Great Conversations features prize-winning print and online journalists


Michael E. Slackman, NY Times’ Deputy Foreign Editor; member of Pulitzer Prize-winning team
Currently, Michael Slackman has oversight responsibilities for global coverage with a focus on the Middle East, Europe and Russia.  From June 2010 to June 2011, he served as NY Times’ Berlin Bureau Chief, covering Germany and Eastern Europe and, from June 2005 to June 2010, as NY Times’ Cairo Bureau Chief, the lead reporter in the Middle East with responsibilities stretching from Iran, across the Gulf and North Africa. Slackman previously worked as a government and politics reporter in New York covering local, state and national politics, including the 2004 presidential race. As Cairo Bureau Chief for the Los Angeles Times, from April 2000 – June 2003, he covered social, political and cultural events from North Africa to Iran. Prior to that, as Moscow Bureau Chief at Newsday, he covered economic, social and political issues affecting the former Soviet Union, including Russia, Georgia, and the many former republics. From 1994-1998, Slackman was Albany Bureau Chief at Newsday, overseeing a bureau of four reporters and covering state government, budget and social issues and the first Republican administration to control NY State in two decades. He is a member of the team of reporters who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1997 for breaking news.

Brian Donohue, Emmy Award-winning Reporter, The Star-Ledger; Member of Pulitzer Prize-winning team
Brian Donohue is the host/producer of Ledger Live, an innovative web video blog produced by The Star-Ledger/nj.com that combines video footage, reporting and commentary on all aspects of life in New Jersey. Much of his work over the past 18 months, including the documentary Splinters and Sand, has focused on Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath. His video work has won two New York Emmy awards. Before picking up a video camera, he worked the previous twelve years as a print reporter for The Star-Ledger covering the State House and immigration issues and was a member of the team that won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the resignation of Gov. James McGreevey. He also worked briefly as a freelancer in South America and Cuba. He is an avid surfer, fisherman and bird watcher. He lives in Red Bank with his wife and two daughters.

Lamar Graham, Chief Content Officer, NJ.com
Overseeing NJ.com’s digital news operations across New Jersey, Graham has been in news/media all his life. A rural Missouri native, he started his career during high school (1981), and, since then, had his byline in the Columbia (MO) Daily Tribune, the Kansas City Star, the Miami Herald, the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot and the Boston Phoenix. A former Staff Writer for GQ Magazine and Senior Writer for Men’s Journal, he launched the first online edition of Rolling Stone magazine, as Senior Editor (1995). Later, at CondeNet (now Conde Nast Digital), he developed the first online editions of GQ, Details, Mademoiselle and Glamour magazines. A Clinical Associate Professor of Journalism and Director of Digital Journalism at NYU for three years, he then spent a decade at Parade, the national Sunday newspaper magazine as Managing Editor, General Manager and ultimately, as Executive Editor. In 2010, he became Senior Vice President/Product for Everyday Health, one of the internet’s biggest consumer health-information brands and, in 2013, joined NJ.com. A graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism (1987) and Brooklyn Law School (2007), he loves reading, bicycling and WW II history. He is married to a native New Jerseyan and has a ten-year-old daughter.

Buy your tickets now!