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• Return to Citizens Media Summit index Rob Runett, as NAA’s Director of Electronic Media Communications, analyzes business and content strategies employed by online publishers. He oversees the Web and e-mail communications products produced for New Media Federation members. Those products include The Digital Edge Web site (www.digitaledge.org), a storehouse for reports and articles about such topics as online classified advertising, sales techniques, user registration and paid content. He also compiles and distributes an e-mail update that keeps members in touch with the latest online business news,trends and research. Rob manages NAA’s annual Digital Edge Awards competition and co-plans the association’s digital-media conference, CONNECTIONS. Rob joined the NAA in April 1998 following two years as a reporter and editor at Phillips Business Information, Potomac, MD. As editor of min’s (media industry newsletter) New Media Report, a biweekly publication, he covered the online initiatives of broadcasters and magazine and newspaper publishers. Rob graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Maryland at College Park in 1995. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the College of Journalism. Jonathan Weber once told a reporter upon launching his latest venture, New West: “Any start-up is risky, but it’s more fun than working for Time Inc.” Weber was the co-founder and editor in chief of The Industry Standard, a weekly business news magazine and online service that rocketed to prominence in the late 1990s only to suffer along with the rest of the dot-com economy in 2001. He moved to Missoula, Montana, to serve as the first T. Anthony Pollner Distinguished Professor in January 2002 at the University of Montana Journalism School. He quickly became fascinated by the myriad issues associated with growth and change in the region but was also frustrated by the lack of quality media devoted to those issues. In 2004 he began to think in earnest about how the dramatic changes underway in the media world might create an opportunity for a new kind of publication about the Rocky Mountain region. The result was NewWest.net, an online publication derived from citizen journalism efforts that is currently based in Missoula, Boulder, Salt Lake City and northern Idaho. Weber has also served eight years as a writer and editor at the Los Angeles Times and was a co-founder of Geneva-based international affairs publication World Link. Barbara Bry is the founding CEO and editor of VoiceofSanDiego.org, an independent, nonprofit news and information source for the San Diego region. She was vice president of business development for Proflowers.com, which she joined in 1998 as the person responsible for early marketing and business development strategies. Proflowers.com, now known as Provide Commerce, completed its initial public offering in December 2003 and reported over $120 million in revenue for its last fiscal year. Bry was also a co-founder and board member of ATCOM, the pioneer in developing Internet kiosks and high-speed Internet access in hotel rooms. In September 1999, ATCOM was sold to CAIS Internet at a value of $85 million. Though Bry’s early career was as a business and political writer for the Sacramento Bee and the Los Angeles Times, it was her young daughter and her need for more stable hours that found her exploring business ventures. Bry took up an offer in 1986 to run the newly founded CONNECT Program in Technology and Entrepreneurship at the University of California, San Diego. CONNECT was meant to provide entrepreneurs with the resources and management and marketing skills they needed, and it was through this program that Bry came to lead ATCOM’s Internet project. In 1989, Bry also founded UCSD’s Athena, San Diego’s premier organization for women technology executives and entrepreneurs. She earned her bachelor’s degree in sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and her MBA at Harvard Business School. Mark Potts, former business editor and reporter for The Washington Post and co-founder of washingtonpost.com, has been exploring the possibilities of online media since 1992. Recently, with the emergence of blogs, citizens’ journalism and faster broadband Internet access, Potts and his colleagues started Backfence.com in Reston and McLean, two of Virginia’s more affluent cities. He now serves as chairman and chief creative officer of the project. Backfence.com operates with an ad base and list of contributors within the communities it covers, and there are plans to expand nationally. Potts was a member of the founding team of the @Home Network and is a pioneer in the development of new forms of online media. He was also vice president and chief product officer for Cahners Business Information (now Reed Business Information), the nation’s largest trade publisher, where he managed Cahners Digital and oversaw the development of 120 trade magazine Web sites, including Variety.com and PublishersWeekly.com. As a consultant, he has developed strategies and products for The Washington Post Co., New Century Network, Classified Ventures, Disney’s Infoseek/Go Network and leading Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Potts has also been a reporter and editor at the Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Examiner and The Associated Press. J-Lab
is a center of the University of Maryland Philip Merrill College
of Journalism. It is a spin-off of the Pew Center for Civic Journalism
(www.pewcenter.org). © 2004
University of Maryland Philip Merrill College of Journalism
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