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The 2024 Maynard 200 Fellowship is designed to sharpen skills, provide hands-on training as well as a one-to-one year-long mentorship, and build a community of peer support. This year’s curriculum has been updated with a hyperfocus on the critical role editors and managers play in today’s newsrooms. Hosted by the Bob Schieffer College of Communication at TCU, fellows benefit from two weeks of in-person training sessions and workshops led by industry leaders. This blog highlights just a few of the 2024 Maynard 200 Faculty.

Editing for Tone & Language for Coaching Editors

Faculty: Merrill Perlman

Merrill Perlman is a consultant who works with news organizations, private companies and foundations, journalism organizations and writers and editors, helping them to communicate with clarity. She spent 25 years at The New York Times in jobs ranging from copy editor to director of copy desks, in charge of all 150-plus copy editors at The Times. She is also a freelance editor of books, long-form journalism and other informational content.

Before going to The Times, she was a copy editor and assistant business editor at The Des Moines Register. Before that, she was a reporter and copy editor at The Southern Illinoisan newspaper. She has a bachelor of journalism degree from the University of Missouri and a master of arts in mass communication from Drake University.

Finding the Heart of the Story through 5 Focusing Questions

Faculty: Tom Huang

Tom Huang is Assistant Managing Editor for Journalism Initiatives at The Dallas Morning News, where he edits enterprise stories, helps with newsroom training and internships and leads the newsroom’s community-funded journalism initiative, which seeks philanthropic support of public service journalism. Since 2020, he has helped launch The News’ Education Lab, which has expanded education reporting with the support of local foundations; Arts Access, a partnership with KERA that covers arts and culture through a DEI lens; and the Dallas Media Collaborative, an alliance of news outlets and universities focused on solutions-based reporting on affordable housing.

As an adjunct faculty member of The Poynter Institute, he organizes seminars for professional journalists on writing, reporting and editing. For the past six years, he has served as a coach in the Poynter Table Stakes program, which helps newsrooms make the transition to sustainable digital publishing.

Editing Across Platforms

Faculty: Joanne Griffin

Joanne Griffin is a strategist, innovator and transformation professional with a lengthy career in finance and technology. Her career has spanned more than twenty years in various industries, including senior leadership positions at LinkedIn, Nielsen and EY.

She is currently the CEO of AdaptIQ where she leads innovation initiatives focused on transformation and adaptability for global enterprises. A solutions-builder at heart with a deep appreciation of the power of community to solve complex challenges, she is co-founder and COO of IrelandTogether.ie, a non-profit organisation creating opportunity for entrepreneurs by creating serendipitous collisions.

An enduring love affair with technology dates back to the arrival of the Commodore VIC-20 in the early 1980s. She has judged the European Automation Awards category for SSON since 2017, and is ranked as one of the Top 50 Thought Leaders in RPA. As a tech zealot with an innovative mindset, she believes that technologists have a responsibility to be ethical, collaborative and transparent in the design of products and business models. She advises a small number of high-potential start-ups who are aligned with those values.

Building Trust & Effective Relationships between Editors and Reporters/writers

Faculty: Maria Carrillo

Maria is a consultant and coach after spending 36 years in seven newsrooms. She was enterprise editor at the Tampa Bay Times and Houston Chronicle and, before that, managing editor at The Virginian-Pilot. She has edited dozens of award-winning projects, frequently lectures on narrative journalism and co-hosts a podcast (WriteLane) about craft.

She is a board member of the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism and the National Press Photographers Association and a juror for the Hillman Prizes. Maria was born in Washington, D.C., two years after her parents left Cuba in exile. She now lives in St. Petersburg, Fla.

Mounting and Managing a Big Project

Faculty: Aaron Glantz

Aaron served as Executive-in-Residence for the Maynard 200 Fellowship’s Investigative Storytelling Track. He is California bureau chief and a senior editor at The Fuller Project, the global newsroom dedicated to groundbreaking reporting that catalyzes positive change for women.

Aaron is a two-time Peabody Award winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist, who produces journalism with impact. His work has sparked dozens of Congressional hearings and investigations by the FBI, DEA, Pentagon inspector general, and the United Nations Special Rapporteur for extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary execution. One project prompted the second largest redlining settlement in Justice Department history, against Warren Buffett’s mortgage companies.

As senior investigations editor for NPR’s California Newsroom, he built an investigative collaboration for 17 public radio stations in partnership with NPR national. Their work led to the enactment of two state laws and propelled more than $2 billion in additional funds for affordable homeownership, climate mitigation, and compensation for fire victims.

Aaron is author of three books: How America Lost Iraq (Penguin); The War Comes Home: Washington’s Battle Against America’s Veterans (UC Press); and Homewreckers: How a Gang of Wall Street Kingpins, Hedge Fund Magnates, Crooked Banks, and Vulture Capitalists Sucked Millions Out of Their Homes and Demolished the American Dream (HarperCollins).

An alumnus of the John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University, Aaron has been a DART Ochberg Fellow at Columbia University and a visiting professor at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

Convening in-person on March 11

The Maynard 200 Fellowship program is made possible thanks to all members of the 2024 faculty and mentors and the first training week kicks off on March 11. Our university host partners at TCU’s Bob Schieffer College of Communication including long-standing TCU faculty member, Associate Professor of Professional Practice and Director of Student Media Journalism, Jean Marie Brown has also been instrumental in welcoming the Maynard 200 Fellowship. Brown is an expert in the Maynard Institute’s Fault Lines training methodology that promotes diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in newsrooms. Under Brown’s tutelage, the Fault Lines® methodology has also been applied to in-depth community reporting by students at TCU 360, the official, student-produced journalism of the Journalism Department in the Bob Schieffer College of Communication.

In addition to the sessions mentioned above, the Fellowship’s training sessions will also explore:

• Evaluating and coaching successful story pitches
• DEI in Artificial Intelligence
• The Fault Lines® Framework: Fault Lines® in News Coverage
• Gallup Strengths Assessment & 1:1 Coaching
• Coaching Workshops: Success in Management & Effective Leadership
• Leading Difficult Conversations and Managing Conflict
• Managing through Authenticity
• Managing Up, Down and Across Generations
• Building Resilience & Mental Well-Being in Teams
• Negotiation Strategies
• Fault Lines® in Management

About the Maynard 200 Fellowship

Maynard 200 is the cornerstone program advancing the Maynard Institute’s efforts to expand the diversity pipeline in news media and dismantle structural racism in its newsrooms. Since 2018, the Maynard Institute has trained media leaders, storytellers, editors, managers and entrepreneurs through the fellowship program. Maynard 200 is designed to sharpen skills, provide hands-on training as well as a one-to-one year-long mentorship, and build a community of peer support for diverse journalists. In 2024, the program returns with two weeks of in-person training rounds — specifically designed to support the success of newsroom editors and managers. Hosted by the Bob Schieffer College of Communication at TCU in Fort Worth, Texas, the program will convene in March and July of 2024.

Maynard 200 is made possible thanks to the support of our generous funders Craig Newmark Philanthropies, The Hearthland Foundation and McClatchy.

Questions?