JAWS CAMP 2025 Panel: Building a Nonprofit Newsroom
(WASHINGTON, DC) - JAWS’ 40th Anniversary Conference and Mentoring Program (CAMP) will be held September 5-7, 2025 at The Royal Sonesta Hotel in Washington, DC’s Dupont Circle neighborhood.
Join us on Saturday, Sept. 6 for a panel examining the challenges and rewards of building and maintaining a nonprofit newsroom in today’s industry. The panel features:
Emily Holden - Founder and Executive Director of Floodlight, a newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action
Cheryl Mainor Norman - Co-founder and Publisher of Chicago News Weekly and President of CNW Media, LLC
Stacy Palmer - Chief Executive and founder of The Chronicle of Philanthropy
Wendy Wei - Training Coordinator & Reporter for Investigative Project on Race and Equity
This panel is generously sponsored by the Field Foundation.
What happens at CAMP? This will be JAWS’ 40th CAMP. While the format and size have varied over the years, the goal has not: to bring women journalists together from different specialties, beats, demographics and geographies to share with, learn from and empower each other. There will be structured presentations and workshops, planned social events and free time for unstructured relationship-building and city exploration. The CAMP Site Selection Committee chose Washington, D.C. based on feedback from members urging a balance between an urban setting allowing easier travel with access to a get-away-from-it-all vibe. The committee also took into account the venue’s capacity, support for conferences, cost and central location.
Stay tuned for more programming announcements and updated information on the CAMP page.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:
Emily Holden is founder and executive director of Floodlight, a newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action. She was previously an environment reporter in Washington, D.C., and has written for the Guardian, Politico, E&E News and CQ Roll Call.
Cheryl Mainor Norman is Co-Founder and Publisher of Chicago News Weekly and President of CNW Media, LLC. Through print, digital, events, and broadcast, Chicago News Weekly amplifies Black voices and builds upon a bold local media ecosystem that redefines how Chicago’s Black community is represented. A nationally recognized leader in Black media, Cheryl made history as the first woman Publisher of The Chicago Defender and is featured in the “Power of the Press” exhibit at the National Museum of African American History & Culture. Her career spans more than three decades in journalism, publishing, and civic storytelling, earning recognition from the New York Times, Crain’s Chicago Business, and numerous national awards, including the U.S. Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award, the New America Media Communicator of the Year, and Daimler Chrysler Entrepreneur of the Year. Under her leadership, CNW has become an inaugural Journalism & Storytelling Cohort member of The Field Foundation and has earned major support through the Press Forward Chicago Multi-Year Grant, Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism’s Local News Accelerator, Public Narrative’s Healing Illinois Grant, Chicago Independent Media Alliance’s Alliance Matters Grant, and the Transformation Tech Grant from the Alternative News Weekly Foundation and Google News Initiative. Previously, Cheryl co-founded Black Press Specialty Publications and published LifeLines: The Journal of African American Health, the largest circulation publication on Black health disparities. She also played a pivotal role in national voter engagement efforts, including the award-winning “Every Voice and Vote” campaign and the launch of BlackPressUSA.com, the nation’s largest Black news website. Appointed in 2017 to the Illinois Human Rights Commission, Cheryl helped eliminate a decade-long backlog of civil rights cases, further reflecting her commitment to advocacy and justice and served as the first Black Chair of the Commission. A graduate of Western Michigan University, Cheryl has worked in Chicago, New York, Atlanta, New Orleans, and Washington, D.C. Today, she leads CNW’s growth while continuing to shape the future of Black media and storytelling. She is the mother of one son, one daughter and one very happy grandson.
Stacy Palmer is chief executive of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, and has overseen the organization’s transition as it became an independent nonprofit in April 2023. Palmer helped found the Chronicle in 1988, when it was started by the Chronicle of Higher Education, Inc. She has served as its top editor since 1996. Under Palmer’s leadership the organization has evolved from its roots as a biweekly newspaper for social-sector professionals into an organization that offers a monthly magazine, robust news, advice, and opinion sections, and a host of webinars, briefings, and other services. She is host of its podcast, Nonprofits Now: Leading Today. In addition, she helped forge a partnership with the Associated Press and the Conversation designed to educate the public about the nonprofit world and to establish a fellowship program to coach local journalists to provide more sustained and sophisticated coverage of nonprofits and foundations. Before she helped found The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Palmer was editor for government and politics at The Chronicle of Higher Education. She was also a longtime member of the Chronicle of Higher Education Inc., leadership team.
Wendy Wei is a Chicagoan and independent journalist passionate about tying global stories to the Midwest. She covers migration, racial equity, and gender for publications including the Chicago Reader, Chicago Sun-Times, Borderless, Truthout, and more. Her work explores how migrants are pitted against other marginalized groups to compete over scarce resources – whether that be in Darfur or the US – and documents movements rooted in interracial solidarity. Before journalism, she evaluated refugee response programs in the West Bank, Libya, Chad, and Ethiopia. Outside of reporting, Wendy runs the Investigative Project on Race and Equity's data journalism training program and was the immigration editor at South Side Weekly. Since 2021, she has served as Programming Committee Co-Chair at ARTWORKS Projects. Wendy's work has been supported by the International Center for Journalists and the Fund for Investigative Journalism. She was a 2025 IWMF Ukraine Reporting Fellow, a 2024 IWMF Gwen Ifill and Lauren Brown Fellow, and a 2024 Renaissance Journalism Fellow.
