Thursday, October 16

Margaret Talev is the founding director of Syracuse University’s Institute for Democracy, Journalism & Citizenship in Washington, D.C., and a senior contributor at Axios. She oversees newsroom polling and focus group partnerships and previously served as Axios’ managing editor.

Talev is a regular political analyst on CNN, SiriusXM, NPR and other national outlets. She began her journalism career as a yearbook editor at Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, Maryland, a columnist for The Diamondback at the University of Maryland, and a call-screener for the local talk station 980 AM. She went on to cover or direct coverage of local news in Florida and California, as well as Congress, presidential elections and the White House.

A past president of both the White House Correspondents’ Association and the Washington Press Club Foundation, Talev is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She is a professor of practice at Syracuse’s Newhouse School of Public Communications, an adjunct lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School and serves on the Board of Visitors for the University of Maryland’s Merrill College of Journalism.

Journalism today and tomorrow

Perspectives and predictions from SPJ’s 2025 fellows

Each year, SPJ proclaims three exceptional journalists as Fellows of the Society. This year’s trio represents a cross-section of the profession.

  • Dean Baquet was the first Black executive editor of The New York Times.
  • Valeria Fernández is an investigative journalist and filmmaker who leads a project to strengthen reporters at community outlets that serve Black, Indigenous, immigrant, and other communities of color.
  • Kat Tenbarge is known as an “influencer watchdog” for her work covering the creator ecosystem, including the rise of deepfakes and online abuse. She created Spitfire, a newsletter with a fiercely loyal following, in the process.

Together, they represent the landscape of journalism: legacy media (Baquet), nonprofit media (Fernandez), and independent media (Tenbarge).

moderator: Emily Bloch, SPJ president

11 am Friday, October 17

Saturday, October 17

Jabin Botsford and Demetrius Freeman, award-winning photojournalists at The Washington Post, will appear together to share their experiences covering politics, history and the moments that define them.

Botsford is a two-time White House News Photographers Association Photographer of the Year, most recently in 2025. He shared in a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the 2024 assassination attempt on Donald Trump, work that also earned honors from World Press Photo and Picture of the Year International, where he won first place in the Impact 2024: On the Campaign Trail category.

Freeman is a staff political photojournalist at The Washington Post. He previously worked as a freelance photographer in New York, with work published by The New York Times, ProPublica, New York Magazine, the Tampa Bay Times and HuffPost. He also served as photographer for the mayor of New York City. Freeman’s work has been recognized by Picture of the Year International, the National Press Photographers Association and Time magazine’s Top 100 Photos.Botsford and Freeman were college roommates at Western Kentucky University, where both earned College Photographer of the Year honors and worked for the College Heights Herald, an Associated Collegiate Press Pacemaker winner.