General and News Divisions
Sunday, Feb. 18 - Friday, Feb. 23
Moderator is Rick Shaw, Director of Pictures of the Year International

Carol Guzy - Staff Photographer, The Washington Post
Carol Guzy is a staff photographer for The Washington Post with three Pulitzer Prizes and numerous Photographer of the Year credits to her name. A native of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, she began studying photography at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale in Florida. While at the Art Institute, she interned at The Miami Herald and upon graduation was hired as a staff photographer. She spent eight years at the newspaper before moving to Washington, D.C. in 1988 where she is a staff photographer at The Washington Post. Her assignments include both domestic and international stories and documentary reportage. She has been honored twice with the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography for her coverage of the military intervention in Haiti and the devastating mudslide in Armero, Colombia. She has received a rare third Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for her work in Kosovo. She has been named Photographer of the Year for the National Press Photographers Association three times and eight times for the White House News Photographers Association, among many other prestigious awards in photojournalism.

Genaro Molina - Staff Photographer, Los Angeles Times
Genaro Molina is a staff photographer for the Los Angeles Times with extensive experience at a variety of California newspapers, including the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury News, the Claremont Courier, and the Sacramento Bee. He has photographed the tragedy of AIDS in eastern Africa; the impact of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska; the misuse of pesticides in Culican, Mexico; the aftermath of the war in Bosnia; Pope John Paul II at the Vatican; the Muslim community in Las Vegas; the plight of California migrant farm workers; and the homeless of Los Angeles' skid row. Molina has won numerous awards, including California Photographer of the Year, the Harry Chapin Media Award, the Clarion Award (Women in Communications), and second place Newspaper Photographer of the Year. His work has been published in the books, "A Day in the Life of California," "The Jews in America," "Americanos - Latino Life in America," "In the Presence of Elephants," "Ferris in Exile," "A Day in the Life of the U.S. Armed Forces," "Al and Tipper Gore's - The Spirit of Family," and "The Photojournalistic Approach."

Patty Reksten - Director of Photography, The Oregonian
Patty Reksten joined The Oregonian as their director of photography in 1998 after 14 years as a professor at the University of Montana School of Journalism. In 1997, Reksten received the Robin F. Garland Educator Award from the National Press Photographers Association. The award recognized her role in building the photojournalism program at the University of Montana and for encouraging her students to tackle issues of importance to Native Americans. Before that she worked as a reporter, photographer, designer, and editor. The Oregonian picture editing and photography staff has won numerous awards in the past several years. Rob Finch was the 2002 Newspaper Photographer of the Year. That same year the picture editing staff won six POYi awards and placed in the overall picture editing portfolio competition. For 2003, the picture editing staff placed in the Best Use of Photography category, and in both 2004 and 2005 the photography staff was honored for their portfolio. In the 2005 POYi sports portfolio category, two Oregonian photographers placed second and third. Reksten is a faculty member for the Stan Kalish Picture Editing Workshops and has been a previous judge of POYi and numerous other state and regional contests. She has also taught at the Missouri Photo Workshop, sponsored by the Missouri School of Journalism, and the Mountain Workshops, sponsored by Western Kentucky University.

Peter Schwepker -Northern Arizona University
Peter Schwepker is an instructor of photography and photojournalism at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. Prior to his academic career, Schwepker served 22 years as a staff photographer and photo editor for The Arizona Republic in Phoenix, and became recognized as one of the most accomplished photojournalists in the Southwest and West. During his newspaper career, he is a four-time recipient of the Arizona Newspaper Photographer of the Year title and accumulated more than 2,200 clip contest points in NPPA's Region 10. Schwepker began his journalism career at the Palisadian (Calif.) Post and then the Arizona Daily Sun, after graduating from California State University-Fullerton in 1979. In addition to his present teaching duties, he continues his own photography with magazine and editorial freelance projects.

Magazine and World Understanding Divisions
Sunday, Feb. 25 - Thursday, March 1
Moderator is Loup Langton, University of Miami

Kim Hubbard - Photo Editor, Audubon Magazine
Kim Hubbard is the photography editor for the award-winning Audubon Magazine, where she is responsible for assigning and editing photographs. She has previously worked for Discover magazine and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, as both photo editor and photographer. She was also involved with the "Here Is New York" documentary photo project after 9/11. She received her master's degree in photojournalism from the Missouri School of Journalism.

Ed Kashi - Freelance
Ed Kashi is a photojournalist dedicated to documenting the social and political issues that define our times. His images have appeared in National Geographic, The New York Times Magazine, Time, Fortune, Geo, Newsweek, MSNBC.com, and many other domestic and international publications. The February 2007 edition of National Geographic contains Kashi's 11th major story for the magazine since 1991. "Curse of the Black Gold, Hope and Betrayal in the Niger Delta" chronicles the negative impact of oil development on the impoverished Niger Delta. In 2003, Kashi completed an eight-year project called "Aging in America: The Years Ahead," which included a traveling exhibition, an award-winning documentary film, and Web site. The book won the judges' special recognition in the 61st POYi competition, plus honors in World Press Photo and American Photo Magazine. Kashi's previous projects include documentary work on the Protestant community in Northern Ireland; the lives of Jewish settlers in the West Bank; and his long-term coverage of the Iraqi Kurds which resulted in the book "When the Borders Bleed: The Struggle of the Kurds" in 1994. Most recently those images were compiled into an innovative approach to photography and filmmaking, the "Iraqi Kurdistan Flipbook," which premiered on MSNBC.com in December 2006. Kashi and his wife, writer and filmmaker Julie Winokur, are founders of Talking Eyes Media, a non-profit multimedia company that explores significant social issues. The first documentary project produced a book and traveling exhibition on uninsured Americans called "Denied: The Crisis of America's Uninsured."

Paula Lerner - Freelance
Paula Lerner's passion for photographing people has taken her from the rain forests of Brazil to the back roads of New England. Since 1985 she has been commissioned by a wide variety of national and international clients, including Smithsonian, People, Time, Newsweek, Business Week, plus a host of European and Asian magazines. This past November, The Washington Post Web site presented Lerner's project, "The Women of Kabul," a multimedia feature with photographs and audio interviews of five women of Kabul who are struggling to rebuild their lives and establishes businesses five years after the Taliban fled Afghanistan. Lerner photographs people in all walks of life, and her assignments range from stories on cancer patients, factory workers, and corporate executives to profiles of eminent scientists, authors, and performing artists. Her photo essay "A Widow on Welfare: An Untold Story," won first place for Issue Reporting in the 55th POYi competition. Most recently, Lerner collaborated with Deb Murphy on the book "Why We Walk: The Inspirational Journey Toward a Cure for Breast Cancer," which tells the poignant and personal stories of some of the hundreds of thousands of people who participate in breast cancer fundraising walks each year.

JP Pappis - President, Polaris Images
JP Pappis was born and raised in Alexandria, Egypt where he received his high school diploma from the Lyc?e Fran?ais in 1967. He moved to New York in 1968, attended Queens College and received a Bachelor of Arts in Literature and Philosophy. He attended graduate school in Paris, France and received a Masters Degree in Literature in 1972 from the Sorbonne University. He started his career in photography in Paris as a photographer covering news and social unrest in post May68 France. He returned to New York in 1975 as correspondent and bureau chief of Fotolib, a photo agency based in Paris. In 1980 he joined Sygma Photo News and remained there until 2000 as Executive Editor. He then joined Gamma Press USA in New York as Editor-in-Chief until August 2002. In September 2002 Pappis started Polaris Images, a photo agency representing photographers dedicated to the coverage of news and the production of news features.

Multimedia Divisions
Sunday, March 4 - Monday, March 5
Moderator IS Rick Shaw

Molly Bingham - Freelance and Documentary Filmmaker
Molly Bingham began her career as a photojournalist in 1994, traveling to Rwanda in the wake of the genocide and spent four years focused on the regional fallout of that event. Aside from her photojournalistic work, Bingham has also completed two special projects for Human Rights Watch - one on Burundi and another on small arms trafficking in Central Africa. From 1998 through 2001 Bingham worked as Official Photographer to the Office of the Vice President of the United States, during Al Gore's terms in office. Afterwards, she returned to work in Central Africa, producing a story for The New York Times Sunday Magazine on the mineral "coltan" that is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Bingham made the headlines while in Iraq. Shortly after the launch of the war in March 2003, she was detained for eight days by the Iraqi government security services and held in Abu Ghraib prison with four other westerners during the war, and released to Jordan in early April 2003. Bingham's first major written story on the Iraqi resistance was published in Vanity Fair in July 2004. Most recently, Bingham has teamed up with Steve Connors to direct the documentary film, "Meeting Resistance," examining the emerging post-war violence in Iraq. The film is a program feature of the True/False Film Festival in Columbia, Mo. during March 2007.

Steve Connors - Freelance and Documentary Filmmaker
Steve Connors began taking photographs while serving as a British soldier in Northern Ireland in the early 1980s. After leaving the military in 1984 he worked for London newspapers and housing charities and spent the early1990s covering the wars following the break-up of Yugoslavia. He later spent time in Russia and the former Soviet Union. Connors' freelance work has appeared in a variety of newspapers and magazines including Time, Newsweek, The New York Times in the United States; The Guardian, The Observer and The Telegraph in London; and in Europe he has worked for Der Spiegel, Stern and Paris Match among others. Connors spent fifteen months from November 2001 on in Afghanistan. Most recently, Connors has teamed up with Molly Bingham to direct the documentary film, "Meeting Resistance," examining the emerging post-war violence in Iraq. The film is a program feature of the True/False Film Festival in Columbia, Mo. during March 2007.

Larry Dailey - University of Nevada-Reno
Larry Dailey holds the Reynolds Chair of Media Technology and is an associate professor at the Donald W. Reynolds School of Journalism, University of Nevada, Reno, Nev. There he teaches courses in nonlinear documentary multimedia storytelling, photojournalism and game design for journalists. Previously, he was an assistant professor of journalism and the director of the Digital Media Minor at Ball State University in Muncie, IN. He has also been a journalism instructor at Southern Illinois University - Edwardsville, IL. Prior to that, he taught multimedia and advanced photojournalism courses as a visiting assistant professor at the University of Missouri - Columbia. He worked for three years as a multimedia producer for MSNBC Interactive, one of the Internet's top news sites. He has been a picture editor for the Associated Press and United Press International in Washington. And he has worked as a newspaper photographer and photography department manager. Larry holds a master's degree in photography from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. He also holds degrees in journalism and education from the University of Missouri. This is the second year that Dailey has helped POYi evaluate online photojournalism, serving as the moderator for the multimedia division judging.

Editing Divisions
Sunday, March 4 - Thursday, March 8
Moderators are Larry Dailey, University of Nevada-Reno and Rick Shaw

Carol Nakagawa – Pacific Northwest Magazine Art Director, The Seattle Times
Carol Nakagawa is the art director of the Sunday magazine of The Seattle Times, which is primarily a venue for photojournalism and has been honored for both photography and picture editing for many years. She has also been the features design coordinator in the Times art department and a features copy editor. She started her career as a desk editor in sports and news at the Boston Globe, then became an assistant news editor and features designer at her hometown paper, The Honolulu Star-Bulletin, before joining the Seattle Times.

Barry Locher - Editor, The State Journal-Register
Barry Locher is editor of The State Journal-Register in Springfield, Illinois. He began his career at the newspaper in 1974 as an intern in the photography department, and has since served in a variety of staff and senior management level capacities including staff photographer, photography editor, assistant managing editor/graphics, deputy managing editor and managing editor prior to being appointed editor in 1999. Locher has played a key role in the development of one of the country's most professional newspaper photojournalism programs, chosen in 2005 by Photo District News as one of the 13 best newspapers in America for photojournalists to work. He was the supervising picture editor for "The Youngest Victims," a series that documented violence to children in Chicago. It was awarded a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for Coverage of the Disadvantaged in 1994. In 2004, he directed the newspaper's four-day series, "Beardstown: Reflection of a changing America," on immigration in a small, Central Illinois community. The project was awarded the Freedom Forum/ASNE Award for Outstanding Writing on Diversity and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting (written by S. Lynne Walker for The State Journal-Register, submitted by Copley News Service). Locher is a former Illinois Press Photographers Association Photographer of the Year, as well as Region 5 Photographer of the Year. He is a 1977 graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, where he served as president of Kappa Alpha Mu.

Doug Parker - Photo Editor, The Times-Picayune
Doug Parker has been a Photo Editor at The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, La. since 1990, with the last 12 years serving as it director. During that time his editing projects have ranged from Fidel Castro's Cuba to New Orleans' dysfunctional school system; and from the U.S. Track and Field Olympic trials to LSU's national football championship at the Sugar Bowl. He has planned coverage for four Super Bowls, two World Series and numerous national championship games played in New Orleans. Parker began his photo editing career at the Alameda Newspaper Group in Northern California, after earning a BA from San Jose State University and a MSJ from Ohio University. During his tenure, the photo department has won more than 100 national and international awards, including the prestigious Angus McDougall Overall Excellence in Editing Award in the 64rd POYi competition. He was part of the team that earned The Times-Picayune the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for their coverage of Hurricane Katrina. Other projects he has helped edit have been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize three times, with the series "Oceans of Trouble" winning the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.

Sharon Rosenhause - Managing Editor, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Sharon Rosenhause joined the South Florida Sun-Sentinel as managing editor in 2001 after eight years as managing editor/news of the San Francisco Examiner. When The Examiner staff merged into the San Francisco Chronicle, Rosenhause became editor of the new Chronicle PM edition. The New York native, who graduated from Queens College in Flushing, N.Y. and was a Knight Fellow at Stanford University, has also worked at the Bergen (N.J.) Record, Los Angeles Times and New York Daily News. Rosenhause, who has served two terms as a Pulitzer juror, is a current board member of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Florida Society of Newspaper Editors, the advisory board of the Race and Diversity Workshop at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and the journalism advisory board of the Foundation for American Communications. In 2006, Rosenhause won the Robert G. McGruder Award for Diversity Leadership, awarded by the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the Associated Press Managing Editors and the Freedom Forum. She is a former board member of the Associated Press Managing Editors, the Journalism and Women Symposium and the California Society of Newspaper Editors.

Moderators

Rick Shaw - Director, Pictures of the Year International
Rick Shaw is director of Pictures of the Year International (POYi), an international photojournalism competition and archive sponsored by the Missouri School of Journalism and the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute. He joined the journalism school in 2004 as an assistant professor in the photojournalism sequence and director of photography for the Columbia Missourian, the faculty-run, student-staffed daily city newspaper. Shaw's prior newspaper career spans 27 years in visual editing and management. He began as a photojournalist and moved into picture editing, working at a variety of newspapers including the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville and then The Sacramento (Calif.) Bee for 12 years. At The Bee, Shaw served in a variety of positions including photo editor, assistant director of photography, and later as an assistant news editor. He was the photo editor and designer on the "Sierra in Peril" project that earned The Bee the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 1992. Shaw then became the director of photography and graphics at The Arizona Republic in Phoenix, and in 2001 joined the Hartford (Conn.) Courant as its director of design and graphics. Shaw has been recognized with several design and picture editing awards, including Picture Editor of the Year honors in the 48th POYi competition and National Press Photographers Association. The Sacramento Bee and Hartford Courant both have received the Angus McDougall Overall Excellence in Editing Award. At Missouri, Shaw directed the student photo editing staff to an Award of Excellence in overall portfolio during the 64rd POYi competition in 2006. This is Shaw's first year as the full-time director for POYi, following David Rees' influential six-year tenure.

Loup Langton - University of Miami
Loup Langton currently serves on the faculty of visual journalism at the University of Miami's School of Communication. His career reflects a balance between creative and research work with a particular passion for Latin America. As Director of Photography for Copley Chicago Newspapers he helped lead a team that won more photography awards than any other newspaper in the nation and twice produced POYi Newspaper Photographer of the Year. While serving as Director of Photography for El Universo, Ecuador's largest newspaper, he helped change the concept of visual storytelling in Ecuador. He also co-directed the Descubriendo Ecuador book project. As an educator, Langton was a faculty member at the University of Missouri School of Journalism from 1992 to 1998 before returning to the professional world. In 2005, he organized the SomosFoto workshop in Quito, involving photographers and photo editors from 11 different Latin American countries. Langton also has been a faculty member for photography workshops in Germany, Bulgaria, Argentina, Miami, Colombia, Missouri and Ecuador. He is currently working with the World Press Photo organization (Amsterdam) as part of their international tutoring program. He received his Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Texas School of Communication. Langton continues to be long-standing contributor to the annual Pictures of the Year International competition, serving as the moderator for the magazine division judging.

Larry Dailey - University of Nevada-Reno
Larry Dailey holds the Reynolds Chair of Media Technology and is an associate professor at the Donald W. Reynolds School of Journalism, University of Nevada, Reno, Nev. There he teaches courses in nonlinear documentary multimedia storytelling, photojournalism and game design for journalists. Previously, he was an assistant professor of journalism and the director of the Digital Media Minor at Ball State University in Muncie, IN. He has also been a journalism instructor at Southern Illinois University - Edwardsville, IL. Prior to that, he taught multimedia and advanced photojournalism courses as a visiting assistant professor at the University of Missouri - Columbia. He worked for three years as a multimedia producer for MSNBC Interactive, one of the Internet's top news sites. He has been a picture editor for the Associated Press and United Press International in Washington. And he has worked as a newspaper photographer and photography department manager. Larry holds a master's degree in photography from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. He also holds degrees in journalism and education from the University of Missouri. This is the second year that Dailey has helped POYi evaluate online photojournalism, serving as the moderator for the multimedia division judging.