Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum

Protecting a Free Press while Journalism is in Turmoil
Wednesday, December 3, 2008, 7:30 p.m.
at the Gerald R. Ford Library

GIL KLEIN
Moderator
Gil Klein is director of the National Press Club's Centennial Forums. For 22 years he was a national correspondent with the Media General News Service, writing for 25 newspapers in the Southeast including The Richmond Times-Dispatch, The Tampa Tribune and The Winston-Salem Journal. He was National Press Club president in 1994 and wrote the Club's centennial history, Reliable Sources: 100 Years at the National Press Club.

DICK RYAN
Richard A. Ryan retired as Chief Washington Correspondent for The Detroit News in January, 2006 after spending nearly 40 years with the newspaper, 37 of them in Washington. He was assigned to the Washington Bureau in 1969 at the beginning of the Nixon Administration and reported on each of the six succeeding presidential administrations. During his 37 years in Washington, Ryan covered national politics, the Supreme Court, Congress, the White House and made several reporting trips overseas, primarily to the Middle East. Ryan was president of the National Press Club in 2001 and in 2005 served as president of The Gridiron Club, a journalistic organization composed of 65 Washington newspaper, magazine and television correspondents.

JONATHAN WOLMAN
Jonathan Wolman is editor and publisher of The Detroit News and publisher of its website, detnews.com. He has held the position since June 2007. Jon worked for 31 years with The Associated Press where he served as Washington bureau chief, managing editor and executive editor. He retired in 2004 as senior vice president and served for three years as editorial page editor of The Denver Post. He served on a committee of five Washington editors which negotiated principles of combat coverage with the Pentagon following the 1991 Iraq war. He is a member of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and The Gridiron Club, an association of Washington journalists, and he served as a Pulitzer Prize juror, chairing the national reporting jury in 1999.

VINCENT DUFFY
Vincent Duffy has been the news director at Michigan Radio since May 2007. In his first year of leading the Michigan Radio news room, the news team won more than three dozen national, regional and state awards including a national Sigma Delta Chi award from the Society of Professional Journalists for a month long series investigating education in Michigan. Duffy has won five national Edward R. Murrow awards for his radio journalism, a National Headliner award and many other national, regional and state awards. Duffy's toured the world as a radio journalist covering news in Australia, Switzerland, South Africa and most recently Ghana while covering a University of Michigan delegation led by U of M President Mary Sue Coleman.

OMARI GARDNER
Omari Gardner is news editor/digital media at the Detroit Free Press. He joined the Free Press’ copy desk in 1999 after working at the Tallahassee Democrat as a copy editor. He became an assistant business editor in 2005. He joined the Web department in 2006 while as the Free Press began growing its digital operation in earnest.

MARLA DRUTZ
Marla Drutz was named Vice President and General Manager of WDIV-TV Detroit in 2008. Drutz joined the WDIV Local 4 family after spending 19 years at WXYZ-TV where she was Director of Programming and Special Projects for the E.W. Scripps Company. Drutz has received numerous professional awards including Emmy Awards, first-place awards from the Michigan Association of Broadcasters and a “Top Woman in Management” Award from the Detroit Chapter of American Women in Radio and Television. She was selected as one of Detroit’s “Top 40 Under 40” by Crain’s Detroit Business. Drutz was also selected by Corp! Magazine as one of Michigan’s Top Businesswomen.