Jury

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.

Willy Lenaers is Chairman of the Board of Directors at Concentra, 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

Franziska Bluhm is the vice chief editor of RP Online, the website of Rheinische Post.
The website is one of the ten biggest newspaper websites in Germany. She is responsible for the video activities at RP Online. Franziska Bluhm is experimenting with web videos since 2001.

Michiel Buitelaar (1962) is COO Digital Media at Sanoma Magazines' Dutch branch.
At Sanoma - both in the Netherlands and worldwide - he was also appointed Chief Digital Media, and is a member of the Sanoma Magazines Management Board.
As Chief Digital Media he coordinates the development of new publications, for amongst others e-readers, pads and similar devices. In the Netherlands, Sanoma Magazines publishes approximately 80 magazines and over 150 websites.

Vicent Partal is deputy-Chairman of the European Journalism Center. Founder 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, he worked as a journalist in several newspapers, as a reporter for TVE and as 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).

Michelle Webb was named Vice President Content Strategy & Acquisition, Verizon FiOS TV and General Manager, Chief Programming Officer for the FiOS1 Local Channels in April 2006.

She created Verizon's first owned and operated local channel network. VerizonFiOS TV’s local channels are comprised of several components, including broadcast channels and video-on-demand content, both with enhanced TV capabilities. The local channels also offer an accompanying web presence aligned with the video services.

Tom Happold is head of multimedia with The Guardian. He previously worked on the BBC Ten O'Clock News and Channel 4 News.