Biographies

David Ardia

Fellow, Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society
Director, Citizen Media Law Project

David Ardia is a fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society and the director of the Citizen Media Law Project, which provides legal education and resources for individuals and organizations involved in citizen media. David received his J.D. degree, summa cum laude, from Syracuse University College of Law in 1996 and received an LL.M. from Harvard Law School in June 2007. Prior to coming to Harvard, he was assistant counsel at The Washington Post where he provided pre-publication review and legal advice on First Amendment, newsgathering, intellectual property, and general business issues. Together with legal counsel from other major media organizations, he helped develop strategies for dealing with important media law issues, including court access, prior restraints, and the reporter's privilege. Before joining The Post, David was an associate at Williams & Connolly in Washington, DC, where he handled a range of intellectual property and media litigation. David is a former member of the Newspaper Association of America's Legal Affairs Committee and is a current member of the First Amendment and Media Litigation Committee of the American Bar Association, the Media Law Committee of the District of Columbia Bar, and the New England Media Lawyers Group. David is admitted to practice law in New York, District of Columbia, United States Supreme Court, United States District Court for the District of Columbia, and United States District Court for the District of Maryland.

Dr. Tobe Berkovitz

Associate Professor of Advertising;
Dean ad interim, BU College of Communication

Tobe Berkovitz is the Dean ad interim of the College of Communication and has been a professor in the Department of Mass Communication, Advertising, and Public Relations for eighteen years. He was the Director of the Advertising Program and currently teaches AdLab, Boston University's student operated advertising agency. Professor Berkovitz has two theater degrees from the University of Connecticut and a doctorate in Speech, Communication and Theater from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan.

Dr. Berkovitz specializes in political advertising. He has worked as a political media consultant since 1974 as a media planner and buyer and produced and directed TV ads for candidates and groups supporting environmental and social causes. He is the author of Political Media Buying, a Brief Guide, published by the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

A noted expert on advertising, politics, and the media, he appears regularly as a news analyst on television and radio.

Robert A. Bertsche

Partner, Prince, Lobel, Glovsky & Tye

Robert A. Bertsche has made a career of protecting the First Amendment and business interests of the media. A litigator and employment lawyer by training, and a journalist at heart, Rob plays a general-counsel role to regional and national magazines, newspapers, book publishers, broadcasters, websites, and bloggers. Rob's practice ranges from prepublication and pre-broadcast review to litigation in such areas as libel, access privacy, reporters' privilege, and copyright and trademark infringement. He has represented Internet sites in cases applying the “single publication rule” and Massachusetts anti-SLAPP protections to the Web. He is currently defending a case challenging websites' legal immunities to liability for third-party speech. A graduate of Wesleyan University and Harvard Law School, Rob was on the founding staff of New England Monthly magazine and a reporter/editor at the Transcript-Telegram in Holyoke, Mass. He is now a partner at the Boston law firm of Prince, Lobel, Glovsky & Tye.

Robert Bone

Professor, BU School of Law

Robert Bone is Professor of Law and Richard L. Godfrey Faculty Research Scholar at Boston University School of Law. Professor Bone received his B.A. degree from Stanford University in 1973 and his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1978. He clerked for United States District Court Judge W. Arthur Garrity, Jr. and practiced law at the Boston firm of Hill & Barlow before joining the University of Southern California law faculty in 1983. Professor Bone has been a member of the Boston University School of Law faculty since 1987 and has been a Visiting Professor at Columbia Law School and Harvard Law School. His areas of expertise include intellectual property, civil procedure, and complex litigation. His intellectual property work focuses mainly on trademark and trade secret law and he has published important articles in both fields and given numerous lectures and talks. Professor Bone was selected to give the 2000-2001 Boston University Lecture in honor of his scholarly achievements, and he received Boston University's highest teaching award, the Metcalf Award for Excellence in Teaching, in 1991.

T. Barton Carter

Professor of Communication & Law; Chairman, Department of Mass Communication, Advertising and Public Relations at BU's College of Communication

T. Barton Carter is Professor of Communication and Law and the Chairman of the Department of Mass Communication, Advertising, and Public Relations at Boston University's College of Communication. He received his B.A. in Psychology from Yale University in 1971, his J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1974 and his M.S. in Mass Communication from the Boston University School of Public Communication in 1978. He has been a faculty member at Boston University since 1977. His areas of expertise include the First Amendment, communication law, electronic mass media regulation, telecommunication regulation and new communication technologies. He is the coauthor of The First Amendment and the Fourth Estate, The First Amendment and the Fifth Estate, and Mass Communication Law in a Nutshell. He has published articles and given lectures on defamation, privacy, new technology's effect on the marketplace of ideas, prior restraint and the Patriot Act.

Wendy J. Gordon

Paul J. Liacos Scholar-in-Law; Professor of Law

Internationally known, Wendy Gordon has been named a Fulbright Fellow and was elected to the Senior Visiting Research Fellowship at St. John's College, Oxford. She also served as a Visiting Fellow in the Oxford Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy. Professor Gordon has given more than 80 presentations worldwide and has taught as regular or visiting faculty at the law schools of Georgetown University, Rutgers University/Newark, the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan and Western New England College. She has been awarded several honors such as a New Jersey Governor's Fellowship in the Humanities and most recently won an award from the Ronald A. Cass Fund for Teaching Excellence. She is the author of over three-dozen articles, and she has co-edited two books on the economics of copyright. Her work has appeared in journals such as the University of Chicago Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the Virginia Law Review and the Columbia Law Review, and she is often reprinted and anthologized. Her scholarship has been cited in three opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Ellen Hume

Founding director of the Center on Media and Society at UMass-Boston

Ellen Hume, a veteran journalist and teacher, is the founding director of the Center on Media and Society at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where she teaches courses about the relationship between journalism and democracy. In 2006 she founded the New England Ethnic Newswire (www.go-NEWz.com). Hume formerly was executive director of Harvard's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, director of the Democracy Project at PBS and White House correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. She is author of the prizewinning study, Tabloids, Talk Radio and the Future of News (Annenberg Washington Program, 1995) and of Media Missionaries (Knight Foundation, 2004), a survey of Americans' efforts to train journalists in developing countries. Hume is the recipient of two honorary degrees and sits on the boards of the Shorenstein Center and several other nonprofit journalism support organizations.

Mark Jurkowitz

Associate Director, Project for Excellence in Journalism

Mark Jurkowitz, Associate Director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, has spent nearly two decades covering the news media. He was the press critic and author of the Boston Phoenix's "Don't Quote Me" column from 1987-1994 and again from July 2005 until June 2006. In between, he spent 10 years at The Boston Globe, initially as the paper's ombudsman and then as its first full-time media beat writer. A graduate of Boston University, Jurkowitz has taught a course on media ethics at both Northeastern University and Tufts University and has been a commentator on media-related issues on outlets ranging from CNN's "Reliable Sources" to NPR's "On the Media." He has also made more than 300 appearances as a regular panelist on "Beat the Press," a weekly program on Boston's WGBH-TV that scrutinizes the journalism profession. In the 1990's, he spent a number of years as a radio talk host on WHDH-AM and WRKO-AM in Boston.

Dan Kennedy

Professor of Journalism, Northeastern University;
Blogger, Media Nation

Dan Kennedy teaches journalism at Northeastern University, writes the media column for CommonWealth Magazine, and comments on media issues for "Greater Boston with Emily Rooney," on WGBH-TV (Channel 2). The media critic for the Boston Phoenix from 1994-2005, he has written for The New Republic, Slate, Salon, and The Guardian. He blogs at Media Nation, medianation.blogspot.com.

Peter Mancusi

Senior Vice President, Weber Shandwick

Peter Mancusi joined Weber Shandwick's Cambridge office in November 2002 and heads the firm's corporate practice in New England. Peter served as Business Editor for The Boston Globe from March 1999 through November 2002, overseeing a dramatic expansion of the paper's business coverage. Outside the business journalism arena, Peter has more than 20 years of media experience. He served as the Globe's city editor and local political editor, and as a reporter worked on the Globe's Spotlight Team and as the paper's legal affairs correspondent, among many other assignments. Peter is also a lawyer and practiced for four and a half years as a litigator at Bingham, concentrating on media law. At Weber Shandwick, Peter has developed a wide-ranging practice helping individuals and companies build relationships with reporters and editors and tell their stories effectively. He has extensive crisis management experience, providing counsel during a crisis to limit the damage and hasten the recovery. As a veteran journalist, Peter also conducts in-depth media training for senior executives around the country. Peter is a graduate of Northeastern University and Boston College Law School. He was also a John S. Knight journalism fellow at Stanford University.

Markos Moulitsas

Founder, Kos Media, LLC

Markos Moulitsas was born on September 11, 1971, in Chicago, IL. The son of a Salvadoran mother and Greek father, Moulitsas spent his formative years in El Salvador (1976-1980), where he saw first-hand the ravages of civil war. His family fled threats on their lives by the communist guerillas and settled in the Chicago area. After high school, Moulitsas served in the U.S. Army (1989-92) as a 13P -- Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) Fire Direction Specialist. He trained at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, and served the remainder of his three-year enlistment in Bamberg, Germany. While he entered the Army as a Republican, he abandoned the GOP soon after his enlistment. Moulitsas earned two bachelor degrees at Northern Illinois University (1992-96), with majors in Philosophy, Journalism, and Political Science and a minor in German. He subsequently earned a J.D. at Boston University School of Law (1996-99) before deciding that it would be a cold day in hell before he ever worked as a lawyer. He headed West to the San Francisco Bay Area to make his dot.com millions but got nowhere. He worked as a project manager at a web development shop when, in 2002, he started Daily Kos. Moulitsas flirted with political consulting in 2003 before deciding that 1) he hated it, and 2) he didn't need to do it. Daily Kos was making enough revenues to allow him to blog full-time, which he still does today. In addition to running Kos Media, LLC, which publishes Daily Kos, Moulitsas is also founder of the SB Nation network of sports blogs, and co-founder of Vaster Books. He's an avid pianist and composer. He is co-author of the critically acclaimed book Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics. He was named one of the 100 Most Influential Hispanics in the world by People en Español, clocked in at third in Forbes Web Celeb 25 rankings, and was listed 26th in PC World's list of the "Most Important People on the Web." Moulitsas has been happily married since 2000. He has a wonderful toddler, Aristotle, and another child (sex unknown) is scheduled to hit the scene in early April.

Maureen O'Rourke

Dean, BU School of Law

Dean Maureen O'Rourke joined the faculty of the School of Law in 1993 after working at IBM Corporation, where she handled a variety of issues surrounding software licensing. The intersection of intellectual property law and other fields, such as contract law and antitrust, has long been her primary interest. Prior to becoming dean, Maureen O'Rourke taught courses in commercial law and intellectual property law, in addition to helping supervise the student-run Journal of Science and Technology Law. In May 2000, she became the School's sixth recipient of the Metcalf Award, the University's highest teaching honor. She served as acting dean for two years prior to accepting the post of Dean of the Law School in 2006. Dean O'Rourke graduated from Marist College with a B.S., summa cum laude, and received her J.D. from Yale Law School. She has published articles in the law reviews of Columbia, Duke, Iowa, and Minnesota, the technology journals of Berkeley, Harvard, and Boston University and other publications including the Journal of the Copyright Society. She has lectured extensively and been a visiting professor at Columbia University Law School. She also co-authored the casebook Copyright in a Global Information Economy.

R.D. Sahl

Principal anchor, New England Cable News

R.D. Sahl is a principal anchor at NECN. He currently anchors Right Now with R.D. Sahl, and co-anchors The News at 9 and New England Business Day. His 40-year career in broadcast journalism has taken him to stories around the corner and around the world. Foreign assignments include: The former Soviet Union and the new Russia, Solidarity-era Poland, German unification, the 40th, 50th and 60th anniversaries of the D-Day landings, The Vatican, Japan, and Cuba. He´s covered national political conventions going back seven elections. Sahl first joined NECN in 1995 as host of NewsNight. He joined the network fulltime in 1997. He´s received several regional Emmy awards for reporting and anchoring. He is a member of the Silver Circle of NATAS, a recipient of the Yankee Quill Award, and the Boston University Kauff Award. Sahl holds a Journalism degree from the University of Colorado, and a Master´s degree in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

Gigi Sohn

Co-founder, Public Knowledge

Gigi Sohn is an internationally known communications attorney. In September 2001, she founded Public Knowledge with Laurie Racine and activist/author David Bollier. Gigi serves as PK's chief strategist, fundraiser and public face. She is frequently quoted in the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, as well as in trade and local press. Gigi has been published in the Washington Post, Variety, CNET and Legal Times, and has appeared on numerous television and radio programs. Gigi is a Non-Resident Fellow at the University of Southern California Annenberg Center, and a Senior Fellow at the University of Melbourne Faculty of Law. She has been an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University and at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University. Gigi served as a Project Specialist in the Ford Foundation's Media, Arts and Culture unit and as Executive Director of the Media Access Project, a public interest law firm that represents citizens' rights before the FCC and the courts. In 1997, President Clinton appointed Gigi to serve as a member of his Advisory Committee on the Public Interest Obligations of Digital Television Broadcasters. In May 2006, the Electronic Frontier Foundation gave Gigi its Internet “Pioneer” Award. Gigi currently serves on the board of the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference (TPRC) and Broadcasters' Child Development Center (BCDC). She is a member of the advisory board of the Future of Music Coalition and the Center for Public Integrity's “Well Connected” Telecommunications Project. Gigi served on the District of Columbia Bar Board of Governors from 1997-2000. Gigi holds a B.S. in Broadcasting and Film, Summa Cum Laude, from the Boston University College of Communication and a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Sherrese Smith

Deputy General Counsel, Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive

Sherrese Smith is Deputy General Counsel of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, The Washington Post Company's internet subsidiary. Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive publishes washingtonpost.com, Newsweek.com, Budgettravelonline.com, Slate.com and Sprig.com. At WPNI, Ms. Smith focuses on matters pertaining to copyright, trademark, Internet and media law, as well as licensing and commercial transactions. Prior to Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, Ms. Smith was an associate at Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C., where she was a member of the intellectual property practice group. At Arnold & Porter, Ms. Smith focused her work in the areas of copyright, internet law, and licensing and technology transactions. Ms. Smith received a J.D. from Northwestern University and earned a B.A. from the University of South Carolina.

Joseph Steinfield

Partner, Prince, Lobel, Glovsky & Tye LLP

Joseph D. Steinfield is a partner in the Boston law firm of Prince, Lobel, Glovsky & Tye LLP. He is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, is listed in The Best Lawyers in America under both Business Litigation and First Amendment Litigation, and is cited as one of the nation's most notable First Amendment practitioners in the 2007 edition of Chambers USA. Joe is a member of the American Law Institute, teaches a First Amendment seminar at Boston College Law School, and is a featured speaker at the Practising Law Institute's annual Communications Law Program in New York. He recently represented Fox Television in three high-profile defamation cases brought by the Islamic Society of Boston. Among several high profile cases, he served as special prosecutor in the impeachment trial of the Chief Justice of New Hampshire and as counsel for the former Governor of Puerto Rico. He has published numerous articles and book reviews and appears regularly at litigation and media law seminars.

Bruce D. Sunstein

Co-founder, Bromberg & Sunstein

Bruce D. Sunstein is a co-founder of Bromberg & Sunstein and heads the Patent Practice Group. His strategic approach to intellectual property has enabled a wide range of enterprises to establish dominant patent positions in their markets. Technologies regularly involved in Bruce's practice include bioinformatics, electronic circuits and systems, computer hardware and software, communications and speech, biomedical devices, bio-pharmaceuticals and mechanical devices. Sunstein has a broad focus on both intellectual property and business representation of enterprises that have a substantial component of intellectual property. He has experience as an expert witness, and as arbitrator, in intellectual property disputes. He speaks nationally on intellectual property law and business strategy and has authored numerous papers on intellectual property matters. He was named co-inventor in a business method patent, covering methods for assisting in the prevention of identity theft. Sunstein is a member of the American Intellectual Property Law Association, the Boston Patent Law Association, Licensing Executives Society, American Bar Association, Massachusetts Bar Association, Boston Bar Association, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He was named one of the five best intellectual property lawyers in Boston by Boston magazine (Oct. 2002) and the only one cited for patent prosecution skills. He was also named by the publishers of Law & Politics and Boston magazine in 2006 as among the top 100 lawyers in Massachusetts, and in 2004-2006 as a "Super Lawyer" in the field of intellectual property in Massachusetts, which is limited to the top 5 percent of attorneys in each state, as chosen by their peers and through independent research.