Jury 2008

For more than 12 years, Michael Rosenblum has been on the cutting edge of the digital 'video-journalist' revolution and the complete rethinking of how television is made and controlled. In fact, he coined the phrase. "Video-journalism is more than just teaching someone to shoot and edit their own video," he says, "It is teaching creative people to be 'literate' in the most powerful medium in the world today."

His work has included: the creation of 'VJ' units for BBC and Oxygen, the complete conversion of The Voice of America, the United States Government's broadcasting agency (and the largest broadcaster in the world), from short wave radio to television broadcasting and webcasting using the 'VJ' paradigm (1998-present), as well as the construction of NYT Television, a New York Times Company, and currently the largest producer of non-fiction television in the U.S. Rosenblum was both the Founder and President of NYT TV. He was also the President and Founder of Video News International, a global, VJ-driven news gathering company, with more than 100 journalists around the world (1993-1996).

Michael has also designed, built and implemented VJ-driven news channels around the world, including Time/Warner's New York 1, Associated Newspapers (UK) London-based Channel 1, Switzerland's largest commercial TV broadcaster, TeleZuri, as well as a host of smaller projects such as Eritrea's ERI-TV and Sri Lanka's SLBC. His consulting clients include The BBC, TV-24/Germany, TV4/Sweden, Oxygen Media, National Public Radio, Danmarks Radio (DK), TV-3 Sweden, Norway & Denmark, Tokyo Broadcasting, Korea Broadcasting.

He has conducted his unique VJ training classes all over the world, from Thailand to Marakech, and has lectured extensively both oversees and in the US. He is an adjunct professor of communication at New York University, where he teaches "Television and the Information Revolution", a course of his own design.

Leif Hedman has spent a large part of his life on the road with a camera in hand. He has worked as a documentary filmmaker, foreign correspondent, and professor in cinematography at the Swedish Dramatic Institute and he has served as head of production at SVT News. He is also one the members of the group which developed and introduced the digitized workflow for TV news production now in use at Swedish Public Television. Hedman has spent a lot of time spreading the ability amongst TV journalists to prepare, shoot and edit their stories by themselves. In this spirit he has appeared as a lecturer in several countries and he has held courses all over Sweden, in the Baltic countries and in Botswana.

Sue Phillips is the London Bureau Chief for Al-Jazeera International. She is an experienced broadcast professional. Her career includes senior roles as London Bureau Chief for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Managing Director of News World International, and Senior Radio Producer and Senior Television Producer at CBC.

Willy Lenaers is CEO of Concentra Media, one of the oldest and largest media groups in Belgium.  The Concentra regional TV stations, TV Oost and TVL are European pioneers in video journalism. Willy Lenaers will be the host of this year's jury

Christian F. Trippe was born in Düsseldorf in 1961. He first started work for the BBC Radio German Service in London, Deutschlandfunk Cologne and then WDR-TV in Düsseldorf before joining Germany's inernational broadcaster Deutsche Welle TV in 1993.

Since then he has job roles including  Editor, News and Current Affairs Department (1993 - 1998),  Moscow Bureau Chief (1999 - 2002) and Head of Political Department in Berlin between 2002 - 2007,  where he was responsible for DW-TV's VJ-activities. Presently, Christian is the Brussels Bureau Chief. 

Vicent Partal is deputy-Chairman of the European Journalism Center. Founders and Director of VilaWeb.com an electronic newspaper which is the main catalan language site and one of Spain's most successful internet news services. Before worked as a journalist in several newspapers and as a reporter in TVE. He has also been working as a foreign affairs correspondent in Central and Eastern Europe focusing on the former USSR. He is academic-director of the Digital Journalism MA at Ramon Llull University in Barcelona and advisor of BarçaTV, the official channel of FC Barcelona. Partal has been awared with several prizes as the National Award in Journalism (2004) or the City of Barcelona Award in Journalism (1999).

Tone Kunst is editor-in-chief in NRK Nordland, which is one of NRK's 12 regional stations. NRK Nordland has 20 VJ's, most of their TV news are produced by VJs, and since 2003 they annually arrange the Norwegian VJ Congress . Kunst began her journalist career in 1980, working with both radio and TV until she in 1994 became an editor and later chief editor in NRK Finnmark, the northernmost regional station in Norway. From there she moved on to NRK Nordland in 2002. She has worked with VJs and strategies for integrating videojournalism in the news production for the last ten years.

Bas Broekhuizen (1975) studied History in Amsterdam. He joined de Volkskrant – one of the leading broadsheets in The Netherlands – in 2000. As a web editor and a project manager he helped build the online strategy of the paper. In 2005 he headed an experiment on multi skilled journalism. Three newspaper reporters were trained as video journalists so they could create video reports to accompany their print stories. The main conclusion of the project: writing an article for the newspaper and producing a video report on the same subject is not a good combination when you want both stories to be the best you can offer. To get quality, you need a dedicated team of talented video journalists. Since 2006 Bas has been the editor and producer of Volkskrant TV, a department of the newspaper that creates video clips for the web, IPTV and broadcast television. His team is a mix of retrained newspaper reporters and television professionals. They operate on their own, in small teams or together with their colleagues from the print edition.

Simon Bucks began his journalistic career as a news agency reporter in Bristol, UK in 1972. He moved into television news in 1975, as a producer with HTV West, also in Bristol. In 1981 he moved to the ITV national news organisation, ITN, where he rose to be Senior Programme Editor, producing at various times all ITN’s main programmes on ITV, as well as numerous special programmes.

In 1994, Simon moved to be Head of News and later Controller of Programmes for London News Network, the company responsible for producing all ITV news programmes for London. In 1998 London Tonight won the RTS award for the best regional news programme. In 1999, he spent a year an independent consultant and producer; and executive produced ITV’s “Millennium Night” show on December 31st . In 2000 he joined Sky News, initially as Executive Producer, Business News. In 2001 he switched to Executive Producer, Special Events. He has been Associate Editor since 2004 and in 2007 moved to Sky News Online where is specifically responsible for growing user participation.

Simon has a special interest in innovation. Most recently he helped launch Sky News’ presence in Second Life. He was responsible for Sky’s reconstructions of the Hutton Inquiry into the death of the scientist David Kelly and the Michael Jackson trial; and he was responsible for winning permission to stream live stenography from courtrooms direct to TV screens. This work won the RTS Innovation award in 2004 and was nominated in 2006. Simon has been closely involved with the British Broadcasters’ campaign to get cameras into courts.

He is President (from Nov 07) of the Society of Editors, and the Vice Chairman of the DA- notice Committee. He is married with two children and lives in London.

Steve Taschini is an Italian who grew up in the North West of England. Leaving school at 16 he worked for various small companies as everything from a Butcher to a Shop fitter before joining the British Army. He served in the old West Germany and Denmark. He then joined BBC Radio Merseyside and has worked for the Corporation for nearly 24 years. During that period he has worked at 8 Local Radio stations, was the Managing Editor of three and for a time worked at BBC Look East, the regional news programme based in Norwich as a reporter and presenter.

Between 1998 and 2000 he worked as a freelance broadcaster, this included time as a Newsreader on SKY TV News. He re-joined the BBC to take charge of BBC Radio Kent and was a member of the management team which set up a new broadcasting region for the South East of England.

He was BBC English Regions Business manager for two years, formulating and developing England wide strategies for all 40 local radio stations and 13 Regional centres and is now Executive Editor of BBC Oxford. The centre is the BBC’s most advanced in terms of multi-media working and was the first in the world to use Video Journalists to produce daily television news. The station has a successful radio station and internet site serving Oxfordshire with the television operation serving the central English counties of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire, parts of Gloucestershire and the town of Swindon.

Steve is an MA in European Audiovisual Law and Economics, he has one son, Alexander who is 12, his partner Claire also works for the BBC in Network news. Steve has interests including Music, Classic cars and travelling.