A Political Roundtable
The 2017 conference in Manchester, NH, June 8-11, includes a political roundtable on Friday afternoon from 2:00 to 2:50 p.m. that will discuss all that has happened in this oddity of a political season.Emmy award winning Scott Spradling will moderate this discussion. Spradling is a former reporter, anchor and political director for WMUR-TV in Manchester, NH. While covering national politics, he worked with and earned the respect of Charlie Gibson, Wolf Blitzer and Ted Koppel. In 2001, Scott was the first local reporter to interview President George W Bush in the Oval Office, soon after his inauguration. And in 2007, Scott was the first New Hampshire reporter to interview then-Senator Barack Obama, on his very first campaign trip to the Granite State.
Jill Lawrence is commentary editor and a columnist at USA TODAY, and author of the 2017 book, The Art of the Political Deal: How Congress Beat the Odds and Broke Through Gridlock. A former columnist for Creators Syndicate, U.S. News & World Report and The Associated Press, she has won National Press Club, Sigma Delta Chi and National Headliner awards for her writing. Her positions have included managing editor for politics at National Journal; senior correspondent at PoliticsDaily; national political correspondent at USA TODAY, and national political writer for the AP. Her work has also appeared online in Politico Magazine, The Week, The Daily Beast and The Atlantic.
James Pindell is a political reporter at The Boston Globe who focused on the 2016 presidential race. The Washington Post called him the “Insider’s Insider” for his coverage of New Hampshire politics and he is the only reporter to cover both the Iowa Caucuses and New Hampshire Primary as a beat for local outlets.
Joseph W. McQuaid is the third of four generations of a New Hampshire newspapering family. His grandfather worked for the Manchester Union at the beginning of the 20th Century before a career with William Randolph Hearst papers in Boston and New York.
His father was a decorated World War II correspondent for the Chicago Daily News Foreign Service, co-founded the New Hampshire Sunday News after the war, and was editor-in-chief of the Union Leader.
Joe McQuaid began his career at age 15 as a newsroom office boy. He reported sports during high school and later became a news reporter and photographer. He was named editor of the Sunday News in 1971. He has covered local, state, and national politics and has reported from Europe, the Mideast and Afghanistan. He has won numerous writing awards and was honored with the New England Society of Newspaper Editors’ “Yankee Quill” award for significant contribution to the advancement of journalism in New England.
He has served as managing editor, editor-in-chief, and general manager. In June of 1999, he succeeded Nackey S. Loeb as president and publisher of New Hampshire’s largest newspaper.
In addition to the daily and Sunday statewide papers and UnionLeader.com, the corporation owns NewHampshire.com and, through its Neighborhood News, Inc. subsidiary, several community weeklies in southern New Hampshire.
