Who We Are
Spotlight magazine showcases the projects and people funded by the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning Initiative and covers the intersections of technology and learning.
The weekly Behind the Research feature introduces a topic or idea important to the field, and the accompanying set of stories offers additional perspectives on that topic. Our blog reports daily on curriculum and events; useful websites and resources; and issues surrounding students’ use of social media, video games and other technologies. Later this year, we’ll launch StudentSpeak: we give teens cameras and ask them to document a day in their life with digital media.
With this package of stories, we hope to give readers a quick entry into the issues and possibilities of digital media—including how it’s changing the way young people learn, play, socialize and participate in civic life.
We invite educators, researchers and policy makers to submit guest blog posts, and we welcome suggestions for websites that Spotlight should feature. Contact spotlight.dml [at] gmail [dot] com with your ideas. Please join us.
The Editorial Team
Spotlight is produced and edited by a team of journalists, videographers and editors under a grant from the Tides Foundation.
Barbara Ray, Hiredpen, Inc., Managing Editor
As the owner of Hiredpen, inc., Barbara Ray helps researchers and nonprofit organizations convey their work to broader audiences. She has worked as an editor at the University of Chicago Press, a senior writer at the Joint Center for Poverty Research, a stringer for Pacific Islands Monthly (Fiji), a culture reporter on the island of Guam, and as an award-winning travel writer. She is the author of the forthcoming Slouching Toward Adulthood (Random House), which summarizes eight years of research by the MacArthur Foundation’s Network on Transitions to Adulthood on why young people are delaying adulthood.
Heather Chaplin is the author of Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution, a narratively told exploration of the modern videogame industry. Chaplin is a regular contributor to All Things Considered and writes for such publications as the New York Times, LA Times, GQ, and Details. She has been quoted on the topic of games in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, New York Times Magazine, Talk of the Nation, CBS Sunday Morning, Newsweek, and Business Week.
Matt Haber has written for The New York Observer, The New York Times, Esquire, Wired, and other publications. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Josh Karp teaches graduate magazine writing at Northwestern and is the author of two books. The first, A Futile and Stupid Gesture: How Doug Kenney and National Lampoon Changed Comedy Forever won best biography of 2006 at the independent Publisher Book Awards. His second book, Straight Down the Middle: Shivas Irons, Bagger Vance and How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Golf Swing, will be published by Chronicle Books in March 2010. Karp’s work has appeared in Salon, Premiere, The Atlantic Monthly Online, L.A. Times Sunday Magazine, Chicago Magazine and many other publications.
Mac Montandon is a writer living in Brooklyn, N.Y., with his wife and two daughters. He has worked on staff at a handful of national magazines and has written for The New York Times, New York magazine, Spin, Details and Salon, among others. Montandon is the author of the narrative non-fiction book Jetpack Dreams: One Man’s Up and Down (But Mostly Down) Search for the Greatest Invention that Never Was. He also edited the book Innocent When you Dream: The Tom Waits Reader and founded the websites The Silence of the City and Best Recession Ever!.
Jeane Quentin, StudentSpeak Coordinator
Jeane Quentin studied communication and digital media at Stanford University, where she also ran track and cross country. After graduation, Quentin worked as a sports information director for the Stanford Athletic Department. She then moved to Phoenix where she coached and taught middle school Integrated Studies. Quentin is now a part-time Chicago resident with her husband.
Ben Wolff is a freelance video journalist/producer with a passion for documentary filmmaking. He got his start in media production in his hometown of Washington, D.C., while he studied media theory as a graduate student of political psychology at George Washington University. His experiences there inspired him to enroll in Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, where he earned his master’s degree in 2007. Aside from his current work for Spotlight, Ben has recently produced work for the Women’s Sports Foundation and is concurrently creating online media about political decision-making and its relationship to society.
Website
Christine Cupaiuolo, Web Editor/Outreach
Christine Cupaiuolo is a freelance writer and editor specializing in politics, culture and gender. A former newspaper reporter, she launched her first online magazine in 2000 and has been writing and consulting for online media ever since. She also works with individuals and nonprofit organizations, helping them to tell their stories using new media tools and technologies.
Sarah Jackson, Blog Editor/ Webmaster
Sarah Jackson has worked with MacArthur’s Digital Media and Learning Initiative since its launch in 2006. She has worked as a journalist, community outreach worker, and a researcher for the Chicago Public Schools and AFSME Council 31. She has a degree in journalism from Northwestern’s Medill School and holds a master’s in urban policy and planning from Tufts. She is a hardworking mom of two young children and lives in Oakland, CA.
