Meet the KDMC Staff
Len De Groot
Len De Groot is the Interactive Design & Data Instructor at the Knight Digital Media Center at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, teaching mid-career journalists and graduate students skills to tell stories on the Web. He has nearly 20 years of newsroom experience and was graphics director for WSFL-TV and the SunSentinel newspaper in South Florida. While there he created and directed news graphics for print, interactive graphics for the paper’s Web site and animated news graphics and packages for a morning television news show and television station promotions.
Core Skills
- • Course design, instruction and online tutorials
- • Interactive and multimedia storytelling
- • Data cleaning, analysis and visualization
- • HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Protoviz
- • GIS (ESRI, QGIS, MAPublisher), 3D (LightWave), Adobe Creative Suite (all), VizRT
- • Project management
Professional accomplishments
- • freeDive: Designed and developed a tool for making embeddable, user-searchable databases
- • Rebranded KDMC and redesigned KDMC web site
- • Contributed chapter to The Multimedia Journalist (publishes early 2012)
- • Television: Successfully integrated new technology and design skills in three months to launch morning news show.
- • Online: Developed precinct-level election results maps that updated live on election nights. Developed GIS-based interactive maps that take just hours to complete. Resurrected the Sun-Sentinel’s pioneering multimedia gallery, The Edge, which was awarded the Best News Site by the Florida chapter of the Associated Press.
- • Staff development: Extensively cross-trained staff to be proficient journalists and to use a wide range of industry tools, Including LightWave 3D, Flash, and VizRT. Developed reporters and page designers, who learned graphic storytelling, Flash and video editing.
- • Nearly 30 international awards for news graphics and design (production and editing)
- • Sigma Delta Chi award for Multimedia Storytelling (interactive presentation - shared)
lendegroot
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Len-De-Groot/150590478340910?sk=app_6009294086
Paul Grabowicz
Paul Grabowicz is Senior Lecturer, Associate Dean and Director of the New Media Program at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and teaches classes in multimedia reporting, new media publishing and video game storytelling.
He is co-author of "California Inc.," a book about how the entrepreneurial spirit shaped the politics, culture and economy of California, and has written extensively about issues in online journalism and digital technology.
A professional journalist for more than 25 years, he spent most of his career as the investigative reporter at The Oakland Tribune. He also served as night city editor and acting city editor and developed an early prototype of a Web site for the paper (it was rejected).
A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology, he began his journalism career in 1973 working for local papers in the San Francisco Bay Area, including the Bay Guardian. He has written for publications such as the Washington Post, Esquire magazine, The Village Voice and Newsday.
In 1995 he began setting up the New Media Program at the Graduate School of Journalism. He also was the driving force in creating the Knight Digital Media Center at the school.
Scot Hacker
Until late 2011, Scot Hacker was the webmaster for the Knight Digital Media Center and was also involved with web operations for the Graduate School of Journalism. He provided technical assistance in multimedia training courses, ran the webcast operation, and taught classes in web development.
Hacker is currently a Senior Software Developer for CalCentral at ETS (UC Berkeley), where he's helping to build a next-generation portal system for students, faculty and staff.
Hacker is the author of O'Reilly's "MP3: The Definitive Guide," Peachpit's "The BeOS Bible," and dozens of articles for print- and web-based technology publications including PC Magazine, Byte.com, Windows Sources, MacWorld, and ZDNet, as well as television appearances and trade show gigs.
On the side, Scot runs a web hosting company for independent journalists and artists, as well as the life goal-tracking site bucketlist.org.
Vickie Hammarstedt
Comming Soon!
Jerry Monti
Jerry Monti is an award-winning multimedia producer with more than 20 years experience in the digital media industry. Monti has served as Executive Producer at AOL and as coordinator for the largest computer training program in Washington state. Monti was a founder of one of the first VC-funded video sites on the web and he has consulted for Adobe and Corbis. Monti holds a BA in Journalism from California State University at Northridge and a M.Ed. from the University of the Philippines, Diliman. He is a former Peace Corps volunteer and was Apple Certified Consultant with Server Certification. Jerry lives at the beach in Pacifica and enjoys trail hikes in the fog, watching storms and listening to Miles Davis.
Lanita Pace
Lanita Pace-Hinton began her journalism career as a print reporter, starting out with Gannett News Service as a feature writer. Her written work has appeared in the Marin IJ, The Detroit News, The Washington Post and other publications. The bulk of her daily reporting experience was developed as a staff writer for The Press-Enterprise, in Riverside, Calif. She subsequently served as the assistant to the managing editor for the paper, responsible for editorial recruitment, staff development, the paper’s summer internship program and its community outreach initiatives. Following her stint in daily journalism, she took a turn at teaching reporting, writing and newspaper production at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, Calif. She has a master’s degree in education from UC Berkeley and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Howard University in Washington, DC.
