A group of innovative news leaders representing 20 diverse organizations has been selected for the 2010 Knight-McCormick Leadership Institute hosted by the Knight Digital Media Center at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism.

The 20 fellows will benefit from a unique, six-month curriculum tailored to meet their individual needs as primary digital news leaders in their organizations, according to Vikki Porter (pictured, right), director of the Knight Digital Media Center.

“We consider these to be among the best people positioned to make their organizations viable in the changing digital media landscape,” Porter said. “We want to provide them with expertise and resources that can make them even better. To do so we surveyed fellows and interviewed each one to determine their priority development areas.”

The fellows represent a diverse cross-section of the media organization landscape - major nonprofit broadcasters such as PBS, NPR and CBC,  newspapers such as the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Wichita Eagle, new startups like the St. Louis Beacon and the New Haven Independent, and new models for investigative journalism including the Center for Investigative Reporting and Investigate West.

2010 Fellows (in alphabetical order):

• Melissa Bailey, Managing Editor of the New Haven Independent.
• David Watts Barton, Editor in Chief of The Sacramento (CA) Press.
• Dan Cates, News Director at Media General’s WSPA-WYCW.
• Sherry Chisenhall, Editor and Vice President/News of The Wichita Eagle.
• Jonathan Cooper, Vice President of Content for the Journal Register Company.
• Julian Do, Director of Southern California for New America Media (NAM), a national association of ethnic media.
• Arturo Duran, former Chief Executive Officer of ImpreMedia Digital, LLC. and digital consultant.
• Brian Farnham, a founding executive of Patch Media and Editor-in-Chief of Patch.com.
• Susan Goldberg, Editor of The (Cleveland, OH) Plain Dealer.
• Rita Hibbard, Executive Director and Editor of InvestigateWest.
• Nicole Hollway, General Manager of the St. Louis Beacon.
• Holly Kernan, News Director at San Francisco-based KALW public radio.
• Damon Kiesow, Managing Editor/Online at The Telegraph in Nashua, NH.
• Christine Montgomery, Managing Editor of Public Broadcasting Service’s PBS.org.
• Rachel Nixon, Director of Digital Media for CBC News in Canada.
• Loren Omoto, Managing Editor for TBO.com, the news portal in Tampa Bay, FL.
• Robert Rosenthal, Executive Director of the Center for Investigative Reporting in California.
• Michael Skoler, Vice President of Interactive Media for Public Radio International.
• Jane Stevens, Director of Media Strategies at The World Company in Lawrence, KS.
• Matt Thompson, Editorial Product Manager at National Public Radio.

The Institute is structured to provide several layers of development opportunities for the fellows beginning with a July 29-31 convening in Los Angeles for an intensive foundation in such areas as audience engagement and growth, partnership and collaboration, revenue models and strategic modeling.

After the July sessions, the fellows will participate in ongoing monthly virtual learning sessions and one-on-one mentoring with leading experts in their specific areas of interest. The group will return to LA in January for final sessions.

The KDMC is a partnership of USC Annenberg and the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism funded by the James L. and John S. Knight Foundation. In addition to Knight Foundation’s funding, the Institute will be supported by a generous grant from the McCormick Foundation.