Stanford University

News Service


NEWS RELEASE

12/13/00

CONTACT: Jim Bettinger, Director, Knight Fellowships (650) 725-1189;
e-mail jimb@stanford.edu

Elaine C. Ray, News Service (650) 723-7162;
e-mail elaineray@stanford.edu

Dawn Garcia named deputy director of Knight Fellowships for Professional Journalists

Dawn Garcia, an assistant managing editor at the San Jose Mercury News and an 18-year newspaper veteran, has been named deputy director of the John S. Knight Fellowships for Professional Journalists at Stanford.

"Garcia is a top journalist and we're lucky to get her," said James Bettinger, director of the program. "She brings not only the practical knowledge of the newsroom, but also a wide range of experience and contacts throughout the journalism world."

The Knight Fellowships program each year brings up to 20 U.S. and international journalists to study at Stanford. During the academic year they are at Stanford, they pursue individual courses of study and attend a series of special seminars. Since the program began in 1966, more than 600 journalists have participated in the program.

Garcia, who was a 1991-92 Knight Fellow, will begin her new job in January. She succeeds Bettinger, who became director of the program Sept. 1. She will have a wide range of responsibilities in her new position, including supervising the selection of new fellows, coordinating their orientation, assisting them in their selection of courses and selecting seminar leaders.

Garcia has been assistant managing editor/metro of the Mercury News since 1999, supervising a staff of 90 reporters and editors who produce the newspaper's local, regional and state news. Previously, she was city editor and state editor at the newspaper, and she also has been a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle, the Modesto Bee and the Oceanside Blade-Tribune.

Garcia was a Pulitzer Prize juror in 1998 and 1999. She also has been a member of the Accrediting Committee of the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communication since 1997.

She has conducted workshops for new editors for the California Society of Newspaper Editors and has been a member of several Knight-Ridder diversity task forces.

Among the workshops she has participated in are the Leadership Development Program at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a workshop on the evolution of public journalism at the Pew Center for Journalism, Community Leadership San Jose, and the Newspaper Management Development Program at Northwestern University.

She is a native of San Jose and graduated from the University of Oregon with a bachelor's degree in journalism in 1981. She is married to Paul McHugh, a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle.

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By Elaine Ray


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