2022 Board Election – Meet the Candidates!

Candidates in alphabetical order. Asterisks denote incumbents. LAPC Active Members — click here to cast your vote! Ballot closes Sunday, February 6 at 5 p.m.

**Brittany Levine Beckman, Mashable

Brittany Levine Beckman is Mashable’s managing editor. At Mashable, she develops new and recurring series and manages day-to-day operations. She has been on the Los Angeles Press Club board since January 2020. She is a leading member of the Press Club’s Foot in the Door Fellowship committee; the fellowship connects journalists from communities historically underrepresented in media with mentors. In her committee role, she organizes training opportunities, one-on-one informational calls for fellows with veteran journalists, and maintains the fellowship’s Slack channel, consistently posting job opportunities and resources for past and current fellows. She has also worked to expand the network of sources who advertise the fellowship to local community colleges and state schools. Additionally, she created a resource for Press Club members seeking to protect themselves from online harassment. If re-elected, Brittany would continue supporting the Foot in the Door Fellowship as well as advocating for grant opportunities, journalist protections, and press rights issues.

**Emily Elena Dugdale, KPCC/LAist

I’m an audio journalist covering criminal justice for KPCC/LAist.

I’ve lived in and reported from cities across the globe like Honolulu and Medellín, but I’ve spent the bulk of my career in California. I’ve driven across the Southland covering all kinds of stories as a general assignment reporter, and worked on a joint investigation with ProPublica last year into Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department school resource deputies in the Antelope Valley. I co-reported and produced the award-winning Offshore podcast from Honolulu Civil Beat in Hawai’i before moving back to L.A.

As a board member at LA Press Club, I’m helping to reimagine the Foot in the Door Fellowship, which provides mentorship to emerging journalists from underserved backgrounds. I’m passionate about engaging people of all ages and backgrounds in this work who have never seen journalism as a welcoming or safe industry. The work never ends.

Maria Estevez, ABC.es, Cinerama

Journalist and author Maria Estevez is the entertainment correspondent for ABC.es and Cinerama in Los Angeles. Born in Madrid she studied Communications Science at the Complutense University. She is a globetrotting journalist specialized in cinema, who attends most of the movie Festivals.

I want to bring diversity but also I want to create a more active group in support of journalism. Help peers that need it and create a conversation of inclusivity and not confrontation

Caroline Feraday, KCLU News

I’m a reporter for KCLU News, and have lived and worked in LA for 8 years. Prior to KCLU, I worked for The Sun US and Daily Mail. I’m originally from the UK, with a background in broadcast journalism – working for BBC News, Sky News, and having started out in the newsroom of 95.8 Capital FM London over 25 years ago! I won the Prince Philip medal for journalism in 2007, and an LA Press Club Award in 2021 for use of sound.

I’m a passionate defender of quality journalism, of local journalism, and in working together to all learn from each other, especially in encouraging and supporting fresh talent and opportunities.

Vic Gerami, The Blunt Post

My prime-time radio show, The Blunt Post with Vic on KPFK, covers breaking & headline news, offers analysis & commentary, and I interview members of Congress and other high-profile public figures. It airs on Mondays at 6:00 a.m. (PT) and reaches over 18 million households + Livestream at KPFK.org.

I am also the editor + publisher of The Blunt Post.

Today, reaching national, international audiences, I first built a foundation of knowledge and skills by learning the media industry during my years at Frontiers Magazine, followed by positions at LA Weekly and Voice Media Group. I have well over ten years in many aspects of media and journalism. I have also served on other boards and have expertise in development, communications, public relations, and special events.

I am also a contributor for some of the most prominent publications in the nation, including Windy City Times, Bay Area Reporter, Armenian Mirror-Spectator, The Advocate, The Immigrant Magazine, GoWeHo, Destination Luxury, OUT Traveler, The Fight, and among others.

**John Gittelsohn, Bloomberg News

John Gittelsohn is the Los Angeles real estate and investing reporter for Bloomberg News, where he’s worked since 2009. He previously reported for the Orange County Register and Sun-Sentinel in Florida, among other publications. He has degrees from Stanford and Columbia universities. He lives in Hollywood with his wife, Deborah Belgum, also a journalist.
He is currently a board member and the treasurer of the Los Angeles Press Club.

** Nic Cha Kim, KCET/PBS SoCal

Nic Cha Kim is a Senior Producer for PBS SoCal and KCET where he produces the award-winning local arts and culture television series Artbound and develops arts programming for public media. 

A native Angeleno, Nic has lived in East L.A, Westlake, and the San Gabriel Valley, but considers Downtown L.A. his home base where he previously owned a video art gallery and co-founded the creative district Gallery Row. Passionate about telling stories about arts and culture, Nic enjoys connecting with artists and learning about their creative processes.

Nic has won three L.A. Emmy awards and was named the 2018 “Television Journalist of the Year” by the L.A. Press Club. Devoted to increasing diversity and inclusion in the newsroom, Nic co-chairs LA Press Club’s Foot in the Door Fellowship and mentors for Arts for LA’s Activate Innovators Program and PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs. 

If re-elected, Nic will continue advocating for increased diversity inside newsrooms as well as safety for multimedia journalists.

David Kipen, LA Times, Alta, NY Times, WSJ, The Nation, UCLA, Libros Schmibros

BIO: Former book editor/critic of the San Francisco Chronicle and later Director of Literature for the National Endowment for the Arts, David Kipen has contributed for years to the L.A. and NY Times, teaches writing at UCLA, and is the founder of Libros Schmibros, an 11-year-old bilingual storefront nonprofit lending library in Boyle Heights. He is also the author of Dear Los Angeles: The City in Diaries and Letters, 1542-2018 (Modern Library), and is currently gathering material for its sequel, Dear California: The State in Diaries and Letters.

A 2020 L.A. Times article by Kipen — “85 years ago, FDR saved American writers: Could it happen again?” — has led to a bill now before Congress, Rep. Ted Lieu’s 21st-Century Federal Writers’ Project Act, aka H.R. 3054. (Supportive calls and letters to your own members of Congress welcome.)  

STATEMENT: LAPC has done great work lately, including its heroic labors to pass SB-98. If elected, I’ll do everything I can to uphold that tradition. I’ve been an LA-based print, audio and online journalist for 30 years. I’ve seen firsthand how, for us, the Great Depression might as well be back. We’re adrift on a shrinking ice floe, so we need to stick up for ourselves as writers, editors, photographers, cartoonists, designers, broadcasters and, on good days, artists. I’d relish this opportunity to help.”

Deborah Zara Kobylt, Host/Creator of Deborah Kobylt Live & The Little Italy of LA Podcast

I’m deeply passionate about being a journalist, and consider our work to be an honorable extension of the community. 

I started out in Atlantic City, NJ, covering everything from entertainment, corruption, & Donald Trump’s bankruptcies. I moved to LA with my husband for his radio show, and started covering local news at KCAL-9, Fox11-LA, and eventually CNN. I loved it, every neighborhood & every story, because I genuinely care about the work and people here in LA.

I took time off to raise three boys, but wanted to get back to covering our community, but instead of network or local news, I created Deborah KOBYLT LIVE, a LIVE video/audio interview-style podcast, interviewing authors, philanthropists, moms, tech wizards, actors, athletes, & others. Being passionate about my Italian heritage, I also started The Little Italy of LA Podcast, interviewing Italians from the world of opera, art, travel, food, science, & film who have made contributions to Italian-American culture in LA. 

I want to serve on the LAPC Board because I care about our community and the stories we cover here. I can provide outreach, whether with other journalists, community members, students, and as a new member, I would watch, learn, and apply myself where best needed.  Thank you for this opportunity. It’s an honor.

** Adam Rose, CBS Interactive

BIO: Adam Rose is secretary of the Los Angeles Press Club and chairs the press rights committee. In that role, he builds dialogue with law enforcement in Southern California and government leaders in Sacramento. He successfully lobbied for Senate Bill 98, which prohibits police from arresting or intentionally interfering with journalists as they cover protests. Involved with Los Angeles media for nearly 20 years, Adam is currently a senior editor at ViacomCBS. He previously served in newsroom leadership roles for The Huffington Post, worked for the Los Angeles Times, and was an editor and contributor for LAist.

STATEMENT: I’m excited to continue the press rights work we’ve been doing at the Los Angeles Press Club. In the last year, we’ve expanded dialogues with local law enforcement, successfully fought for legislation in Sacramento, created a number of new information resources for our members (including protest safety tips and legal resources), and collaborated with other journalism organizations across the state. In the next two years, my priorities are to improve and protect a variety of forms of press access: courtroom remote access, public records requests, public agency communications, and police scanners. It’s also critical to expand informational resources, especially around journalist safety (in all its forms), as well as narrower issues like covering homelessness.

** Malina Saval, Variety

Malina Saval is a features editor at Variety covering the film, TV and music beats. Her piece on the representation of autism in television garnered a 2018 Los Angeles Press Club Award for best magazine commentary, and most recently, her feature-length profile on the actor Nick Nolte earned a second place National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Award.

She’s also the author of “The Secret Lives of Boys: Inside the Raw Emotional World of Male Teens,” a non-fiction account of male adolescence published by Basic Books in 2010. Additionally, she’s traveled to film fests around the world moderating panel discussions on behalf of Variety and have appeared as a guest on NPR, PBS, CBS Radio and several other news outlets. She’s currently at work adapting her investigative research piece published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, “Stolen Children, Erased Children: The Story Behind Slovakia’s Parental Kidnapping Crisis” as a documentary.

She graduated from Cornell University with B.A. in English and USC School of Cinematic Arts with an MFA in Screenwriting.

I’d love to continue my tenure as board member of the Los Angeles Press Club because it is a wonderful opportunity to play an active role in discovering and supporting budding journalists on the rise as well as engaging and networking with fellow editors and writers committed to promoting crucially important and socially conscious journalism in both Los Angeles and nationwide.