2010-2011 Board Officers
Western Washington Professional Chapter
Society of Professional Journalists

Clay Holtzman — President

Clay covers nonprofits, philanthropy and education for the Puget Sound Business Journal in Seattle. A reporter and editor for about 10 years, Clay started his full-time professional career five years ago at the New Mexico Business Weekly in Albuquerque covering technology, venture capital and energy. Previously, he has served as reporter at the Arizona Daily Sun in Flagstaff, and held positions that include news editor, managing editor and editor in chief at the student newspapers of the University of New Mexico and Northern Arizona University. He is a two-time Hechinger Institute fellowship recipient and he holds a bachelor’s degree in communications from NAU. Clay has served on the board since 2009.

Hilary Reeves — Past-President

Hilary is the board’s immediate past president and recently left her post as managing editor of the Business Examiner in Tacoma, where she had worked for four years. Prior, she spent two years covering municipal government and education for the Port Orchard Independent, a division of Sound Publishing. Hilary is a graduate of the University of Washington’s Department of Communication, majoring in editorial journalism, where she was awarded the John and Harriet Reid Memorial Scholarship for excellence in journalism. She has been an SPJ member since 2001, and was president of the University’s collegiate chapter for three years before graduating. Hilary has served on the board since 2005.

Breanne Coats — Treasurer

Breanne Coats is a native Washingtonian. She started her journalism career in Gig Harbor at Peninsula High School and developed her professional skills at Pacific Lutheran University. In 2008, Breanne graduated from PLU with a double major in communication and history and a double minor in literature and women’s and gender studies. While at PLU she was published in numerous local publications including The Olympian, The Gateway and the Puyallup Herald. She has also produced online videos for The News Tribune and worked at the NPR station, KPLU. Coats was president of PLU’s SPJ chapter for almost two years. During that time, the chapter was named Region 10 student chapter of the year twice and was named student chapter of the nation. Coats was named the SPJ 2007 Robert D.G. Lewis First Amendment Award and the 2008 Julie Galvan Outstanding Graduate in Journalism award winner. Upon graduation from PLU, Coats took off for Indianapolis for a Freedom of Information national internship with SPJ. She is currently an associate editor at the Business Examiner in Tacoma. Breanne has served on the board since 2009.

Monica Guzman — Secretary

Mónica Guzmán is director of editorial outreach at Intersect, a storytelling startup gearing up for launch. Before joining the Seattle-based company in June, Mónica spent five years in journalism, reporting for newspapers and online publications in Houston, Michigan and Seattle. From January 2007 to May 2010, she was a reporter at seattlepi.com, where she ran the award-winning Big Blog and drew a community of readers online and through weekly meetups. Since 2007 she’s spoken to classrooms and conferences about online conversation, new communication tools and trends in the social Web. In May 2009, she was named one of the Top 100 Women in Seattle Tech by tech news site Techflash. This year, the Society of Professional Journalists’ “Quill” magazine ranked her one of the 20 journalists to follow on Twitter. Apart from her duties with SPJ, Mónica serves on the advisory boards of Seattle City Club and the University of Washington Information School’s Masters of Science and Information Management Program. You can follow her on Twitter at @moniguzman.

Cliff DesPeaux — Board Member

Cliff Despeaux is a freelance photojournalist who has lived in the Northwest all his life. Originally interested in becoming a classical pianist, he decided to pursue a degree in art photography at the University of Washington. Eventually, Cliff discovered journalism and became the photo editor at the University’s campus newspaper, The Daily of the University of Washington. His college internships included the Seattle Supersonics and Storm, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer/seattlepi.com, and The Seattle Times. In addition to still photography, Cliff has experience with multimedia, video and Web producing.

Ursula Reutin — Board Member

Ursula Reutin is the news director at News Talk 97.3 KIRO-FM. She has been with the station for 20 years, working as an editor and a street reporter before going into management in 2002. Some of the highlights of her career include winning awards for investigative reporting and spot news. She graduated from the University of Oregon in 1988 with Bachelor of Arts degrees in Journalism and Telecommunications and Film. Ursula has served on the board since 2008.

Tracy Record — Board Member

Tracy Record is founder, editor and co-publisher (with husband Patrick Sand) of West Seattle Blog, the Seattle area’s first financially self-sustaining independent community-collaborative online neighborhood news service. Before WSB became a business in late 2007, Tracy worked in almost every other form of media - newspapers, radio, national Web news, and TV news, where she spent eight years as a producer and manager at KOMO-TV and six years as a manager at Q13. She and Patrick have a teenage son and live, of course, in West Seattle.

Sharon Salyer — Board Member

Sharon Salyer is the health and social issues reporter for The Herald in Everett. She serves as the chapter’s scholarship chair. Her reporting on the national forest issues won the Washington Journalism Center’s national award for environmental reporting. Sharon also was selected for a John S. Knight national journalism fellowship at Stanford University, where her studies focused on health and science topics. Her reporting on the lack of health care access for the poor, seniors and the uninsured launched a $1 million drive to open a new nonprofit clinic in Everett to serve these patients. A yearlong series on childhood obesity led to an ongoing countywide effort, Get Movin’, that provides incentives for kids to be active during the summer. Before coming to The Herald, Sharon worked for the Atlanta Journal and Constitution. She’s a graduate of Kent State University.

Jim Simon — Board Member

Jim Simon is an assistant managing editor at The Seattle Times, where he has worked for 24 years. He has held several editing positions and has extensive reporting experience covering politics, the environment and social issues. He also did a stint as staff writer for the Sunday Pacific Magazine. He has taught journalism at the University of Washington and Seattle University, and has been involved for several years in teaching and developing journalism training programs in Indonesia and East Timor. Last year, he helped organize a successful two-day conference at the UW for journalists on covering global health issues.

David Volk — Board Member

Volk is a University of Missouri School of Journalism grad who always planned to be a newspaper reporter, only to have things not go according to plan. He covered county government and the environment for an afternoon daily in suburban Kansas City, Missouri for a year before quitting to freelance full-time in the late 1980s. He moved to Seattle and has been covering the Northwest for a variety of local, regional and national magazines ever since. His writing credits run the gamut from the Capitol Hill Times and the Puget Sound Business Journal to Horizon Airlines Magazine, AAA Journey, The Chicago Tribune and Reuters. He has also served as associate editor of the trade publication Coffee & Cuisine and west coast editor for Building Supply Home Center Magazine.

Non-Voting Chairs/Associate Members:

Oren Campbell — Education Chair

Oren Campbell retired as publisher/editorial adviser at The Daily of the University of Washington in 2005, after more than a half-century as a journalist. He has advised the University’s collegiate SPJ chapter for the past 13 years and is deputy director for campus chapter affairs for SPJ’s Region 10. Oren formerly owned a small Oregon weekly and was an editor at the Bremerton Sun, Walla Walla Union Bulletin, Idaho Free Press and The Register-Republic in Rockford, Ill. He was sports editor in Wichita and Rockford and a sports copy editor at the Chicago American.

Marcus Donner — Access Chair

Marcus Donner is a photojournalist and visual storyteller. As director of photography for eight years at a daily newspaper, he coached staff photographers and provided the visual direction of the paper. His other work includes staff photographer, cinematographer on independent films and picture editing for print and multimedia. Marcus has volunteered for the past decade with the Society of Professional Journalists - twice as chapter president. He is the Bench-Bar-Press chair and worked extensively on the improvements to the Cameras in the Courts rule for Washington state. He is currently the editor of the 2007 edition of the chapter’s “Access: A Guide to Open Government.”

Dale Steinke — Webmaster

Dale Steinke is the interactive news and operations manager at KING5.com and NWCN.com in Seattle. He has a print journalism degree from the other UW: the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, where he was the SPJ student chapter president. He started out as a reporter at The Daily Herald in suburban Chicago, before moving to the Seattle area in 1993. Dale has been a beat reporter at the VDN/South County Journal and The Herald in Everett where he later worked on Heraldnet.com before coming to KING. As part of his SPJ board duties, he currently maintains the SPJWash.org website and is co-chair of the chapter’s monthly Seattle press club gatherings.

Stacey Walters — Law and Ethics Chair

Stacey is a media attorney with Vandeberg Johnson & Gandara in Seattle and a former television journalist. She practices in the area of media law emphasizing contracts, defamation, privacy, access, public records, prior restraint, reporters’ shield laws and intellectual property (trademark, copyright and rights clearance). She has represented newspapers, publishers, television networks and local stations in both state and federal court. She also represents television production companies. Stacey has nearly 20 years of experience in the television industry. Prior to law school, she worked as a reporter, producer and anchor for television stations in Washington and California. Stacey received her law degree from the University of Washington where she was elected to the Order of Barristers and Moot Court Honor Board.