David Cohn is the Director of Distributed Reporting at NewAssignment.Net. He has worked for Wired News, Columbia Journalism Review and the Commonwealth Club of California. His writing has appeared in Plenty Magazine, Seed Magazine and the New York Times. His interest in journalism began at the University of California at Berkeley where he helped create the school’s undergraduate philosophy journal. He is also working towards his masters at Columbia’s school of journalism. He can be reached at David.NewAssignment[At]gmail.com or through his personal blog.

John McQuaid, contributing editor for the test site, is a former investigative reporter for The Times-Picayune and co-author of Path of Destruction: The Devastation of New Orleans and the Coming Age of Superstorms. He and “Path” co-author Mark Schleifstein reported “Washing Away,” a 2002 series on hurricane risks that anticipated many of the devastating impacts of Hurricane Katrina. He was also on a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for a series on the decline of fishing around the world. His work has won national awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Society of Civil Engineers. He has also been a foreign correspondent covering Latin America and a political reporter. He lives in Silver Spring, Maryland with his wife and two children.

Amanda Michel is director of participation for the test phase of NewAssignment.Net and associate editor of the test site’s blog. Recently she was Communications Director at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. She was also National Director of Generation Dean, Howard Dean’s official youth outreach program as well as director of the Media Corps program on the Kerry campaign. She also co-founded the New Organizing Institute, which trains young techies and organizers in the essentials of online organizing. Amanda received a Bachelors in Philosophy at the University of Vermont. She can be reached at Amanda.NewAssignment[At]gmail.com

Jay Rosen is the founder of NewAssignment.Net and executive editor of the test site. Jay teaches journalism at New York university and is the author of Press Think, a blog about the shifting world of the press in the Web era.