Democracy Day: Meet the team
Meet our project coordinator
Will Fischer
Will Fischer is the project coordinator for U.S. Democracy Day at the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University. Democracy Day, taking place annually on September 15, is a nationwide reporting collaborative involving 300+ newsrooms across the United States that promotes and centers pro-democracy journalism.
Will previously worked for Business Insider as a Senior Editor and Strategist on the Service Journalism team. He’s also been a Fact-Checker at New York Magazine. Will graduated from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where he conducted research on local news ecosystems and helped City Bureau launch their Documenters program by attending town halls and doing interviews with community stakeholders.
Will currently lives in New York with his wife and two cats and can be reached at [email protected].
Meet the organizing committee
Rachel Glickhouse
Rachel Glickhouse (she/her) runs partnerships and collaborations at Grist. She previously worked at the News Revenue Hub, The COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic, ProPublica, Univision, and Medium. She has also taught at the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and the New School.
Jaisal Noor
Jaisal Noor (he/him) is the Democracy Initiative Manager at the Solutions Journalism Network and is a former TRNN host, producer, and reporter. He mainly grew up in the Baltimore area and studied modern history at the University of Maryland, College Park. Jaisal’s mother has taught in the Baltimore City Public School system for the past 25 years.
Stefanie Murray
Stefanie Murray (she/her) is the Director of the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University. A Michigan native, Stefanie previously worked in Michigan and Tennessee as a reporter, editor, digital media manager and news executive. Before joining Montclair State, she worked for Gannett Co. as vice president and executive editor of The Tennessean in Nashville, and was with the Detroit Free Press before that.
Michelle Faust Raghavan
Michelle Faust Raghavan (they/them) is a John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford, is also joining us. Michelle is examining best practices to create a culture of belonging in the news industry for BIPOC journalists, and they are passionate about mentorship. With Michelle’s experience leading the Equity Initiative at the Solutions Journalism Network, they will bring valuable insights to Democracy Day.
Bridget Thoreson
Bridget Thoreson (she/her) works with INN member newsrooms to frame, fund and execute project-based editorial collaborations, ongoing partnerships and collaborative networks. She has worked with journalists from 109 news organizations as an engagement consultant at Hearken, where she also served as project manager for Election SOS. She also makes a tasty pumpkin pasta.
Jennifer Brandel
Jennifer Brandel (she/her) is CEO & founder of Hearken, a social impact consultancy that uses the power of community engagement to impact and influence systems for the public good. She has built a variety of initiatives for journalism, including Democracy SOS, Election SOS, Advancing Democracy and the Democracy Toolkit. She loves finding ways to turn theory into action and results.
Joe Amditis
Joe Amditis (he/him) is the assistant director of products and events at the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University and an adjunct professor in the School of Communication and Media. He is also the former producer and host of the WTF Just Happened Today podcast.
QUESTIONS? NEED MORE INFO? GET IN TOUCH!
The Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University is providing infrastructure support for this iteration of Democracy Day, so you can contact us at [email protected].
Still have questions? Contact the Center for Cooperative Media directly by sending an email to [email protected].
WHO IS FUNDING THIS PROJECT?
The Democracy Day project is supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.