The ONA is pleased to announce the slate of candidates for the 2005 ONA Board of Director elections.

ONA members in the "professional" category may vote in the election, which will be conducted online, using technology provided by VoteNet.com. Twelve ONA members are running for eight open board positions.

The candidates are:

Apcar, Len
Brady, Jim
Budde, Neil
Dube, Jonathan
Meyer, Dick
Montgomery, Christine
Moor, Anthony
Panciera, Andrea
Plotz, David
Polverine, Denise
Rothenberg, Matthew
Stiegman, Patrick

Elections will begin Monday, Oct. 24 at 9 am and continue until Friday, Oct. 28 at 5 pm. ONA members eligible to vote in the election will receive voting instructions on Sunday, Oct. 23. The winning candidates will be announced on Saturday morning, Oct. 29 at 10 am at the ONA General Session.

Immediately below are short profiles on the candidates that offer a look at why they, or the person who nominated them, think they are ready to take a position on the ONA board.

(The designation "I" after a candidate's name indicates they are an incumbent member of the ONA board and are running for reelection.):

Len Apcar, Editor, NYTimes.com (I)

I believe the Online News Association should continue as the leading new media organization devoted to journalism on the Web. There are other groups focused on business concerns, technology and design. But the ONA must be a place where journalism counts. It must be a forum where reporters, writers, editors, teachers, students and multimedia producers can exchange ideas, explain their work and celebrate the best of the medium.

As editor of NYTimes.com for three years, and as an ONA board member for the past two, I value the ONA as a professional community to learn from others -- news sites, bloggers, schools -- and will work to preserve and enhance that mission at our conference and throughout the year. The ONA must also assume a leadership role as the Internet medium evolves be it in training, best practices or critical constitutional concerns.

As a Web site editor for more than three years I am keenly attuned to the myriad of issues involving newspapers and Web sites. As as long-time reporter and editor I believe that old and new media must work together to achieve the next measure of journalistic excellence.

Jim Brady, Executive Editor, washingtonpost.com

I’d be honored to be considered for a board position on the Online News Association. As someone who has been working in online news since 1995, both at washingtonpost.com and America Online, I bring a tremendous amount of passion and commitment to continuing to develop a medium that is so clearly the future of news and information. I would be thrilled at the opportunity do help lead that charge by working on the ONA board.

Since I took over as executive editor at washingtonpost.com in January 2005, the site has seen a significant increase in unique visitors and page views. In that time, we’ve launched more than 20 blogs, individual local and national home pages, an inline media player and an overhauled Opinion section.

We’ve also hired programming prodigy Adrian Holovaty to try and take us to the next level in terms of innovation and tools development, and partnered with Technorati to foster communication between The Post and bloggers. In the next six weeks, we will be adding comments links to articles, and will be launching an overhauled city guide. I feel we’ve taken a major step forward in terms of innovation and experimentation, while at the same time maintaining the incredibly high journalistic standards set by my predecessor, Doug Feaver.

I believe that my dual experience at AOL, a new-media-only company, and The Washington Post, which is still working to unify the new and old media parts of the company, has given me an excellent perspective on how to maintain a top-notch news operation while also fostering the innovation that’s so essential for the future of the medium and our businesses.

Neil Budde, GM/Executive Producer of Yahoo!News

One of the reasons I was excited to take my current position at Yahoo!News was because it allows me to be more directly involved in daily news operations than I have been in recent years -- getting me to get back to my journalistic roots.

My years of editing experience at newspapers such as the Louisville Courier-Journal and USA Today were crucial to formulating the ideas for The Wall Street Journal Online and translating those ideas into a useful and engaging online news experience. But at WSJ.com, the news operations were under the capable leadership of Rich Jaroslovsky, so most of my time was spent on defining and designing the overall product and working on making it a business success.

As we shape the online news medium, I believe it is crucial that we have leaders who have a deep passion and commitment to the journalistic side but who also are players in deciding how the business side of the industry will evolve.

Jonathan Dube, Editorial Director for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Web site, CBC.ca (I)

Working with the Online News Association has been one of the most rewarding parts of my career. I first became involved with ONA in 2000, after I won ONA's breaking news award for my World Trade Organization protest coverage. I later chaired two of ONA's most successful conferences, the 2003 conference in Chicago and the 2004 one in Hollywood. In the past year, I've served as the Board's Secretary and Membership Chair, helping to expand member benefits, increase regional events, create a members-only area of journalists.org -- and double our membership as a result.

I also publish CyberJournalist.net, a news and resource site for online journalists, which is co-branded by ONA to help promote the organization. In my day job, I'm the Editorial Director for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Web site, CBC.ca, which has won several of ONA's OJA awards.

Previously, I've worked as MSNBC.com's Managing Producer; an ABCNews.com national producer; and a writer for The Charlotte Observer.

In the next year, I hope to help ONA continue expanding member benefits, such as special discounts; internship and mentoring programs; and additional online resources. I also hope to make ONA more inclusive, by reaching out to smaller online sites, independent publishers and bloggers, magazines, broadcast organizations and international news sites. And I want to help ONA create a development plan to ensure its long-term viability.

Dick Meyer, Editorial Director, CBSNews.com

I'm delighted to have been nominated to serve on ONA's board. I'm a big fan of ONA and believe it has a very practical role in our young, fast-changing vocation. I especially hope that I could help broadcast-based sites have a louder voice within ONA.

That same concern led me to offer a hand in organizing the panels for the 2004 conference in Los Angeles. It was, frankly, a very time consuming project, but very rewarding; I thought the conference served the whole spectrum of Web sites well and was pleased that we experimented with new kinds of activities like the "Master of the Web Universe" contest. I survived Wonkette's keynote address and went on to embarrass myself moderating the Super Panel on the 2004 election.

I have been the editorial director of CBSNews.com since 1999 (before that I was a producer for The CBS Evening News, mostly doing investigative and political pieces). For the past few years, I have also written a weekly column (no, not a blog -- a stodgy old column) on the site, "Against the Grain." So my perspective is not entirely from that of a middle-management grind, and not entirely television in sensibility.

I also spend time managing our Opinion section, which gets much of its content from opinion magazines -- a potential source, I believe, of membership and creative juice for ONA. I have also been riding herd on an interesting project at CBS News -- Public Eye, a daily blog that is trying to bring an ombudsman-like function to national broadcast news for the first time. Check it out.

I am not generally a board-kind-of-a-guy. But I think ONA is important for us -- as a place to meet the few colleagues we have, to get and give professional education and to help advocate for our interests in the business, journalism and legal worlds.

Christine Montgomery, Director of Electronic Publishing, St. Petersberg Times

I’ve had the opportunity during the last six years to experience online journalism from both national and local perspectives. Lots in common for sure – breaking news and news-of-the-weird play in any market – but there’s a key difference I cherish.

The readers I can see and hear.

Forget focus groups or survey respondents. When my tax guy asked me why we water down our website every day with a bunch of wire stories, I knew why facilitating a newsroom environment that’s platform agnostic will be on of my most important contributions to the Times.

Right behind that is figuring out meaningful ways for my community to participate on the site as equal contributors to our journalists. How else will we differentiate ourselves from portals and national sites?

I enjoyed several years working as a deputy managing editor for USATODAY.com before coming to the St. Petersburg Times in July 2003 to run our online operation.

At the Times, our independence is our greatest strength. It keeps our focus on doing great journalism, and the self-governing means we’re nimble enough to react quickly to market changes. But that independence can be isolating, and so it is with the expectation that I’ll gain as much as I give that I am applying for this ONA board position.

Anthony Moor, editor, OrlandoSentinel.com

As chairman of this year's ONA conference in New York, I led an all-volunteer group of fellow online journalists for most of 2005. It is the most recent demonstration of my strong commitment to our organization.

My vision for ONA includes the belief that we must embrace the revolutionaries who are innovating entirely new forms of Internet journalism, while reaching out to educate our legacy newsroom colleagues about the new ways they can commit journalism online.

Currently I am editor of OrlandoSentinel.com. We have twice been nominated for ONA awards during my tenure, in service journalism and breaking news. Previously I managed the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle site, where we were honored with ONA's award for creative use of the medium. Our endeavor was considered unique enough that I was selected to explain our techniques for creating multimedia journalism in a Poynter/ONA training module.

I have twice judged OJA awards and was once a lead screener.

I co-chaired the panels committee for ONA Chicago in 2003 - one of the most demanding conference planning responsibilities - and have served as a moderator and panelist.

As a journalist I have a strong background in the three media that form the building blocks of the news that we do. In addition to print and the Web, I was a correspondent at On24, an online news startup that produced Web-only video for a business audience. And my old media days were largely spent as a television reporter at KRON-TV in San Francisco.

Finally, here's something different: I was a double major in Astrophysics and American Civilization at Williams College.

Andrea Panciera, Editor, projo.com

Andrea Panciera, the editor of projo.com, is an experienced online journalist who has worked hard on behalf of ONA for at least four years. She served on the conference committee for at least a year (possibly more) before becoming the conference panels committee co-chair in 1993 and the conference vice chair in 1994 – doing an outstanding job in both cases.

Andrea would also help to diversify the board, as she represents a small/medium size newspaper site.

Panciera adds that she is proud to represent projo.com, which recently won an EPpy for best overall newspaper site in its size category and has been the recipient of numerous awards on the national and regional level.

She believes strongly in team efforts when it comes to producing quality online journalism, and in providing her community with the news and information -- no matter what the form -- needed to live everyday life.

David Plotz, Deputy Editor, Slate.com

I believe I'm qualified to be an ONA board member for several reasons. First, I know the online news industry. Ive been an online journalist for almost as long as there has been online journalism. I joined Slate before it launched in 1996, and have been there ever since.

I've lived and worked through every trend the business has seen, paid and free, push and pull, aggregation and disagreggation, pop-ups, pop-unders, and pop-overs.

Second, I have lots of experience on both the editorial and management side of online news. I wrote columns for Slate for seven years and have served as our Washington bureau chief and deputy editor for four years. In those jobs, I have been involved in all the critical decisions an online news organization has to make: what to write, when to publish, how to make money, how to change owners.

Third, I know the ONA and have good connections throughout the industry. I have been an ONA member for a couple of years. I won an OJA in 2002 and was a finalist for one in 2001.

Denise Polverine, Editor-in-Chief, Cleveland.com (I)

I have been the editor-in-chief of Cleveland.com for nearly nine years. During that time I have seen the transformation from trying to explain what I do each day, to witnessing a real change in how people get their news each day. I have seen a culture shift in newspapers. Reporters and editors are now blogging, doing podcasts and thinking of ways to incorporate live chats, audio and video into their story-telling.

When I lived in New York City a little more than nine years ago, I worked in a Time Warner division called Time Inc. New Media on a project called "The News Exchange" which was all about "News on Demand". Now is the time for news and information on demand and I am invigorated each day to be involved in this ever-changing, challenging and exciting online industry.

The limits are only those that we have not yet dreamed up. Greater Clevelanders come to our site to get the reliable news and information they need and I am so proud to serve as editor of the site on which they rely. I hope I can continue to bring my experience as a more medium-sized site to the ONA board.

Matthew Rothenberg, Executive editor, Ziff Davis Internet

As an ONA director, I look forward to upholding this organization’s high standards while extending its influence. I’m uniquely suited to bring ONA values to the online trade press, business-to-business reporting and vertical markets.

I’m excited by the work of the ONA and the caliber of its membership, and I’ve helped extend its work in the Manhattan area. Ziff Davis Media played host to a panel of recent OJA winners, and I’ve helped organize regular local gatherings.

ONA has let me reach out to colleagues involved in major, horizontal news operations with roots in print, TV and other media. I believe that the benefits of the organization should also be extended to other outstanding news professionals in the trade press.

The Web is ideal for exploring vertical topics in the context of broader news events. Serious journalism within vertical markets can enrich readers’ understanding of current issues, and the day’s top news can be filtered in new ways through the tech-press lens.

In addition, tech pubs and b-to-b titles are often ahead of the bigger-traffic players when it comes to initiating paid newsletters, premium content and other plays. I believe vigorous outreach to these editorial innovators will energize ONA’s base.

Patrick Stiegman, executive editor, ESPN.com

Patrick Stiegman should serve on the ONA board of directors because he has spent the past 10 years helping to build online journalism, is the “father” of one of the model premium products on the web and because he loves the medium.

His experience and enthusiasm for online journalism are unmatched. And as this medium goes forth into its second decade, it – and the journalists who work on the web -- will need his knowledge and energy.

Patrick, currently an executive editor at ESPN.com where he oversees premium products and beat coverage, previously worked as vice president and editor of Journal Interactive, the award-winning online operation of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. It was while working in Milwaukee that Stiegman implemented “Packer Plus” and “Packer Plus Online,” which has served as a model for other premium sports products around the country. At ESPN.com, Patrick is spearheading the growth of ESPN’s Insider premium service, while overseeing the day-to-day reporting and writing that makes the website the center of the sports fan’s universe.

His passion for his work is infectious. He is a patient teacher and a professional and excellent spokesman for online journalists everywhere, and will represent their interests well.