Media Giraffe Project
108 Bartlett Hall
Univ. of Massachusetts-Amherst
Amherst MA 01003
(413) 577-4370
mediagiraffe (at) journ.umass.edu  

The Media Giraffe Project is the collective idea of  journalists, educators, producers, technologists, web-media practitioners and media reform activists.

Project director/editor is Bill Densmore, a former daily, wire-service, trade and weekly writer, editor and publisher who also started an Internet user-management service and has experience in consulting and non-profit management.

The project is affiliated with the journalism program in the Department of Communication at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Dr. Norman Sims, professor of journalism, is principal investigator. Principal collaborators include documentary filmmaker Mary Mazzio, book and magazine editor Scott Walker and media educator Dr. Rob Williams.
 
A board of advisors helps identify and nominate giraffes.

Profiles of the principal collaborators appear below:

Bill Densmore is director/editor of the Media Giraffe Project at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He has also been a visiting lecturer in journalism at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, North Adams, Mass.  A career journalist, he has covered space shots, presidents, politics and assassinations for The Associated Press in Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco. Densmore has also served as advertising director for a small, group-owned daily; and as an interim director of the not-for-profit Hancock Shaker Village. He edited trade publications in business and law, and freelanced for general circulation dailies including The Boston Globe. He has written for ComputerWorld Magazine on Internet and technology subjects. In 1994, after nine years owning and publishing weeklies in Berkshire County, Mass., Densmore formed Clickshare Service Corp., which provides user registration, authentication, and transaction handling for Internet web content sites. Densmore Associates develops partner and other business strategies for independent media and print publishers, including newspapers. At the start of his career, Densmore worked briefly in public radio in Worcester and Amherst, Mass. He is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in environmental policy and communications. FULL BIO / EMAIL DENSMORE

Norman Sims, is grant principal investigator for the Media Giraffe Project. He is a professor and former department chairman of the Journalism program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.  Sims served two terms on the Board of Directors of the Appalachian Mountain Club.  Sims holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, an M.S. in American History from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a Ph.D., in communications from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. A former United Press International reporter, Sims taught at Illinois and the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee before UMass.  A specialist in literary journalism, he teaches nonfiction writing and courses on literary journalism, freedom of the press, history, and reporting.  He directs a distance learning Certificate of Online Journalism that won a UCEA Program of Excellence award in 2006. He has published articles and reviews in Journalism History, The Quill, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, Gannett Journal. Author and editor, The Literary Journalists (1984), Literary Journalism in the Twentieth Century (1990), and co-editor of Literary Journalism (1995).  / EMAIL SIMS / FALL 2007 FACULTY PROFILE

Sara Majka is a research editor for the Media Giraffe Project. She holds an undergraduate degree in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is currently getting her MFA in Fiction from the Bennington Writers Seminars. She has worked as a freelance editor and has edited books on health care access and research reports on the specialty chemicals industry. She has published work in the Boston Herald, Zone 3, Night Train, and was the recipient of the Cape Cod Literary Press Fiction Award in 2005.  / EMAIL MAJKA

Scott Walker is literary advisor and agent and marketing director for the Media Giraffe Project. Over 20 years, Walker was founder and executive director of Greywolf Press, a not-for-profit literary publisher of 20 books per year, and was instrumental in founding Consortium Book Marketing, a national sales and distribution company for mid-sized and smaller publishers. Walker maintains strong contacts among booksellers, critics, agents and distributors.   He then launched the Internet and book divisions of Utne Reader Magazine as editorial director.  In 1995, he joined Tripod, Inc., a dot-com startup that pioneered personal web-page publishing (now “blogs”).  Over five years at Tripod, and later Lycos Inc., (which acquired Tripod) he served in senior management positions, including executive director, production director, VP marketing and VP business development.  When Tripod moved from Williamstown, Walker chose to remain in the Berkshires with his consulting practice to commercial and non-profits seeking innovative thinking on which to base new ventures.  He has been cited by Esquire magazine among “Men and Women Under 40 Who are Changing the Nation,” has been a speaker on Internet, publishing and marketing issues, and has served as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Twin Cities Metropolitan Arts Commission. Walker maintains wide contacts among foundation, corporate, and governmental philanthropy, and has been speaker at the national “Grantsmakers in the Arts” conference.

Rob Williams is an advisor to the Media Giraffe Project on curriculum and media education issues.  He is a professor of history and media studies at Burlington and Champlain Colleges, Sacred Heart University, Burlington, Vt., and president of the non-profit Action Coalition for Media Education, a nationwide collaboration of teachers, health educators, and other citizens whose goal is to teach democracy-centered access, evaluation, consumption, and creation of media. Williams is a graduate of Princeton University, with a Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico in U.S. western and modern U.S. history.  He has taught history and social studies in grades 10-12 and was a Presidential Scholar in 2000-2001.  FULL BIO.

Student researchers at UMass Amherst  have included Ferron Selnike, Matt O'Rourke, Amy Kent, Kristin Hamill, Kristina Freire, Matt DeFinish, Kristin Sauve, Kay Metcalfe, Tara Trayers and Emily Moses.  Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts-based student researchers have included Jen Thomas, Lena Consoli and Chris Gauthier. Williams College student researchers have included Alison Davies and Sarah Randall. Other researchers have included Emily Cohane-Mann.

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