Print, Photography and Online Judges
Chrysti Shain
Chairperson
Chrysti Shain spent 25 years running metro desks at newspapers in the Carolinas, including The Charlotte Observer, The (Columbia, S.C.) State and The (Myrtle Beach) Sun News. She spent eight years as a travel writer and editor before working as a public information officer for the S.C. Department of Social Services. She is now Director of Communications for the S.C. Department of Corrections. She’s been a Headliner judge on and off since 2002, and this is her 11th year serving as chairman of the judges’ panel.
Peter Brophy
Judge
Peter Brophy is founder /editor of strongerwords.com, an online service that provides low-cost editing and proofreading to individuals and small businesses. His career includes stints as executive editor of The Press of Atlantic City and as an editor at the Daily Racing Form. His early career was spent as a sports writer, and he collected various writing awards including an Associated Press Sports Editors national award for his coverage of baseball’s Pete Rose. In 2017 he ran a campaign for a city council seat in his hometown of Northfield, N.J.
Candy Hatcher
Judge
Candy Hatcher, a native of North Carolina, worked for seven newspapers around the country, from Florida to Seattle to Chicago to Virginia and South Carolina. In her 40-year career, she was a reporter, editor, editorial writer and columnist. She now lives in Beaufort, SC.
Sharif Durhams
Judge
Sharif Durhams has directed audience efforts at regional, national and international publishers. He is the managing editor at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, overseeing core news teams that include 60 editors and reporters. He is a board member and former national president of NLGJA — the Association of LGBTQ Journalists, which works from within the news industry to foster fair and accurate coverage of diverse communities. He also serves on the board of Journalism Funding Partners. He was a managing editor The News & Observer and The Herald-Sun in North Carolina and a former deputy managing editor at The Washington Post. Durhams oversaw award-winning audience teams at The Washington Post and CNN Digital, worked as a reporter at the Charlotte Observer and was the founding social media editor at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Dawn Kujawa
Judge
Dawn Kujawa spent more than 30 years in newspapers, serving in a variety of design, writing, and editing roles. Today, she is the public information officer for a school district in one of South Carolina’s fastest growing counties.
David Weisenfeld
Judge
David Weisenfeld has reported on the Supreme Court for many years and hosted an employment law podcast for LexisNexis Risk Solutions from 2012-2022 that won national and regional first place awards from the American Society of Professional Business Editors for his Supreme Court coverage. He also previously hosted NPR-style podcasts for a nationwide audio legal news service. David’s print work has appeared in USA Today, the ABA Supreme Court Preview, Princeton Alumni Weekly and other publications.
Mark Washburn
Judge
Mark Washburn, who has been part of three teams that won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, is a semi-retired career journalist from Charlotte, N.C. He has worked as a columnist and reporter for the Charlotte Observer, which he joined after working as a writer and editor at the Miami Herald. In his two decades with Knight Ridder newspapers, he served as a war correspondent in Iraq and New Orleans bureau chief after Hurricane Katrina.
Neill Borowski
Judge
Neill Borowski is editor/owner of 70and73.com, a digital news website covering several towns in South Jersey. He held a variety of reporting and editing positions over 21 years at The Philadelphia Inquirer, where he was a Pulitzer finalist, winner of the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting from Harvard University and winner of IRE national awards. He was executive editor of The Press of Atlantic City and also top editor for three Gannett papers in Binghamton, Elmira and Ithaca, New York. He also worked as assistant managing editor/local news at the Indianapolis Star and managing editor of the Rochester (NY) Democrat and Chronicle.
Paul Davies
Judge
Paul Davies is an editor-at-large and senior editorial writer at The Philadelphia Inquirer. He has spent more than 30 years as a journalist, including as a reporter at The Wall Street Journal and the Philadelphia Daily News. He was also an adjunct journalism professor at Temple University and a visiting professor at the University of Delaware. Davies spent four years as a speechwriter for the president of Drexel University. He graduated from the University of Delaware and has a masters in journalism from Columbia University, where he was also a Knight-Bagehot Fellow. He lives in Philadelphia.
Carolyn Callison Murray
Judge
Carolyn Callison Murray got her journalism degree from the University of Missouri in 1976 and spent the next 40+ years as an ink-stained wretch in newsrooms from St. Louis to Los Angeles and finally the Carolinas, where she worked at the Charlotte Observer and The Sun News in Myrtle Beach. She retired/took a buyout in 2015 after four years in the editor’s hot seat. She’s now working way outside her comfort zone on a work of historical fiction about Belle Baruch. Don’t know who she is? Get a couple of drinks in Carolyn and you may be sorry you asked.
Wendy Ruderman
Judge
Wendy Ruderman is an investigative reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News. She won with Barbara Laker the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting. Ruderman, along with Inquirer colleagues Barbara Laker and Dylan Purcell, was named a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer for local reporting for “Toxic City: Sick Schools,” which examined how environmental hazards in Philadelphia schools deprive children of healthy spaces to learn and grow. She won the 2024 Headliner award for an investigation into medical errors and bad practices that endanger lives. She lives in South Jersey and in addition to a good scoop and a meaty story, she enjoys reading, hiking and traveling to far-flung places.
Michael Tribble
Judge
Michael Tribble is the Chief Content Officer at WAMU in Washington, D.C., overseeing the station’s editorial operations, including local and national news, programming, podcasts, digital platforms and live events. Since joining in 2024, Michael has advanced WAMU’s content strategy to deepen community connections and elevate impactful storytelling. Previously, as Vice President of Multi-Platform Content at National Geographic, he led award-winning projects, including an ambitious Mount Everest climate expedition that earned three Guinness World Records. He also spearheaded an Emmy-winning World Cup partnership and contributed to 11 National Magazine Awards, including the prestigious General Excellence award in 2019. A native Texan, Michael holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from East Texas A&M University and lives outside D.C. with his wife, Sarah, and their two children.
Larry Wells
Judge
Larry Wells contributed feature articles to the American Airlines in-flight magazine for more than 20 years, which were circulated by the New York Times syndicate. He co-founded the indie press, Yoknapatawpha Press and published five books by Harper’s magazine editor Willie Morris, among other authors. Wells is the author of two historical novels published by Doubleday. He scripted the television documentary, “Return to the River,” which won an Emmy for Best Regional Documentary. In 2014 he received the Faulkner-Wisdom gold medal for narrative non-fiction at the Words and Music Festival in New Orleans. His memoir In Faulkner’s Shadow was published in 2020 by University Press of Mississippi.
Bert Fox
Judge
Bert Fox is a retired visual journalism director whose last stop in his 40-year career was the Charlotte Observer. He was a photo editor and magazine art director at the Philadelphia Inquirer, a photo editor for National Geographic Magazine and began his career as a newspaper photographer in the Northwest, where he was born and raised. His awards include five times named Photo Editor of the Year in the University of Missouri “Pictures of the Year” competition. He has edited the photos of Pulitzer Prize Feature Photography winners and the portfolios of “Pictures of the Year” Magazine Photography winners and Newspaper Photography winners.
Elaine Matsushita
Judge
Elaine Matsushita was a features section editor at the Chicago Tribune, an editor and reporter at The Miami Herald and news editor at The Press of Atlantic City, where her 30-year journalism career began. At the Chicago Tribune, she won a Chicago Tribune Beck Award and attended the Asian American Journalists Association’s Executive Leadership Program.
Jennifer Weingart
Judge
Jennifer Weingart is an audio journalist currently working as a podcast producer, primarily with the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum’s podcast, AirSpace. Prior to podcasting she worked in public radio in local news reporting. Her award-winning work has been heard on NPR member stations around the country. In her spare time she enjoys playing hockey, reading, crafting and hanging out with her cats.
Kathleen Wickham
Judge
Dr. Kathleen Wickham is a professor of journalism at The University of Mississippi. She is the author of five books, most recently James Meredith: Breaking the Barrier and numerous academic articles as well as a producer of several documentaries which have aired on Mississippi Public Television. She was recently awarded the Farrar Prize for the best civil rights journal article for “The Magnifying Effect of Television News: Civil Rights Coverage and Eyes on the Prize.” She worked as a professional journalist for 10 years at various newspapers in her native New Jersey with her longest stint at the Newark Star-Ledger before entering academia.
Michael Walker
Judge
Michael Walker is the global executive editor at Bloomberg Media Studios, where he creates videos, podcasts, digital articles and data visualizations for some of the world’s most influential finance and technology companies. Before joining Bloomberg, Michael was a managing editor for the Sports Illustrated Golf Group, where he covered golf around the world as a writer and video producer– breaking major PGA Tour news stories and competing in the North Korean Open golf tournament at the Pyongyang Golf Club (he finished 6th).
John Wordock
Judge
An award-winning journalist, John Wordock started podcasting in 2006 while at Dow Jones & Company. He most recently served as Executive Editor and SVP for Podcasting at Westwood One from 2019 to 2024. During his tenure, he helped build Cumulus Podcast Network into a top ten network and top free channel on Apple. Under John’s tutelage, Cumulus Media had 50 shows charting on Apple in May, 2024. That was the most in company history and included 14 local radio station podcasts. Previously he launched WSJ Podcasts in 2015 and served as Executive Producer at The Wall Street Journal for such chart-topping podcasts as What’s News, The Future of Everything, Your Money Briefing, Tech News Briefing, Minute Briefing, and Potomac Watch. John lives in Maryland outside Washington, D.C. and enjoys spending his summer days watching baseball.
TV and Radio Judges
Chris Winkler
Chairperson
Chris Winkler is an Associate Professor or Radio, Television & Film at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey.
Derek Jones
Judge
Derek Jones is a Station Manager for 89.7 WGLS-FM at Rowan University and color commentator for Princeton University Athletics & some NCAA events on ESPN/ESPN+/ESPNU.
Jasmin Bryant
Judge
Jasmin Bryant is a Senior Producer for NewsNation Network.
Candace Kelley
Judge
Candace Kelley is an Associate Professor of Journalism at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey, and a legal commentator and host/co-host for programs on CourtTV.
Jake Callahan
Judge
Jake Callahan is a Senior Field Television Producer for NBC Universal.
Sheila Solomon
Judge
Sheila Solomon’s career has taken her from the newsroom to the boardroom. The award-winning newspaper reporter and editor has worked for numerous newspapers and is now vice chair and co-founder of Journalism Funding Partners, a nonprofit helping to secure grants to support local journalism. Solomon is also chair of the board of directors for City Bureau and strategic alliance manager at Rivet360, both based in Chicago.
Carl Hausman
Judge
Carl Hausman is a Professor of Journalism at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey.
Bofta Yimam
Judge
Bofta Yimam is a National TV Correspondent, Washington, D.C., appearing on multiple networks including CBS, Black News Channel, Cox Media, BBC.
Mark Washburn
Judge
Mark Washburn, who has been part of three teams that won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, is a semi-retired career journalist from Charlotte, N.C. He has worked as a columnist and reporter for the Charlotte Observer, which he joined after working as a writer and editor at the Miami Herald. In his two decades with Knight Ridder newspapers, he served as a war correspondent in Iraq and New Orleans bureau chief after Hurricane Katrina.