Power to the People: Unlocking Government For the Public, Press & the blogs
Speakers, panelists, moderators

Featured Speaker (Saturday, October 15)

FLOYD ABRAMS

Floyd Abrams, the country's preeminent First Amendment lawyer for nearly three decades, represents Judith Miller and the New York Times in efforts to protect confidential sources. Abrams is a partner in the New York law firm of Cahill Gordon & Reindel and is the William J. Brennan Jr. Visiting Professor of First Amendment Law at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. He has argued frequently in the U.S. Supreme Court in significant First Amendment cases and was co-counsel to The New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case.

He has represented the Times, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Time magazine, Business Week, The Nation, Reader's Digest and other media clients. In 2003, he represented Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and the National Association of Broadcasters in a First Amendment-rooted challenge to the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance legislation. Abrams served on the Technology and Privacy Advisory Committee of the U.S. Department of Defense in 2003-04.

Abrams has received many awards, including the William J. Brennan Jr. Award for outstanding contributions to public discourse and the Learned Hand Award of the American Jewish Committee. He is the author of the recently published book Speaking Freely: Trials of the First Amendment (Viking, 2005).

Featured Speaker (Friday, October 14)

DAN GILLMOR

A pioneer of journalism on and about the Internet, Gillmor was a technology columnist at the San Jose Mercury News from 1994 to 2004. He is founder of Grassroots Media Inc., which aims to expand the reach of grassroots journalism, and author of We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, a 2004 book that is widely credited as the first comprehensive look at way the collision of technology and journalism is transforming the media landscape.

OTHER BIOS

Scott Armstrong, a former investigative reporter for the Washington Post, is founder of the National Security Archive and was co-author, with Bob Woodward, of The Brethren, a best-selling investigative report on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Kevin S. Bankston, an attorney specializing in free speech and privacy law, is a fellow at the Electronic Frontier Foundation focusing on the impact of post-9/11 anti-terrorism laws and surveillance initiatives on online privacy and free expression. Previously he litigated Internet-related free speech cases for the ACLU in New York City. He is a 2001 USC Law School graduate.

Barbara S. Blinderman has successfully litigated against local governments for over 28 years. She was counsel for petitioner in the succcessful prosecution of Green v. City of Los Angeles, the secret pay raise case which led to the comprehensive revision of the Brown Act in 1986. She was the the first recipient of the California First Amendment Coalition Beacon Award for Advocacy.

Theodore J. Boutrous Jr. is a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Los Angeles. A 1987 graduate of the University of San Diego School of Law, his areas of expertise include media law; constitutional law; libel, slander and defamation. He represented media organizations in the 2005 trial of Michael Jackson.

Phil Bronstein is Executive Vice President and Editor of the San Francisco Chronicle. Previously he was executive editor of the San Francisco Examiner, where he began as a reporter 20 years ago. At the Examiner, Bronstein specialized in investigative projects and was a foreign correspondent. He has won awards for his coverage of the Philippines and was a 1986 Pulitzer Prize finalist.

Bruce Brugmann is the founder, Editor and Publisher of the San Francisco Bay Guardian and a moving force in the drive that resulted in the San Francisco Sunshine Initiative. He has been the recipient of numerous freedom of information awards, including The Bill Farr Freedom of Information Award from CFAC and the California Society of Newspaper Editors.

James M. Chadwick is a partner at DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary with expertise in media law, media defense litigation, First Amendment and privacy law, copyright and trademark law. A graduate of University of Santa Clara School of Law, he has received the James Madison Freedom of Information Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.

Linda Deutsch is a veteran Associated Press reporter based in Los Angeles who has covered countless high-stakes trials, including those of Michael Jackson, O.J. Simpson, Robert Blake, Patty Hearst and the four LAPD officers charged with beating Rodney King. AP named her a special correspondent--an honor rarely bestowed--in 1992.

Dennis Foley is a 35-year journalist who has served many roles at The Orange County Register, including county-government reporter, politics editor and ombudsman. He currently coordinates the newspaper's training, reader networks, accuracy, ethics and credibility efforts.

Harold W. Fuson Jr. is Vice President and Chief Legal Officer of The Copley Press Inc., publishers of the San Diego Union-Tribune and other newspapers. A law graduate of Cleveland State University, he is a director of the California Newspaper Publishers Assn. and author of "Telling It All: A Legal Guide to the Exercise of Free Speech."

Eric Haley is the Executive Director of the Riverside County Transportation Commission, a former government lobbyist in Sacramento and Washington to the San Bernardino Associated Governments (SANBAG) and the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) and a prime mover in the successful campaign to include a Sunshine provision in the Riverside City Charter. He was named "Person of the Year" by the California Transportation Foundation in 2003.

Brian Hershman, Deputy Chief of the Public Corruption and Government Fraud Section of the US Attorney's Office in Los Angeles, is lead prosecutor in the BALCO grand jury leak investigation. In private practice, he was on the defense team during the grand jury phase of the federal government's prosecution of Wen Ho Lee.

John Hill, a reporter for the Sacramento Bee, won a 2004 Polk Award for a series of articles on abuse of the state pension and workers' compensation systems by state workers, including some of the highest ranking officers in the California Highway Patrol.

Fred von Lohmann is a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, specializing in intellectual property matters. He has represented programmers, technology innovators, and individuals in a variety of copyright and trademark litigation. He is a graduate of Stanford Law School.

Mark Morodomi is Supervising Deputy for the Oakland City Attorney's Open Government Program. Mark worked for 10 years in Sacramento for the State of California's Fair Political Practices Commission, where he served as chief prosecutor investigating and prosecuting cases of political corruption. He is a graduate of Stanford University and NYU Law School.

Thomas W. Newton is general counsel and legislative advocate of the California Newspaper Publishers Assn, overseeing legal and lobbying activity and acting as a spokesman for the state's newspaper industry. A graduate of McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, he received CFAC's Bill Farr Award in 2004.

William Nottingham is a 20-year veteran of the Los Angeles Times, where he is one of two state government editors. Before that he was a reporter at the St. Petersburg Times, where he once spent weeks sifting through garbage bags filled with shredded documents illegally discarded by the Pinellas County Sheriff's Department. As a result, a court ordered the department to open its records for the first time.

Karl Olson, a partner in the San Francisco law firm of Levy, Ram & Olson, specializes in First Amendment and media law matters and has represented many of the state's largest newspapers in libel cases, Public Records Act matters and obtaining access to court proceedings, including the Scott Peterson trial.

Kurt Opsahl is a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation focusing on civil liberties, free speech and privacy law. He previously represented technology clients with respect to intellectual property,
privacy, defamation, and other online liability matters. For his work responding to government subpoenas, Opsahl is proud to have been called a "rabid dog" by the Department of Justice.

Justin Pritchard is news editor in the Los Angeles bureau of The Associated Press. As a San Francisco-based reporter, he won a 2004 Polk Award for his investigative series entitled "Dying to Work," which examined the disproportionate on-the-job death rates among Mexican-born workers in the United States. Prior to covering demographics and immigration for AP, he reported from Southeast Asia and Cuba for newspapers including the New York Times and Christian Science Monitor and covered Capitol Hill for a Washington Post Co. online news service. He began his career at the Philadelphia Inquirer after graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Brown University. Pritchard is an Oakland, Calif., native.

Rick Pullen has been the dean of the College of Communications at CSU Fullerton for 10 years. He received his Ph.D. in Communications from Southern Illinois University and is an expert in mass media law and ethics. He is on the CFAC board of directors and the Ethics Committee of the Society of Professional Journalists.

Tony Rackauckas is District Attorney of Orange County, overseeing more than 200 lawyers who represent the state in some civil and all criminal cases. A graduate of Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, he was a prosecutor and a judge before winning election as DA in 1998. He was re-elected in 2002

Maureen S. Rubin joined the faculty of CSU Northridge in 1984 as a professor of journalism where she teaches law, public relations and media ethics. Previously Rubin was Director of Public Information for President Carter's Special Assistant for Consumer Affairs. She is a graduate of the Catholic University School of Law in Washington, D.C.

Kelli L. Sager is a partner in the Los Angeles office of Davis Wright Tremaine. A graduate of the University of Utah School of Law, she has 20 years of experience with media and entertainment law, including defamation, privacy, access, prior restraint, reporters' shield laws, copyright and trademark law.

Peter Scheer is executive director of CFAC. A lawyer and journalist, he previously was editor of The Recorder, a daily legal newspaper in San Francisco, and publisher of Legal Times, a Washington, DC-based weekly on law and lobbying. He practiced law in Washington, DC, and was general counsel of the National Security Archive.

Susan E. Seager, an attorney in the Los Angeles office of Davis Wright Tremaine, represents newspapers, television, cable, radio and studies in areas including media, entertainment, and intellectual property litigation, pre-publication review and litigate defamation, privacy, right of publicity, copyright, trademark, reporter subpoenas, and public access.

Natalya Shulyakovskaya is an investigative reporter and director of computer-assisted reporting at the Orange County Register. She began her career in 1988 in her native Russia and, after coming to the United States to study in 1992, graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism.