Voice of OC Publisher and Editor-in-Chief, Norberto Santana Jr, is among an exclusive group of 27 newsleaders selected this year to participate in the year long Media Transformation Challenge at the renown Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Santana joins top editors, producers and executives from other highly recognizable media organizations such as ABC News, The Associated Press, BBC, CNN, the Dallas Morning News and Los Angeles Times.
The MTC Fellowship engages executive leaders to develop innovative solutions to challenges facing their newsrooms. Previous participants have innovated new business models and developed new ideas to increase audience impact, capacity and financial sustainability.
“We appreciate the opportunity to talk about our journalism model with national media leaders and also learn from these visionary people,” said Santana.
“I’m deeply grateful for this very diverse, talented incoming class, and we’re excited to begin a new set of MTC journeys,” said executive director Charlie Baum. “As we enter our 17th year, I want to thank all the program alumni and supporters who helped bring together this particular group of Fellows, and more generally, the AP’s 38 Fellows and ABC News’ 20 Fellows since the program inception in 2007.”
Since 2007, more than 350 senior media executives have realized critical performance results, built lifelong career skills and relationships, and made major contributions to industry transformation through this yearlong program (known industry wide as the original Sulzberger Program).
About the Media Transformation Challenge Program
The Media Transformation Challenge (MTC) Program: A Poynter Institute Executive Fellowship is a yearlong fellowship and leadership program designed for senior news executives. Fellows identify and pursue the most significant business performance challenge they face and deliver real results with help from MTC’s trademark tools, concepts, coaches, peer group, and alumni network. This program has over 350 active alumni with strong ties to the program leadership and coaches.
MTC began as the Sulzberger Executive Leadership Program at Columbia in 2006-07 under the direction of program architect Douglas K. Smith. Since January 2020, Poynter has been home to this program, and Charlie Baum has been the executive director. A different program in leadership, network and methodology now operates under the Sulzberger name at Columbia.
About The Poynter Institute
The Poynter Institute is a global nonprofit working to address society’s most pressing issues by teaching journalists and journalism, covering the media and the complexities facing the industry, convening and community building, improving the capacity and sustainability of news organizations and fostering trust and reliability of information. The Institute is a gold standard in journalistic excellence and dedicated to the preservation and advancement of press freedom in democracies worldwide. Through Poynter, journalists, newsrooms, businesses, big tech corporations and citizens convene to find solutions that promote trust and transparency in news and stoke meaningful public discourse. The world’s top journalists and emerging media leaders rely on the Institute to learn new skills, adopt best practices, better serve audiences, scale operations and improve the quality of the universally shared information ecosystem.
The Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership, the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), MediaWise and PolitiFact are all members of the Poynter organization.
Support for Poynter and our entities upholds the integrity of the free press and the U.S. First Amendment and builds public confidence in journalism and media — an essential for health democracies. Learn more at poynter.org.