Bill Barrow
Bill Barrow is AP’s South regional political reporter based in Atlanta. He covers national political trends with a focus on a 13-state region that extends from Maryland to Louisiana. Before joining AP, he covered politics for newspapers in Alabama and Louisiana.
Daniel Holmes
Shelby County Newspapers, Inc., is an award-winning media company based in Columbiana, AL, that publishes five weekly newspapers, two monthly lifestyles magazines, several niche magazines, and a variety of websites and other web-based media.
Print and online marketing professional with more than nine years of experience delivering marketing concepts to a hyper-local audience in order to increase brand awareness, boost-readership and advance organizational mission.
Responsible for developing and executing marketing strategies to increase readership for multiple newspaper operations. These strategies include developing print and online campaigns beginning with creative design and ending with audience targeting through final analysis.
Helen Sosniecki
Helen Sosniecki retired after a 34-year newspaper career that included owning three weeklies and publishing a small daily plus seven years as the Senior Sales and Marketing Manager at Interlink, a Michigan-based circulation-software company serving the community-newspaper industry. She currently is doing consulting work for the community newspaper industry. She has presented postal-related programs in Kansas, Nebraska and Missouri plus the tri-state ArkLaMiss Circulation Conference in Mississippi. Other clients include the National Newspaper Association and individual community newspapers. Helen was the 2011 NNA Emma McKinney Memorial Award winner, and she and husband, Gary, were 2014 Missouri Press Association Hall of Fame inductees.
Richard Karpel
Executive director of American Court and Commercial Newspapers, co-director of the Public Notice Resource Center and public policy counsel for the National Newspaper Association. Before joining APW, chief staff officer of Yoga Alliance and the American Society of News Editors. Founding executive director of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies and executive vice president of the Video Software Dealers Association (now the Entertainment Merchants Association). Business degree from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, and JD from Chicago-Kent College of Law.
Tommy Deas
Tommy Deas, executive sports editor at The Tuscaloosa News, covered everything from high schools to University of Alabama football for The Tuscaloosa News for 15 years before being promoted to his current post in 2008. He previously worked for the Nashville Banner and a weekly publication in Nashville, The Sports Page, after graduating from the University of Alabama and serving an internship with the Birmingham News. He is currently serving as first vice president of the Associated Press Sports Editors and is on the executive board of the Alabama Sports Writers Association. He contributed to The Tuscaloosa NewsÂ’ Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of a tornado that devastated the community in 2011.