The Alaska Press Club board is made up of 11 members, appointed in an annual election (as vacancies open) by the general membership and one student member.* Every full member has a vote. Board members serve two-year terms. Officers are named annually.
The Board has the authority to declare Board seats vacant and to appoint members to serve until the next general election.
* The student seat on the Board was created by a vote of membership at an annual Alaska Press Club meeting, April 17, 2004.
Julia O’Malley
President
Julia O’Malley is a metro columnist at the Anchorage Daily News. Over the last 15 years as a journalist, she has written for the Fairbanks News-Miner, the Anchorage Press, The Juneau Empire, PBS.org, and the Oregonian. Since coming to the Anchorage Daily News full time in 2005, she covered the court system and wrote extensively about life in Anchorage, including big changes in the city’s ethnic and minority communities.
Find her work at www.adn.com/jomalley .
Kathleen McCoy
Development Chair
Kathleen McCoy has worked as a journalist in Alaska since 1981, including 10 months at the Nome Nugget and 26 years at the Anchorage Daily News as a reporter, Sunday magazine editor, features editor, senior editor and assistant managing editor for features and interactivity. She left ADN in October, 2008 for an electronic media position at the University of Alaska Anchorage, adding video and audio podcasting to their Web site through the Advancement Office. McCoy obtained her journalism degree from UC Berkeley in 1975 and was a 2007 John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford University.
907-248-6662 kmccoy@gci.net
Lynne Snifka
Secretary
Lynne Snifka is currently an assistant professor in the journalism department at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She began her career in the Midwest, where she worked as a producer/director at Wisconsin Public Television. She also worked as a freelance camera operator, sound person and technical director for ESPN, ABC, TNN and FOX Sports. Snifka moved to Alaska in 1997 and took a job at KUAC-TV in Fairbanks. In Anchorage, she produced “Inside Alaska,” a nightly newsmagazine at KTVA-TV. She also worked as an independent writer and producer, served as the editor of Anchorage magazine, the managing editor of the Anchorage Press, and has been a regular freelance contributor to Alaska magazine. Her work in television and print has been honored by the Society of Professional Journalists, the Alaska Broadcasters Association, the Alaska Press Club and the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. She has a bachelor’s degrees in journalism and film from the University of Wisconsin and a master’s degree in northern history from the University of Alaska.
Michelle Theriault Boots
Vice President (Contest)
Michelle Theriault Boots is an Anchorage-based journalist and teacher. Before moving to Alaska she worked as a reporter at daily newspapers in Washington and Oregon, earned a graduate degree in journalism from the University of Oregon and reported from the Johannesburg, South Africa bureau of the Associated Press. She’s contributed essays, articles and radio pieces to the High Country News, APRN and the Alaska Dispatch, among other publications. A past Overseas Press Club Foundation Award winner and a 2010 finalist for the Richard J. Margolis Prize for social justice reporting, she works as a web editor and multimedia journalist at KTUU Channel 2 News and teaches journalism classes at UAA.
Ed Schoenfeld
Communications Chair
Ed Schoenfeld, 56, is Regional News Director for CoastAlaska, a consortium of public radio stations in Ketchikan, Juneau, Sitka, Petersburg and Wrangell. He’s also worked as a manager, editor and reporter for the Juneau Empire newspaper and Juneau public radio station KTOO. He’s also reported for commercial station KINY in Juneau and public stations KPFA in Berkley, WYSO in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and WUHY in Philadelphia. He’s lived in Alaska since 1979 and is a regular contributor to Alaska Public Radio Network newscasts, the Northwest (Public Radio) News Network and National Native News. He was elected to the press club board in May of 2010.
723-9004 ed@coastalaska.org
Scott Levin
Web Co-Chair
Scott Levin is currently the Online Editor of the Anchorage Daily News (adn.com). He’s worked as a journalist since the early 1990s, with stints at the Indianapolis Star, Jacksonville (NC) Daily News and New Bern Sun Journal. Although the bulk of his career has been in the online side of the newsroom, he was originally a sports reporter and interned for the Indiana Pacers.
Rosey Robards
Vice President (Conference) & Web Co-Chair
Rosey Robards is currently the director of the Alaska Teen Media Institute, where teens produce a monthly public affairs radio show as well as multimedia content for their Web site. She graduated from the University of Alaska Anchorage with a degree in Journalism and Public Communications in 2005. You might recognize her name from publications such as the Anchorage Daily News, AK This Month and The Northern Light. She also worked at the Anchorage Daily News as an Interactive Content Producer in 2006/2007.
907.272.2864 rosey@alaskateenmedia.org
Mark Thiessen
Treasurer
Mark Thiessen, 47, is the news editor in Alaska for The Associated Press.
He joined the AP in 1998 in the Omaha, Neb., bureau. In 2003, he was named day supervisor for the cooperative’s Salt Lake City bureau. Two years later, he was promoted to the Alaska post.
Thiessen is a native of Valley, Neb., and a 1985 graduate of Midland Lutheran College in Fremont, Neb., majoring in English and journalism.
After college he worked 13 years for a chain of suburban newspapers in Omaha, including 10 years with his hometown paper, the Douglas County Post-Gazette. He won several news writing and column writing awards from the Nebraska and Iowa press associations.
Thiessen and his partner of 17 years, Ron Barta, live in Anchorage with their dogs, Grissom and Chena.
Scott Jensen
Membership Chair
After growing up in Anchorage, Alaska, Jensen left in 1993 to attend college in Oregon. In 1996, he interned at KATU in Portland and graduated from Newberg’s George Fox University with a degree in communications/video production. From 1996 to 1999, Jensen was back in Anchorage working as a staff photographer for KTUU-TV. He moved in 1999 to the Twin Cities of Minnesota to work at KARE-TV. This is where Jensen discovered his love of seeking and capturing the natural moments of his subjects’ lives. After leaving Minneapolis at the end of 2003, Jensen briefly worked at Northwest Cable News back in Portland, Oregon.
He left television altogether early in 2004 to try his hand in construction management. But a year later Jensen returned once again to his roots – Alaska TV. Back in Anchorage, he helped lead KTUU’s staff as Director of Photography.
In late 2009, Seattle’s KING5-TV tapped Scott to help reestablish the grand tradition of Pacific Northwest TV photojournalism. But Jensen just couldn’t stay away from The Last Frontier. In January of 2011 he accepted an offer to become a professor at the University of Alaska Anchorage as the 2011 Atwood Chair of Journalism. In this temporary assignment, Jensen mentors aspiring communicators and teaches journalism classes in video, documentary filmmaking and new media.
Jennifer Canfield
Board Member
Jennifer Canfield is a reporter for Kodiak’s public radio station, KMXT. She has also worked for radio stations KRUA and KNBA in Anchorage, the Alaska Dispatch and contributed to the Alaska Public Radio Network, National Native News and the Anchorage Daily News. She is a 2009 Poynter Institute College Fellow and studied journalism and sociology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Charles Ward
Board Member
Charles Ward is the deputy managing editor for the Juneau Empire, a position he’s held since June 2010. He also served as the Empire’s interim managing editor from August to December of 2010.
Prior to working for the Empire, Ward served as Assistant Managing Editor of the Oklahoma Daily, the student-run daily newspaper at the University of Oklahoma. He also worked as a sports editor at the Claremore (Okla.) Daily Progress, the International Falls (Minn.) Daily Journal and the Gallup (N.M.) Independent. He’s also worked at The Oklahoman in Oklahoma City and the Hobbs (N.M.) News-Sun. His other experience includes internships with the NFL Players Association and an Arena Football League team and work at two different radio stations in Oklahoma.
Ward earned journalism and law degrees from the University of Oklahoma. He currently lives in Juneau with his wife Anne, and their dog Coach.
