The Washington News Council is composed of half Media members, half Public members, and a non-voting chairman. Council members do not represent their employer, their profession, or their ethnic group. They do share a strong commitment to a free press and a belief that the news media are vital to a democracy. 

NOTE: Updated bios of current WNC board members will be posted soon.

Non-Voting Chair

KAREN SEINFELD

Media Members

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MIKE FLYNN is former President and Publisher of the Puget Sound Business Journal.

PETER HORVITZ is Chairman, President and CEO of Horvitz Newspapers, Inc.

JOHN KNOWLTON is Journalism Instructor at Green River Community College in Auburn, where he received tenure in 2003. He teaches newswriting, mass media and newspaper production, and is adviser to the student newspaper. He is President-elect of the Pacific Northwest Association of Journalism Educators (PNAJE). He was a visiting assistant professor at the University of Oregon, and has taught at Clackamas Community College and the University of Missouri-Columbia, where he received a Masterˆs degree in journalism. He is Editor of the Business@Home website, founding editor of Business@Home magazine, and past editor of the Portland Business Journal and the Central Oregon Business Journal. He also has been a reporter at The Daily Astorian, The Anchorage Times, and a stringer/intern for The Wall Street Journal. He is a graduate of the University of Oregon. He lives in Enumclaw.

ERIK LACITIS is a long-time columnist and reporter for The Seattle Times. Lacitis was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and came to this country as a youngster with hisfamily. English is his third language, after Spanish and Latvian. He attended the University of Washington, majoring in wood-products technology. In 1970, he was editor-in-chief of the University of Washington Daily. In the early ë70s, he also published The New Times Journal. He was the writer for the book, Seattle: The Time Has Come. Over the years, he has received over three dozen regional journalism awards, ranging from spot news coverage, to arts and entertainment, to social issues, to columns. He was a finalist in the feature category for the Pulitzer Prize. He also was named best local columnist by the National Headliners Club and the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. He has been honored by the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition, Best of the West and the Blethen Awards. Lacitis and his wife live in Seattle with their son and daughter.

JONATHAN LAWSON is Executive Director of Reclaim the Media.

CHUCK REHBERG is former Associate Editor at the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, where he expanded neighborhood news sections and launched special themed sections. He also directed business coverage and wrote a business column. He previously was Assistant Managing Editor, Assistant City Editor and a general assignment reporter for the Spokane Daily Chronicle. When the Chronicle merged with the Spokesman-Review, he was named assistant to the general manager of the two papers, and later served as assistant business manager and human resources director. He has taught news writing and reporting at Gonzaga University and Eastern Washington University. He is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee with a Masterˆs degree from the University of Oregon. He has been president of Spokane-North Rotary and board chairman of United Way of Spokane County. He and his wife live in Spokane.

DAVID SCHAEFER is Assistant Director of Public Affairs for the Port of Seattle. He was formerly Senior Project Manager at Gogerty Stark Marriott, a Seattle public-affairs firm. He spent 23 years as a reporter and editor at The Seattle Times, where he was the newspaperˆs Washington, D.C., correspondent for four years. He later became Press Secretary for U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Seattle). He was previously a reporter and editor at the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin. He is a board member of the League of Education Voters, and former chairman of Edmonds Citizens for Schools. He is a graduate of Whitman College in Walla Walla. He and his wife life in Edmonds.

 STEPHEN SILHA, Vice President of the Washington News Council, is a communications consultant, writer, and facilitator. He has reported for magazines and newspapers including The Christian Science Monitor and The Minneapolis Star, covering education, communications, arts, community affairs, and youth issues. He is a regular writer for Yes! Magazine. He has worked with a range of philanthropic organizations, including The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Northwest Area Foundation, and Idaho Commission on the Arts. His nonprofit affiliations include Libraries for the Future, Children's Express, Digital Partners, AIDS Housing of Washington and Seattle's Metrocenter YMCA. He co-convened the first national symposium on the Media and Philanthropy, hosted by the Chicago Tribune, which spawned the local research project "Good News/Good Deeds: Citizen Effectiveness in the Age of Electronic Democracy." He now facilitates conversations with journalists and others about ¶Journalism That Matters.¾ He and his partner live on Vashon Island.

Public Members

EVERETT BILLINGSLEA is Vice President, Administration & Legal Affairs, at Lynden Incorporated, a multi-modal family of transportation companies with worldwide operations and a focus on Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. He was formerly General Counsel to Governor Gary Locke in Olympia. He has been in-house counsel for Quality Food Centers Inc., senior attorney for Oceantrawl Inc., and associate attorney at Bogle & Gates. He was a law clerk for Alaska Superior Court Judge Rene Gonzalez. He is a member of the Washington Integrated Justice Information Board, past member of the Civil Justice Equal Funding Task Force, past chair of the Washington State Information Services Board, and a member of the Washington State Jury Commission, among other boards, commission and authorities. He is a graduate of Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, with both a law degree and an MBA from the University of Santa Clara Law School and Leavey School of Business in California. He and his wife live in Seattle with their two daughters.

STEVE BOYER is Senior Vice President of Rockey Hill & Knowlton, the Northwest division of Hill & Knowlton, a global public-relations firm. There he oversees the crisis and litigation communications practices. He spent the Iraq War in Saudi Arabia on a crisis planning and training project for Saudi Aramco, the worldˆs largest oil company. He has special expertise in energy, shipping, forest products, health care, land development and insurance. He was previously director of corporate communications at Services Group of America, and senior vice president at The Fearey Group. He spent 15 years in journalism, as managing editor of the Peninsula Daily News in Port Angeles, news editor at The Journal-American in Bellevue, and editor/reporter at The Bend Bulletin in Oregon. He holds an MBA from the University of Washington and BA degrees from both the University of Washington and Western Washington State College. He and his wife live in North Seattle.

SUZIE BURKE, Treasurer of the Washington News Council, is President and Owner of Fremont Dock Company, managing more than 35 acres of commercial property in Seattleˆs Fremont neighborhood. Burke is on the boards of the North Seattle Industrial Association, Lake Union Association, and the Washington Economic Development Finance Authority. She was described as ¶The Land Baroness of Fremont¾ by The Seattle Timesˆ Pacific Northwest magazine. She is founder and president of History House, a Fremont neighborhood museum, and co-founder of the Fremont Chamber of Commerce. She is a graduate of Seattleˆs Holy Names Academy, and lives in North Seattle.

MARGO GORDON is former Dean of the Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington.

SANDY SCHOOLFIELD is Secretary of the Washington News Council. She is also past President of the Board of Directors of Youth in Focus, a Seattle non-profit organization that helps at-risk youth by teaching them photography. Before moving to Seattle from Washington, D.C., she had a career in commercial real estate specializing in the real estate needs of non-profit groups and investment properties. She relocated the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, headed the team to build the American Heath Careˆs new headquarters building and represented Equitable in a 19-property portfolio sale. She twice won the Commercial Real Estate Transaction of the Year Award for Washington, D.C. She was also President of Commercial Real Estate Women (CREW). Her first job was working at "CBS Morning News with Mike Wallace" in New York. She has had a variety of other experiences including 2 years each in India and Malaysia with the Peace Corps and a year as co-director of a half-way house for first-offending juvenile delinquents. She graduated from George Washington University with an MBA in finance. She lives with her husband, Jon Kechejian, in the Mount Baker neighborhood of Seattle.

DR EDDIE REED is Instruction Coach in the Tukwila School District.

PAULA SELIS is Senior Counsel for the Consumer Protection Division, High Tech Unit, of the Washington State Attorney Generalˆs office. Her responsibilities include litigation, legislation, and business and consumer education. Her areas of focus include telemarketing fraud, Internet auction fraud, junk email, business opportunity scams, health-care fraud. She has headed the officeˆs Telemarketing Focus Group. She has worked with the National Association of Attorneys General on cross-border telemarketing fraud, Internet fraud, and privacy issues. She has also worked on numerous bills sponsored by the Attorney General, including legislation regulating telemarketing, 900-numbers, credit reporting, auto brokering, going-out-of-business sales, unsolicited electronic mail, promotional advertising of prizes, identity theft and consumer financial privacy. She is a graduate of Dartmouth College with a law degree from Seattle University. She and her husband live in Seattle.

FAWN SPADY is co-owner of the family business, Dickˆs Drive-In Restaurants Inc., where she works on promotional and special projects. She founded a consulting firm, Creative Empowerment, Inc. She also was formerly marketing director for Daniel Smith Fine Art Supplies. She and her husband founded the Education Excellence Coalition to revitalize public education through legislative reforms based on deregulation, competition and parental choice. They led two statewide initiative campaigns and worked with the Legislature to improve public education. They won a Best Of Education Reform Award from the Center of Education Reform. She serves on the advisory board of the Washington Chapter of the Institute for Justice, and is past president of the Alpental Community Club Association. She is a graduate of the University of Washington. She and her husband, who have two children, live on Mercer Island.

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Staff Biographies
 

JOHN HAMER is Executive Director of the Washington News Council, which he helped found in 1998. Hamer was formerly Associate Editorial-Page Editor at The Seattle Times. He came to The Times from Washington, D.C., where he was Staff Writer at Congressional Quarterly and Associate Editor of Editorial Research Reports. He began his journalism career as a reporter at The Oregon Journal in Portland. As a Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank, he co-authored International Seattle: Creating a Globally Competitive Community (1993). He later became Vice President of the Washington Institute for Policy Studies, then President of the CounterPoint Center for ReMEDIAtion, a media-critique think tank. He was co-editor of CounterPoint, the centerˆs newsletter, and co-author of "Watchdogs," a media column that ran in Seattle Weekly and Eastsideweek. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College with a masterˆs degree in journalism from Stanford University. He and his wife live on Mercer Island.

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