Who we are

Staff
Interns
Past staff and volunteers
Designers

Staff

John McManus directs Grade the News. A former newspaper reporter, journalism professor and media researcher, he has written extensively about media, particularly about how markets shape news. His book, Market-Driven Journalism: Let the Citizen Beware? won the Society of Professional Journalists' Research Prize in 1994. He earned his Ph.D. at Stanford University.

Michael Stoll is associate director. A former reporter, editorial writer and city editor at the San Francisco Examiner, he has also reported for the Philadelphia Inquirer and KPFA Radio in Berkeley. He has contributed articles to the San Jose Mercury News, the Miami Herald, the Christian Science Monitor, the San Francisco Bay Guardian and San Francisco Magazine. He studied at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. He is a board member of the Northern California chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

Interns

Saadia Malik has previously worked as a staff writer for the News-Press in Fort Myers, Fla., and the Spartan Daily, the daily newspaper for San Jose State University. She is graduating from San Jose State, with a B.S. in journalism.

Erica Holt graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with her B.A. in mass communications in 2003. Before that she worked as an intern at Berkeley Community Media, KFOG radio station and the San Francisco International Film Festival. She is now a communications associate at California College of the Arts, where she contributes articles to the college's Web site and print publications, and coordinates media-buying efforts.

Aimee Threet is a senior majoring in magazine journalism and history at San Jose State University. She is due to graduate in December 2005, and plans to go on to graduate school to pursue a master's degree in history. Aimee is a native of San Jose and resides in the city. She was on the staff of the Spartan Daily in the spring of 2005 as the beat writer for the men's basketball team and also wrote various other articles.

Janet Pak has previously worked as a staff writer for The Bulletin (Bend, Ore.), and the Spartan Daily, the student newspaper for San Jose State University.

Carla Mancebo is a junior at San Jose State University majoring in journalism and mass communications. She hopes to be a foreign correspondent in Latin America. Next semester she will be studying in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She dances flamenco, samba and pagode. She also

Past staff and volunteers

Seeta Peña Gangadharan has been a GTN research assistant. A Ph.D candidate in communication at Stanford, she specializes in political communication and uses an interdisciplinary approach to understand the intersection of media and communications with social movements, actors and institutions. She is studying the struggles for communication rights and civil rights vis-a-vis the political economy of media and communications.

Julie A. Varughese is a perennial intern. She has interned and/or written for Mother Jones; EWWoman.com, a start-up e-zine; MSNBC’s Buchanan and Press show; The Bronx Press, a weekly paper; and The MounTimes, her college paper. She holds a B.A. in communication from the College of Mount St. Vincent. On the Web: julieavarughese.com.

Patrick Cain is a fourth-year journalism and materials science and engineering major at the Ohio State University. He has worked as a campus editor at Ohio State's student-run newspaper, The Lantern, and as a nuclear waste minimization specialist at Los Alamos National Laboratories. His career goal is to write for the science section of a newspaper or a magazine such as Discover.

Kate Cheney Davidson is a freelance writer from Berkeley. She is studying this year at the School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. Her work has appeared in National Geographic Adventure, MotherJones.com and Wharton's eBuzz Newsletter. She holds a B.A. in anthropology and art history from Bowdoin College.

Rajeev Poduval is a journalist from Bombay, India. He most recently reported for the News India Times in New York. He has also written for Khaleej Times, Panorama Magazine and Emirates News, in the United Arab Emirates. He earned his master's in English Language and Literature in 1988 from the University of Poona, India, and his B.S. in physics in 1983 from the University of Calicut, India.

Lise Marken is a second-year Ph.D candidate in communication at Stanford. She hopes to concentrate her studies on the ethics of journalism. She has written for The Daily Californian and InfoWorld as well as the Santa Cruz Sentinel.

Magdalena Wojcieszak is a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Communication from Warsaw, Poland. She has written for the magazine Zwierciadlo. She recently interned at Polish Public Television. She earned her master's degree from the Institute of Applied Social Studies at Warsaw University, specializing in mediation, negotiation, conflict resolution and contemporary anthropology.

Designers

Zachary Pogue brought the site to Stanford and upgraded its look and feel. He graduated from Stanford in June 2003 with a B.A. in human biology.

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