million project Schaffer led for 10 years. The center (www.pewcenter.org)
helped to fund more than 120 pilot projects that developed new reporting
techniques to engage people better in public life. Both centers work
with print and electronic journalists.
She brings more than 30 years of journalism experience to her work. Schaffer
joined The Inquirer in 1972 after earning a masters degree from the Medill
School of Journalism, Northwestern University. She held range of reporting
and editing positions on the city desk, the national desk and the business news
department.
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.
Also while covering federal courts, she broke the Philadelphia Abscam
story about the FBI sting operation that used agents posing as Arab sheiks.
She was sentenced to jail for six months for refusing to reveal her sources;
the sentence was stayed on appeal.
As Business Editor, she directed the reporting and editing of two investigative
series that were named Pulitzer finalists, one on pharmaceutical pricing
and one on abuses in the nation's non-profit sector.
Currently,
she serves as a speaker, trainer, author, consultant and Web publisher
on the future of journalism and is a regular discussion leader for the
American Press Institute and other industry organizations. She is married
to a Smithsonian Magazine editor and has two young children.
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