Roger M. Richards
CEO & Editor

Roger Richards is the Editor and Publisher of The Digital Vision Network, and a documentary video producer with The Drew Carey Project at Reason.tv Richards also continues to work as a documentary still photographer. He began his photojournalism career in 1979, focusing on political and social themes in the Caribbean, the civil wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua and then joining the Gamma Liaison photo agency in 1988. Based in Miami and then Europe, his work with the agency included the US invasion of Panama, political upheaval in Haiti, civil war in Croatia and the siege of Sarajevo. He was Multimedia Editor/Producer for The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Virginia from 2001 to 2007. He is a former Associated Press photo bureau chief in Bogotá, Colombia, and a staff photographer at the Washington Times in Washington, DC, from 1997-2000. He is the recipient of numerous awards from the National Press Photographers' Association, the White House News Photographers' Association, Pictures of the Year International, the Society of Newspaper Design, the Society of Professional Journalists and the Virginia News Photographers Association. He became a digital filmmaker in 1998, focusing on projects about war in the Balkans. He was awarded the first White House News Photographers' Association sabbatical grant for video journalism in 2000 and in 1999 was one of the first graduates of the famous Platypus Workshop that trains photojournalists how to become digital filmmakers and video journalists. In 2002 he joined Dirck Halstead and PF Bentley on the Platypus Workshop faculty. 

Ron Steinman
Executive Editor, The Digital Filmmaker

Ron Steinman began his career at 23 at NBC News and spent 35 years at the network. He moved from copyboy to producing segments and writing for the Huntley-Brinkley Report, first in Washington and then in New York then on to field producer for the newsmagazine show Chet Huntley Reports. He produced documentaries and worked on specials, including space coverage, before being named NBC's Bureau Chief in Saigon during the Vietnam War. He also served as Bureau Chief in Hong Kong and London before returning to New York to oversee the network's news specials. In 1975 he joined the Today Show where he spent 11 years in a number of senior producing positions in Washington and New York. After leaving NBC News he worked for 5 years as a freelance producer for ABC, among other things, he wrote and produced a series of A&E Biography one hour documentaries on O.J. Simpson, Malcolm X, Colin Powell, Timothy McVeigh, LBJ, Frank Sinatra, Nelson Rockefeller, James Earl Ray, and Jim Jones. He also produced for the Discovery Channel, and the History Channel. He produced 3 of the highly rated 6 part series for the Learning Channel on the Vietnam War called The Soldier's Story, first broadcast in October 1998, and the follow up "Missing in Action.", which has won a National Headliner Award and an International Documentary Festival Award. He is also the author of the book, "The Soldier's Story" published in 1999 by TV Books, and now by Barnes & Noble, and "Women in the Vietnam" published by TV Books in July, 2000. The University of Missouri Press published his memoir "Inside Television's First War: A Saigon Journal" in October 2002. Steinman has won a Peabody Award, a National Press Club award, two American Women in Radio & Television Awards, two Chris Awards and been nominated for five Emmies. His documentary film, "Luboml: My Heart Remembers," a Douglas /Steinman Production, aired on PBS' WILW/21 in the New York metropolitan area. His latest film, "My Grandfather's House: The Journey Home" a feature length documentary, and a Douglas/Steinman Production, is currently in release. The film is distributed by Cinema Guild.
 

Contributing Editors

Dirck Halstead

Dirck Halstead is the Editor and Publisher of The Digital Journalist. Dirck started in photojournalism when he was in High School. At the age of 17, he became LIFE Magazine's youngest combat photographer covering the Guatemalan Civil War. (LIFE had no idea how old he was). After attending Haverford College, he went on to work for UPI for more than 15 years, covering stories around the world. In 1972 he accepted a contract for Time Magazine, and for the next 29 years covered the White House for them. In 1992 he played an instrumental part in the formation of Video News International (VNI), which started what is now the Platypus movement, allowing still photojournalists to cross the barrier between print and television. He has won the NPPA Picture of the Year award twice, the Robert Capa Gold Medal for his coverage of the fall of Saigon, and two Eisies.

David Snider 

Born in England and raised in Washington, D.C., David Snider developed a career in documentary photography, website production and broadcast television. After graduating from the School of Visual Arts in New York City, David developed a major documentary photography project called Blindness in America. In 1996, Dirck Halstead taught David how to shoot video stories; in 1997, they began to publish The Digital Journalist website. David has co-produced 3 programs for ABC News Nightline and is on the faculty of the Platypus Workshops.

J. Ross Baughman

In 1978, at the age of 23, photojournalist J. Ross Baughman became the youngest professional ever awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and was cited for his coverage of the guerrilla war in southern Africa. While continuing to work that same year as the first contract photojournalist ever hired by the  Associated Press, he competed against himself with two other nominations: For infiltrating the American Nazi movement over nine months to uncover their assassination and bombing plans, and once more for being the first journalist to ever accompany Palestinian commandoes operating behind Israeli lines. 

Baughman soon went on to become an international lecturer on journalism ethics, a university professor and founder of the photo agency Visions, which specialized in long-term, high-risk, difficult-access investigative photo essays around the world. Besides covering wars in 11 countries, his work has appeared everywhere from LIFE to Vanity Fair, Newsweek, TIME, Stern, Cosmopolitan and Vogue. The life of an investigative photojournalist has not been all that glamorous for J. Ross Baughman. Since becoming a professional in 1975, he has been spit upon, shot at, stricken by encephalitis, had his arm broken by a New York drug dealer, been lined up for execution by a Neo-Nazi, had his ear drum blown out during a Palestinian mortar attack in Lebanon, been accused of being a spy and thrown into Zambian prison for six week. Then he intentionally placed himself next to a tornado, accidentally in the middle of an earthquake, and got his leg blown apart by a Bouncing Betty land mine in El Salvador.

Baughman recently moved back to Virginia, where his family first settled in the 1730s. He currently serves as Director of Photography at The Washington Times.

PF Bentley

Photojournalist/digital filmmaker PF Bentley specializes in covering domestic and international politics. Bentley is known and respected throughout the print and broadcast community for earning unprecedented access to presidential candidates, Heads of State, and Capitol Hill. He was the first photojournalist to shoot on the House floor while in session. Bentley was behind the scenes with President Bill Clinton for his last week in office, Inauguration Day, January 20, 2001, and his last trip on Air Force One to his new life as “Citizen Clinton”. 

Bentley returned to Washington after September 11, 2001 for NEWSWEEK Magazine to be with U.S. lawmakers behind the scenes on Capitol Hill in the wake of the terrorist attacks and Anthrax crisis. Included in this coverage was his widely acclaimed photograph of President Bush in prayer before speaking to a Joint Session of Congress on September 20. 

He has covered every U.S. presidential campaign and photographed every serious presidential contender since 1980 including Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Bob Dole, Michael Dukakis, Walter Mondale, Geraldine Ferraro, Jesse Jackson, John Glenn, Al Gore, Dick Gephardt, Pat Buchanan, Bill Bradley, and Bill Clinton. Bentley's skill at getting close to his subjects without intruding on the events being recorded earned him several first place awards in the campaign category from the University of Missouri School of Journalism prestigious Pictures of the Year Competition. He won his fifth and sixth First Place Picture of the Year awards in March of 1997. Bentley was awarded top honors for his coverage in 1984 of John Glenn's presidential bid, in 1988 for Dan Quayle's vice presidential campaign, 1992 for Bill Clinton's winning campaign, in 1995 for Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America" and twice in 1996 for his coverage of Bob Dole's final presidential run. This year Bentley won yet another POY award for his coverage of President Clinton’s Final Days in Office. He has been a Special Corespondent for TIME Magazine and has been published in the New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post and in newspapers and magazines around the world.

Bentley has also traveled extensively throughout the world capturing on film some the world's most closely followed political events. During the past few years he has made eight trips to Fidel Castro's Cuba, and sixteen trips to Haiti to photograph the chaotic and often deadly ongoing political turmoil. He covered the collapse of the Noriega regime and the ever-changing political landscape in Panama; Kim Dae Jung's return to South Korea; and the Christiani campaign in El Salvador (during which Bentley also spent time in the hills with anti-government FMLN guerrillas). In addition Bentley, whose photographs are syndicated worldwide by both TIME Magazine and through his web site, PFPIX.com, has worked in China, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Hong Kong and most of Europe. He has also been featured in most of the "Day in the Life" book series.

In January 1992, Bentley began a 10-month assignment photographing the then presidential hopeful Bill Clinton's campaign. The best-selling result, CLINTON: PORTRAIT OF VICTORY, published by Warner Books, received critical praise. During the early part of 1995 he documented Newt Gingrich's first 100 days in office for TIME. His latest book, NEWT: INSIDE THE REVOLUTION (An Epicenter Communications book published by Rutledge Hill Press), was based on that assignment. 

In August 2001 he produced and filmed an ABC-TV "Nightline" about Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. This was his third "Nightline" broadcast. 

Bentley grew up in Hawaii and graduated from the University of Hawaii in Honolulu with a B.Ed. degree in 1975. He is also a member of the faculty of the Platypus Workshop. When not traveling he resides in New York and on the Big Island of Hawaii with his wife, publicist, Cathy Saypol.