2023 Conference Speakers

Meredith Cummings, MJE, is an award-winning freelance multimedia journalist who coordinates #press4education for the Society of Professional Journalists, and is a member of SPJ’s Journalism Education Committee. She directs the National Elementary Schools Press Association, the Alabama Scholastic Press Association and the Multicultural Journalism Workshop at The University of Alabama, where she is a full-time Senior Instructor. She is an editing consultant for WVUA 23, a professional commercial TV station. An avid college football fan, Cummings co-hosts the football show Sky Box on WVUA 90.7 each fall and produced Hissy Fit, an intergenerational podcast with her daughter Isabel. She writes columns that have appeared in various outlets, as well as in her Medium publication Woman of a Certain Rage. Reach her @merecummings on all social media.

In addition to being a practicing attorney since 1994 Lori B. Duff is an award-winning author of four humor collections, including her latest, If You Did What I Asked in the First Place, which won the Foreword Indies Gold Medal. She is the vice president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and writes a bi-weekly column called “Legalese,” which explains legal concepts by translating them into plain English. In 2020, she won first place in humor writing in the NSNC’s annual column contest. Lori describes herself as an unrepentant proponent of the Oxford comma and the two-spaces-after-a-period rule. She is a part-time municipal judge and the current president of the Georgia Council of Municipal Court Judges. She lives near Atlanta and has two adult children, three if you count her husband.

Bonnie Jean Feldkamp is a wife and mother of three kids, whose ages span two decades. She adores Erma Bombeck, and the Clooney she most admires is George’s dad, Nick — the journalist of the family, from her hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio. Bonnie Jean’s award-winning columns often seek to understand how current events and family life intersect. She ties personal experiences to social issues to help readers empathize, relate and care. Bonnie Jean is the Opinion Editor for the Pulitzer Prize-winning Louisville Courier-Journal. She is also an ambassador for the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. As a writer, wife and mother, the importance of strong community resources speaks to her both personally and professionally. Journalism is a vital community resource to which she is honored to contribute. Find Bonnie Jean on social media @WriterBonnie, or learn more about her at WriterBonnie.com.

Tony Norman is an award-winning columnist, associate editor, and book review editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and is the current president of the NSNC. He began his career at the PG in 1988 as a clerk before rising to the pop music/pop culture beat a year later. In 1996, Tony became a general-interest columnist who specializes in writing about race, culture, and politics. In 1999, he was appointed to the PG’s editorial board. In 2002, Tony became an adjunct professor of journalism at Chatham University where he continues to teach. In 2005, he won a Knight-Wallace Fellowship and spent a year at the University of Michigan. In 2012, Tony took on added duties as the PG’s book review page editor.