Tag: 2016

Karin Caifa is a Washington-based reporter/producer for CNN Newsource, the affiliate news service of CNN. Karin’s live reports and content are distributed to more than 900 local stations domestically, as well as CNN platforms on-air and online worldwide. Her live political reports are also heard on Westwood One radio stations across the U.S.

Since joining CNN in 2007, Karin has been on-scene to cover a variety of major news events, including extensive coverage of the 2008, 2012 and 2016 presidential campaigns, the inaugurations of President Obama and his final State of the Union address, the historic visit of Pope Francis to Cuba, and the Paris terror attacks of November 2015. Previously, she worked for the networks of NBC News in New York, and her introduction to campaign coverage came as a member of the original class of NBC/MSNBC campaign embeds in 2004.

Karin holds a bachelor’s degree in international studies from the Johns Hopkins University, and a bachelor’s degree in clarinet performance from the Peabody Conservatory of Music. Karin earned her master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York, and has been an adjunct faculty member at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

She has been a fellow at the Loyola (Los Angeles) Law School Journalist Law School, the Ohio State University Kiplinger Program in Public Affairs Journalism, the Wharton Seminars for Business Journalists, and the Strictly Financials program at the Reynolds Center for Business Journalism at Arizona State University.

Twitter: @karincaifaCNN
Instagram: @karincnn

Jennie O’Hagan has been working in Los Angeles television since 1992 when she began as an intern on the then brand new KTLA Morning News. The “Morning News” was the first of it’s kind, local morning news / talk show to rival and soon beat national programs like Today, Good Morning, America, etc. As of February 2016, the KTLA Morning News is still the #1 morning program from 4-10am in Los Angeles. After becoming the KTLA Morning News’ first Entertainment Producer, Jennie then found a new challenge in Public Relations and worked as an agency Account Executive and dabbled in Radio Affiliate relations for the next several years. As TV was her first love, Jennie decided to become a full-time freelancer so she could do a little bit of everything. Her year now consists of several projects, including; Executive Producer of KTLA-TV’s LIVE Red Carpet shows for the Primetime Emmys, Grammys and Oscars and the commercial free broadcast of America’s New Year’s Celebration, the Rose Parade. Jennie is also the publicist for the OC FAIR Pacific Amphitheater Summer Concert Series and enjoys contract work both in publicity and video production for Disneyland. She fits in as much teaching and media training as she can and has recently began blogging for Disney’s babble.com publication. Jennie is excited about what media was, is and will become and loves being part of the conversation.

Phil is a digital producer at ESPN. He anchors the “Official Visit,” a daily recruiting show on ESPN.com, and produces much of the college football and basketball recruiting content for ESPN’s RecruitingNation. He also interviews many of the athletes, coaches and entertainers in Bristol for stories on ESPN.com. Prior to joining ESPN, Phil was an anchor/reporter at DigitalSports, covering high school sports in and around Washington, D.C. for six years. He majored in both accounting and marketing at George Mason, while earning a minor in economics. Phil graduated from nearby Lake Braddock Secondary School. He is thrilled to be at the Washington Journalism and Media Conference and can’t wait to meet the promising journalists here.

Jennifer Bendery has been a White House and congressional reporter for The Huffington Post since April 2011. She covered Congress for four years for Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper, and spent four years covering the Texas Legislature for GalleryWatch in Austin, TX. She also worked in book publishing for three years in San Francisco and was a health care policy re-porter for two years in Providence, R.I.

As the Founder of the Urban website and music destination, AllHipHop.com, Grouchy Greg Watkins is fulfilling his childhood dream as an entertainment business pioneer and entrepreneur. With his partner, Chuck “Jigsaw” Creekmur, Watkins has built AllHipHop.com into the Internet voice of Hip-Hop culture. Born in Albany, N.Y. and raised in Newark, Delaware, Watkins was intrigued by Hip-Hop starting at the age of six. He briefly flirted with a recording career as a member of his rap group, The Outfit, and in 1993 launched his label, Oblique Recordings. While pursuing a career as a music label owner, Watkins attended the Art Institute of Philadelphia, studying audio engineering and marketing and graduating with an Associate’s degree in Music Business. AllHipHop.com officially launched in 1997, and this year Watkins and Creekmur are commemorating their 19th anniversary. AllHipHop.com has won several awards, including the Rising Star Award from Black Enterprise, as well as a coveted BET Award in 2009 and it was the first one the network awarded. The website was recently (2015) nominated for another BET Award and has been nominated every year since the category was created. Watkins has reported on various topics relating to Hip-Hop culture, has been featured on numerous radio shows and has been cited in print, and TV shows ranging from Billboard to The New York Times, as well as CNN, MTV, BET, FOX, Fuse, E!, TVone and others. Almost 19 years after forming AllHipHop.com, Watkins’ holding company Syncing Sun has launched CollegeHipHop.com.

Hoda Kotb is the co-host of the fourth hour of NBC’s TODAY alongside Kathie Lee Gifford. Since the duo teamed up in 2008, the Gifford-Kotb hour has been hailed as “appointment television” by Entertainment Weekly, “uproarious and irresistible” by People, and “TODAY’s happy hour” by USA Today.

Since joining NBC in 1998, Kotb has served as a correspondent for “Dateline NBC.” She has covered a variety of domestic and international news stories, as well as human-interest stories and features across all NBC News platforms.

A New York Times bestselling author, Kotb has penned three books: Hoda: How I Survived War Zones, Bad Hair, Cancer and Kathie Lee; Ten Years Later: Six People Who Faced Adversity and Transformed Their Lives; and Where They Belong.

Kotb is a three-time Emmy winner, and she has also received three Gracie Awards, a Peabody Award, and an Edward R. Murrow Award. As an 8-year breast cancer survivor, Kotb is involved in several initiatives to raise awareness about the disease. Kotb graduated from Virginia Tech University with a Bachelor of Arts in broadcast journalism. She resides in New York City.

A native of Atlanta, Ga., Sonya Ross attended Georgia State University and joined The Associated Press in 1987 as a general assignment reporter in its Atlanta bureau. She went on to cover the Georgia legislature, and was promoted to The AP’s national staff in Washington in 1992 to cover civil rights, race and urban affairs. She joined the White House press corps in 1995 as the first African-American woman assigned to The AP’s presidential reporting team. Sonya became World Services editor in 2002, and helped direct The AP’s coverage of the global anti-terrorism campaign and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2004, Sonya was on the team of editors directing coverage of the Democratic and Republican national conventions, and became news editor for The AP’s Washington-based regional reporters in December 2004. In 2010, Sonya was named The AP’s first-ever race and ethnicity editor, responsible for coverage that captures the changing facets of race relations in the United States, and its effects on the experiences of the American people. The pursuit of news has taken Sonya to 48 countries and an untold number of American cities while on assignment covering Presidents William J. Clinton and George W. Bush, first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and Colin Powell. During the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Sonya was the print pool journalist with President Bush on Air Force One as he was evacuated to safety according to procedures established by the U.S. government during the Cold War. Sonya served on the board of the White House Correspondents Association from 1999-2003, and currently serves on the board of the Washington Press Club Foundation. She is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists, the National Association of Black Journalists, and Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.