About the NCDJ

Steve Doig is a professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University. Before joining ASU in 1996, he worked for 20 years as an investigative reporter and editor at The Miami Herald, where he became a specialist in computer-assisted reporting. Projects on which he worked at the Herald won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service and other major awards.

Doig’s interest in the topic of disabilities in journalism dates back to his experience working with the late John Wolin, a Herald editor who had a stellar career there despite numerous surgeries necessitated by his particularly difficult condition of achondroplasia dwarfism.

Doig holds a degree in political science from Dartmouth College and graduated from, and later taught at, the Defense Information School. He spent a year as a combat correspondent for the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, for which he was awarded a Bronze Star for his service.

He actively consults with print and broadcast news media outlets around the world on computer-assisted reporting problems and is an active member of IRE, serving on the 5,000-member organization’s board of directors for four years. Recently, he worked with IRE to organize a new journalism contest, called the Phil Meyer Award, to recognize the best journalism using social science techniques. In addition, he has been a speaker at many national meetings of journalism and other organizations. He also has traveled to Canada, England, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Brazil and Indonesia to do training in precision journalism techniques. His research interests include newsroom diversity, demographics, public opinion polling and finding techniques used by other professions that can be developed into tools for journalists.

Becky Curran is the Senior Director of Stakeholder Engagement at Disability:IN, where she strengthens relationships with corporate partners, Disability-Owned Business Enterprises (DOBEs), and the broader disability community. She also contributes to client engagement for the Disability Index. Since joining the Index team in 2017, Becky has played a key role in expanding participation from 110 to 542 companies by 2024, dramatically increasing the reach and impact of Disability:IN’s work.

Becky earned her Bachelor of Science in Marketing from Providence College, where she discovered her passion for driving change in media and entertainment. After a determined job search that included over 1,000 applications, she began her career at Creative Artists Agency, later joining CBS Television Studios in casting. During this time, she co-founded the Catalina Film Festival as its Marketing Director and launched DisABILITY In Media, a platform promoting authentic disability storytelling.

After six and a half years in entertainment, Becky built a global public speaking career, delivering more than 600 talks on disability inclusion. She later joined the Equity & Inclusion department at SAG-AFTRA, supporting nationwide diversity efforts in media. Becky also serves on advisory boards for Positive Exposure, Providence College, and Understanding Our Differences.

A dedicated advocate, Becky continues to champion disability inclusion and elevate underrepresented voices worldwide.

Dan Hajducky is a staff writer in ESPN’s Investigative & Enterprise Journalism unit. He covers sports business — including the collectibles space — soccer, and occasionally covers men’s and women’s basketball, baseball and football. He was previously the Operations Chair and Content Chair of ESPN’s ENABLED Employee Resource Group.

He previously worked at Moffly Media, ESPN The Magazine and WWE and interned at both the Connecticut Post and New Haven Register. He has written for Den of Geek US, Bustle, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Spry Literary Journal and Folks. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Fairfield University and attended Fordham and Southern Connecticut State universities, earning a bachelor’s degree in professional writing and media studies with a minor in film. He played on the men’s soccer team at both schools. He lives with a mild-to-moderate bilateral sensorineural hearing loss.

Beth A. Haller is Professor Emerita of mass communication at Towson University in Maryland, retiring in July 2020. Her research specializes in the representation of disability in news, entertainment, and online media. In 2023, she published her latest book, Disabled People Transforming Media Culture for a More Inclusive World. It is available to all as an Open Access e-book here.

In 2020, she co-edited the Routledge Companion to Disability and Media. The book collects the “global perspectives of leading researchers, writers, and practitioners, including many authors with lived experience of disability,” to discuss disability in a variety mass media internationally.

Other books by Haller include Representing Disability in an Ableist World (2010) and Byline of Hope: The Newspaper and Magazine Writing of Helen Keller (2015). She is also the co-author of the textbook, An Introduction to News Reporting: A Beginning Journalist’s Guide (2005). Haller was co-editor of the Society for Disability Studies academic journal, Disability Studies Quarterly, from 2003 to 2006.

Haller was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Sydney and Curtin University in Australia in 2015. In 2016, with Patricia Almeida in Brazil and Catia Malaquias in Australia, she is co-founder and co-director of the Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (GADIM), which was created to promote the inclusion of persons with disabilities in mass media worldwide.

Haller was mass communication faculty at Towson University from 1996-2020 and assisted in the creation of the Applied Adult Disability Studies minor at Towson University. She has been adjunct faculty in the City University of New York (CUNY)’s Disability Studies programs, the graduate Critical Disability Studies program at York University in Toronto, Canada, and the Disability Studies minor at the University of Texas-Arlington.

Haller is a native of Fort Worth, Texas, and received her undergraduate degree in journalism from Baylor University. She worked as a print journalist for newspapers in Texas, New Mexico, Illinois, and Maryland before moving into higher education. She earned a master’s degree in science communication at the University of Maryland College Park School of Journalism. In 1995, Haller completed her Ph.D. in mass media and communication at Temple University with a dissertation titled “Disability rights on the public agenda: Elite news media coverage of the Americans with Disabilities Act.”

Jennifer LaFleur joined the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism in August 2023, where she teaches data journalism. She continues to work with newsrooms, including the Center for Public Integrity where she previously was a senior editor. She was lead editor on 40 Acres and a Lie, a 2.5-year investigation into a long misunderstood government program to give land to formerly enslaved people after emancipation.

She joined Public Integrity from the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, where she was data journalist in residence. LaFleur previously served as a senior editor for Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, where she managed an award-winning team of data journalists, investigative reporters and fellows.

LaFleur’s journalism career includes serving as the director of data journalism at ProPublica, an independent, nonprofit newsroom, and similar roles at The Dallas Morning News and other newspapers. She is a former training director for Investigative Reporters & Editors, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the quality of investigative reporting, and previously served on IRE’s board of directors. She is a board member of the Fund for Investigative Journalism, an independent grant-making organization.

Wendy Lu is a deputy editor at The New York Times, a global speaker on disability representation in the media, and a children's author. Her disability reporting has been featured in HuffPost, Teen Vogue, Refinery29, Bustle, Quartz, Columbia Journalism Review and more. She has previously served as a judge for NCDJ’s annual Katherine Schneider Journalism Award for Excellence in Disability Reporting. Through her Knight Visiting Nieman Fellowship, she developed a curriculum to educate reporters on how to cover disability issues and train newsrooms to be more inclusive of disabled journalists. She was named one of 30 global disability leaders on Diversability’s D-30 Disability Impact List of 2020.

Wendy is the author of "Casting April," a contemporary middle-grade novel from Penguin Random House about a talented disabled girl who loves all things Broadway — and who would do anything for the spotlight. The book is based on Wendy's experiences of living with a tracheostomy tube that helps her breathe. Wendy holds a master’s degree from Columbia Journalism School and a bachelor’s degree from UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Media and Journalism. She is based in New York City.

Amanda Morris is a former disability reporter for The Washington Post who has been a trailblazer on the beat. Before joining The Post in 2022, she was the inaugural disability reporting fellow for The New York Times. She has previously covered topics such as science, politics and national news for outlets such as The Arizona Republic, The Associated Press and NPR.

Amanda has spoken on numerous panels regarding disability representation in the media and has served as a judge for NCDJ’s annual Katherine Schneider Journalism Award for Excellence in Disability Reporting. She also has served as a mentor for the American Journalism Online Graduate Program at NYU and has informally mentored other young, disabled journalists in the industry. Her experiences as a hard-of-hearing woman with two deaf parents informs her coverage, and she is passionate about improving disability representation in news media.

Agam Shah is a freelance journalist who writes about business, technology and politics. He previously worked as a full-time reporter for The Wall Street Journal, S&P Global and the IDG News Service. His work also has appeared in ESPN, The New York Times and CNN. He earned a master’s degree in journalism at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom.

He had multiple brain surgeries in 2005 to treat epilepsy. The surgery stopped the seizures, but the trade-off was a loss in motor, speech and balance. Since then, he has become a passionate advocate for race and disability inclusivity in newsrooms and narratives.

Amy Silverman is an independent journalist based in Tempe, Arizona. Her focus is social justice with the goal of better covering people with intellectual disabilities by merging personal narrative and storytelling with investigative and explanatory reporting, as well as focusing on the development of plain language translations and other ways of making journalism more accessible.

In 2021, Amy will complete a visiting fellowship with the Nieman Foundation, focused on these issues.

She is also continuing work started in 2020 with the Arizona Daily Star and Pro Publica’s Local Reporting Network. The project was a finalist for the Shadid Award for Journalism Ethics and won the President’s Award from Lee Enterprises.

Amy is a frequent contributor to KJZZ, the NPR member station in Phoenix, as well as a monthly columnist for PHOENIX magazine and a contributing editor for the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting. She’s an adjunct professor at Phoenix College, and also co-teaches the long-running Mothers Who Write workshop at Changing Hands Bookstore in Phoenix. Amy is the co-founder of Fly Paper and the co-curator of the live reading series Bar Flies at Valley Bar in downtown Phoenix as well as the co-editor of the essay collection Bar Flies: True Stories from the Early Years.

Her work has appeared on the radio shows Here & Now, The Pulse and This American Life, and in Literary Hub, The New York Times, Washington Post, Lenny Letter, Motherwell, and Brain, Child. Amy worked for 25 years as a staff writer and editor at New Times, the alternative weekly in Phoenix, where she was twice honored as the Arizona Press Club’s Virg Hill Journalist of the Year and also won the Don Bolles award for investigative reporting.

Amy’s first book, My Heart Can’t Even Believe It: A Story of Science, Love, and Down Syndrome, was published by Woodbine House in 2016. Amy is a graduate of Scripps College (B.A. American Studies) and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism (M.S.). She lives with her husband, Ray Stern. They have two daughters.

Jason Strother is an independent multimedia journalist who covers the news through the lens of disability and accessibility. His work is informed by his own experience having a low vision condition. After freelancing overseas for 15 years, Jason returned to New Jersey in 2021. He received funding from the NJ Civic Information Consortium to launch Lens15 Media, a disability-focused production company and consultancy. His work has received support from the Fulbright Program, the National Geographic Society, and UC Berkeley's 11th Hour Food and Farming Journalism Fellowship. In 2023, Jason won a Signal Award for an episode he produced for the podcast Proof by America's Test Kitchen on finding a more accessible way to food shop. Jason is also an adjunct professor at Montclair State University. He's created several undergraduate electives, including courses on disability representation in media and audio description writing. He’s spoken on various panels concerning disability journalism, climate change’s impact on people with disabilities and making accessible media.