Read about the professional experience of the members of the
Illinois First Amendment Center Board of Directors.

Bernard Judge is IFAC Board Chairman and Editor Emeritus of the Daily Law Bulletin. He joined the City News Bureau in 1965 and the Chicago Tribune in 1966. He became city editor in 1974 and assistant managing editor in 1979. He was editor and general manager of the City News Bureau from 1983 to 1984 before being metropolitan editor and associate editor of the Chicago Sun-Times. He joined the Law Bulletin Publishing Co. in 1988. He also taught at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and serves on the board of the Constitutional Rights Foundation of Chicago.

Cheryl Wormley is IFAC Vice Board Chairman, publisher and co-founder of The Woodstock Independent, a past president of the Illinois Press Association (IPA) and a current member of the Illinois Press Foundation (IPF). She and Denise Graff Ponstein launched The Woodstock Independent in 1987. Since then, the newspaper has won more IPA contest sweepstakes trophies than any other single newspaper in the entire state. In 2001, Wormley received the National Newspaper Association's Emma C. McKinney Award, the highest honor presented to a woman by the NNA. She is also a past president of the Northern Illinois Newspaper Association.

Stephen Anderson is the editor of the ISBA Bar News since January 1991, joined the Illinois State Bar Association staff in 1988 after seven years as associate publisher of the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin. A 1955 graduate of the University of Illinois College of Communications, he has been an executive of award-winning community newspapers in Maywood, Highland Park, Downers Grove and St. Charles. He is a past president of the Chicago Headline Club, the Chicago Public Relations Forum and the Northern Illinois Newspaper Association, and he serves on the boards of the Illinois Press Foundation and the Chicago Journalists Association.

Jack Brimeyer, who served as managing editor of the Journal Star in Peoria, is a graduate of Iowa State University, he began his career in 1970 as a reporter at the Dubuque (Iowa) Telegraph Herald before becoming local news editor. He became assistant managing editor/nights at the Journal Star in 1982 and assistant managing editor/news in 1985. The Journal Star then named him managing editor in 1990. He is a founding member of the Heartland Regional Network, a member of the Illinois Associated Press Editors Executive Board and a past member of the Bradley University College of Communications and Fine Arts International Advisory Board.

Don Craven serves as general counsel for the Illinois Press Association. He joined his father, James C. Craven, in 1986 to concentrate on media issues and voting rights litigation. His firm, Donald M. Craven, P.C. focuses its on libel and First Amendment issues, access to government meetings and records and business concerns of newspapers. He also is general counsel to the Illinois News Broadcasters Association and the Illinois Broadcasters Association.

Nancy Day is the Journalism Department Chair at Columbia College Chicago. She earned her M.A. in Communication at Stanford University. Nancy is a Nieman Fellow, Harvard University; Department Chairperson; former editor and reporter, San Francisco Examiner, Associated Press; former reporter, Chicago Sun-Times, Illinois State Register, Anchorage Daily News; freelance editor, writer, consultant, whose articles have appeared in the Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, People magazine, Rolling Stone, Columbia Journalism Review and many other national, regional and online publications; Fulbright Scholar; winner, American Bar Association Gavel Award, UPI Spot News Award.

George de Lama recently retired as deputy managing editor/news at the Chicago Tribune, where he oversaw the newpaper’s news coverage and staff since 2001.  Prior to that, de Lama served for six years as associate managing editor for foreign and national news. During that time, his staff won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, among other honors. He played a leading role in nine years of discussions with the Cuban government that resulted in Tribune Company opening a news bureau in Havana, the first American newspaper office in Cuba in 35 years.  Returning to Chicago in January 1995, he served as chief of correspondents after 14 years in a variety of national and foreign positions for the Tribune that saw him report from 55 countries on five continents.  He also served as the Tribune’s chief White House correspondent during the Reagan administration and as chief diplomatic correspondent in the first Bush administration.  De Lama joined the Tribune in 1978, working on the metropolitan staff in Chicago as a reporter until his 1981 posting to the Washington bureau.  He has won several journalism awards and honors, including the Tribune’s Edward Scott Beck Award for distinguished foreign reporting in 1983 and 1990, and for distinguished domestic reporting in 1994. He also received a National Education Writers award in 1979 for coverage of the Chicago public schools crisis.  De Lama was awarded a prestigious Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University during the 1991-92 school year. The national magazine Hispanic Business has named him one of the 100 most influential Hispanics in the United States.

Shawn W. Denney is Archdeacon of Springfield and Vicar of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Springfield, Illinois. A graduate of MacMurray College (B.A. 1973), Jacksonville, Illinois, and the University of Illinois College of Law (J.D. 1976), Urbana-Champaign, Fr. Denney is a licensed attorney who was employed in the Office of the Illinois Attorney General for over 26 years, serving five Attorneys General. At the time of his retirement from State service (December 31, 2002), he was Senior Counsel to the Attorney General, Ethics Officer and chair of the Attorney General’s Ethics Commission. Previously, he had served as First Assistant Attorney General (1988-1995), Solicitor General (1987-1988), Chief Attorney in the Springfield office (1983-1987) and Chief of the Attorney General’s Opinions Division (1980-1987).

Mary Field is Executive Producer of Chicago Tonight, WTTW 11's nightly live news and current events hour. She is also responsible for all news and public affairs production at the station, including Chicago Tonight, Chicago Tonight: The Week in Review, the Friday Night Program and segments produced for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

In more than 30 years in the news business, Field has been a William Benton Fellow in broadcast journalism at the University of Chicago, an investigative/special projects producer for WGN-TV, an assistant news director for WIND Radio and a reporter for the legendary City News Bureau.

She has been honored with numerous journalism awards for investigative reporting as well as a Peter Lisagor Award for public service and a National Silver Gavel Award for legal affairs reporting. She is a graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and Oberlin College.

John Foreman is the editor and publisher of The News-Gazette in Champaign, the 1997 Illinois Press Association (IPA) president and the 1994 recipient of the IPA’s James C. Craven Freedom of the Press Award. He joined The News-Gazette as a reporter in 1977 and became city editor in 1981, managing editor in 1985, editor-in-chief in 1987, general manager in 1999 amd publisher in 2002.. He has taught journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has been inducted into Eastern Illinois University Journalism School’s hall of fame and into the Lincoln League of Journalists by the Illinois AP Editors Association.

Kim Freitag is the Gifted Program Coordinator for Community Consolidated School District #93 in Carol Stream and served as a member of the steering committee that developed the First Amendment Center curriculum for students in middle and high school. An experienced educator, she has worked as a principal or teacher in U.S. public and parochial schools as well as international schools in Berlin and Saudi Arabia. She has been a member of the student selection review committee at the Illinois Math and Science Academy. She completed her undergraduate degree in political science at Marquette University, earned a master's degree in curriculum and supervision at N.I.U., and is currently a doctoral student at N.I.U. She is a member of professional organizations including the National and Illinois Councils for the Social Studies, National and Illinois Associations for Gifted Children, and Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. She will be presenting a workshop on the Illinois First Amendment Center's upper grades curriculum at the ICSS conference in September of 2006.

Judith Krug, Director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom since 1967 and Executive Director of the Freedom to Read Foundation since 1969, received her B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh where she studied political theory. In 1964, she earned her M.A. at the Graduate Library School of the University of Chicago, and has held positions in various Chicago libraries—including Reference Librarian at the John Crerar Library and Head Cataloger at the Northwestern University Dental School Library. Before assuming her present duties in the Office for Intellectual Freedom, Mrs. Krug was the research analyst for the American Library Association.

James A. Klenk is a First Amendment lawyer with Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal in Chicago. A trial lawyer since 1974, his clients have included Howard Publications, the Orlando Sentinel, the Chicago Tribune and Time magazine. He edited the Wisconsin Law Review from 1973 to 1974 and was law clerk to U.S. Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit Chief Judge Thomas Fairchild from 1974 to 1975. He authors the Media Law Center’s treatise in Illinois defamation law.

Barry Locher most recently served as editor of the State Journal-Register in Springfield. He joined the newspaper in 1974 as a photography intern and became a full-time staff member in 1977 following graduation from the University of Missouri School of Journalism. He was named editor in 1999. Locher played a key role in the development of one of the country's most professional newspaper photojournalism programs, chosen in 2005 by Photo District News as one of the 13 best newspapers in America for photojournalists to work. He was the supervising editor for "The Youngest Victims," a series that documented violence to children in Chicago. It was awarded a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for Coverage of the Disadvantaged in 1994. In 2004, he directed the newspaper's four-day series, "Beardstown: Reflection of a changing America," on immigration in a small, Central Illinois community. The project was awarded the Freedom Forum/ASNE Award for Outstanding Writing on Diversity and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting (written by S. Lynne Walker for The State Journal-Register, submitted by Copley News Service). Locher is a former Illinois Press Photographers Association Photographer of the Year, as well as Region 5 Photographer of the Year. He is a member of the board of directors for the Illinois First Amendment Center and the Illinois Press Foundation.

Richard "Dick" O'Brien is a media law and intellectual property attorney at the law firm of Sidley Austin Brown & Wood in Chicago. He joined the firm in 1981 after serving as a law clerk to U.S. District Court Judge Abraham L. Marovitz in Chicago. His clients have included the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Milwaukee Journal and several radio and TV stations. He is also a member of the Libel Defense Resource Center. He firm publishes an annual newsletter of recent media law developments for the Illinois Press Association.

John David Reed taught journalism for 32 years at Eastern Illinois University and served as publisher of The Daily Eastern News for much of that time. He is the 2005 recipient of the Illinois Press Association's James C. Craven Freedom of the Press Award as well as the 1993 Louis E. Ingelhart First Amendment Award from College Media Advisers. Reed is executive director of Mid-America Press Institute, a member of the Illinois Press Foundation's board of directors and a founder of the Illinois College Press Association. He's been inducted into the Lincoln League of Journalists by the Illinois AP Editors Association and the College Media Advisers Hall of Fame. He also has received the Gold Key Award from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association, a Distinguished Service Award from the Illinois Press Association, the Distinguished Four-Year College Newspaper Adviser Award from CMA, and Distinguished Faculty Member and Outstanding Faculty Member Awards from Eastern. A reporter and editor at the Chicago Sun-Times before joining Eastern's faculty, Reed holds Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in journalism from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and the University of Missouri, respectively, and a B.A. in English, earned while he worked as a student journalist at The Daily Illini at the University of Illinois.

James Reindl is the director of major accounts for The Associated Press. Based in Chicago, Reindl works with AP’s largest member customer groups. He joined the AP in Detroit in 1983. Reindl has directed AP operations in three states – Florida, Indiana and Illinois – serving as chief of bureau in Miami, Indianapolis an Chicago. He began his career as a reporter with The Muskegon Chronicle in Michigan. He was a Kiplinger Fellow at Ohio State University.

Michelle Stevens's past experience includes Sunday Commentary editor at the Chicago Sun-Times, editor of the Letters to the Editor and a member of the editorial board. After two years at the City News Bureau, she began her newspaper career in 1975 at the Chicago Daily News and moved to its sister paper, the Sun-Times, in 1978 when the Daily News ceased publication. After several years as a reporter, copy editor and section editor, she joined the editorial board in 1993 and began writing a weekly opinion column. Stevens was named deputy editor of the editorial pages in 1993 and editor in 1995. She also served as night news editor before returning to the editorial board in 2000. She was a founding member of the Association for Women Journalists and is on the board of directors of  the Chicago Headline Club. She is a graduate of Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism and the John Marshall Law School.County Police Charities.

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