SPJ Executive Director Alison Bethel McKenzie to speak in Knoxville

Alison Bethel McKenzie, the new executive director of the Society of Professional Journalists, will speak to the East Tennessee SPJ chapter on May 10.

Alison Bethel McKenzie, SPJ executive director.

McKenzie, the first African-American to serve as SPJ executive director, will speak at 7 p.m. at the Knoxville Entreprenuer Center, 17 Market Square Suite 10 (in the building where the Knoxville Chamber is).

She was named the 20th executive director of the national journalism organization in February.

A native of Miami, she was executive director of the International Press Institute for five years. The Institute is the world’s oldest global press freedom organization and is based in Vienna.

She was the first American, first woman and first African-American to to be its executive director since it was founded in 1950, according to an SPJ news release.

She has worked as a visiting professor of print and investigative journalism at the Indian Institute of Journalism and New Media in Bangalore, India.

Bethel McKenzie was a Knight International Journalism Fellow in Ghana in 2008-09, managing director of the Nassau Guardian in the Bahamas in 2007 and executive editor of the Legal Times in Washington, D.C., in 2006-07.

She has also worked at The Los Angeles Times and The Miami Herald.

Early in her career, she worked as a reporter and editor at newspapers in Louisiana, New York and Michigan. She was deputy business editor and senior assistant city editor at The Boston Globe and Washington Bureau Chief for The Detroit News.

Bethel McKenzie is a journalism graduate of Howard University She studied non-profit leadership at Harvard Kennedy School of Executive Education and is nearing completion of an MBA in media leadership at the University of Cumbria (U.K.) in collaboration with the Robert F. Kennedy College (Switzerland).

Please join us on May 10.

Google PhotoScan

This one has been around awhile — and it really does a good job. “Scan” old photo prints with your phone with Google PhotoScan. It actually stitches together five copies of a photo to create a digital copy.

This video explains some of the science behind this seemingly simple app.

Everything you need to know about Tennessee open records

Deborah Fisher, executive director of TCOG.

Deborah Fisher, executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government (TCOG), will review legislative changes to the public records act in the past three years, as well as some key court decisions regarding access at an East Tennessee Society of Professional Journalists meeting on tonight (Oct. 25).

Join us!

The meeting will be at 7 p.m. in the Knox Room of the Knoxville News Sentinel, 2332 News Sentinel Drive. It is open to the public and anyone interested in open records issues is encouraged to attend.

The Tennessee Coalition for Open Government seeks to preserve, protect and improve citizen access to public information and open government in Tennessee through an alliance of citizens, journalists and civic groups.

Since its inception in 2003, TCOG has provided training and presentations to more than 2,400 people and offered on-the-spot free guidance to more than 1,200 citizens and journalists. It has conducted research into open government issues, providing education to citizens, journalists and lawmakers.

Is it part of the National Freedom of Information Coalition.

Fisher has been TCOG executive director since November 2013.

She spent 25 years as a journalist, holding positions of reporter, city editor, business editor, managing editor and executive editor at newspapers in Texas and Tennessee. Most recently she worked for a decade for The Tennessean, where she was senior editor for news. She is a past president of the Middle Tennessee Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.