President
Walt Kane is lead investigative reporter for News 12 and has spent the past 25 years investigating the issues that affect people in New Jersey and the tristate area. The Society of Professional Journalists calls his work, “Journalism at its best: fearless, unflinching and impossible to ignore.”
Kane has won hundreds of awards for outstanding investigative journalism including 27 Emmy awards, and six Edward R. Murrow awards. Hs was named NJSPJ’s Reporter of the Year for 2022, 2023 and 2024.
Kane In Your Corner investigations have led to 18 new laws, including stricter regulations on police use of deadly force, testing of rape kits, physical restraint of special needs students, environmental cleanups and security at nuclear power plants.
A native of Brooklyn, Kane is a graduate of Manhattan College. Prior to joining News 12, he worked as a reporter, producer and news manager for television stations and newspapers in New York, Michigan, Oklahoma, and Kansas.
Email: walt.kane@njspj.org
Immediate Past President
P. Kenneth Burns is an award-winning journalist with WHYY, the NPR News station in Philadelphia, where he covers New Jersey and is a news host.
Before coming to WHYY in 2018, Burns covered city government and urban affairs for WYPR , the NPR News station in Baltimore. His coverage of the Freddie Gray police trials earned the station its first National Headliner Award in 2017.
Prior to entering the world of public media, Burns was an afternoon news anchor for WNAV in Annapolis, Maryland, where he also covered the Maryland General Assembly and hosted two public affairs shows. Other career stops included WBAL Radio in Baltimore and NAVTEQ Traffic in Washington, D.C. His professional journalism career began shortly after high school at WTOP, the all-news radio station in Washington, D.C., first as an intern, then as a news assistant.
The Maryland native now calls Central Jersey home. He earned his associate’s degree from Anne Arundel Community College, his bachelor’s degree in political science from Towson University, and is working on his master’s degree in theological studies from Southeastern University.
Email: kenny@pkbmedia.com
Vice President
Jane Primerano is a New Jersey journalist who has covered municipal and county government, police beat, courts and agricultural and environmental beats.
Currently, she writes for American Farm Publishing, The Sussex Journal, New Jersey Hills Media Group papers and the Ridge View Echo as a freelancer, with occasional stories for Straus News and The Lake Hopatcong News. She has won awards for her reporting and photography from the New Jersey Press Association, Garden State Press Association and SPJ.
Jane is a Past President of NJ-SPJ. Her service on the NJ-SPJ board began in 2004. Jane then served as SPJ Region One Director for five years. (Region One is the northeast and represents one of six SPJ members.)
Since 2005, Jane has been liaison to the Garden State Scholastic Press Association (GSSPA), presenting on media literacy, media ethics, lede writing, headline writing and other topics to New Jersey high school journalism students and their advisors. New Jersey is nationally known for its cooperation between professional and student journalists.
Prior to joining the SPJ board, she was on the board of the now-sadly-defunct New Jersey Press Women, serving as vice president and, for three years, as president.
Adrienne J. Romero is an award-winning journalist. She is the co-founder of Slice of Culture, an award-winning media publication, which focuses on uplifting Hudson County and New Jersey’s diverse communities and cultures.
Previously, Adrienne was the editor at fightsports.tv, where she interviewed fighters, including boxer Manny Pacquiao and UFC’s Dustin Poirier, and she was the weekend reporter for The Jersey Journal on NJ.com.
She is a graduate of the Newmark J-School’s 100 Day Entrepreneurial Journalism Creators Program.
Secretary
Bob Schapiro has been a frontline reporter in Ukraine, Afghanistan, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Ethiopia and Lebanon. He is an Emmy Award-winning documentarian. For many years, he wrote and produced newscasts for WCBS, WPIX and WNBC.
Bob is a past president of NJ-SPJ.
Email: njbob7500@gmail.com
Treasurer
Steven Tettamanti is the Executive Director of the New Jersey Historical Society and, as many of you know, he worked on NJ-SPJ events for many years before joining in our February membership drive. Steven brings an expertise in seeking grants and not-for-profit funding, drawing on his business experience and his training as an accountant. He has run many educational events and campaigns at the Society’s exhibit hall in Newark, where he instructs and consults on New Jersey history. In addition, he continues to build-up the archive of NJ periodicals housed at the Society’s research library, a facility that includes newspapers dating back to the American Revolution.
Board Members
Kimberly Avalos is a video journalist with 10 years of experience in video reporting, on-camera hosting, video production, social video, and documentary storytelling in the United States, Mexico, Morocco, Kenya, Israel, and the West Bank.
Her 2024 documentary about self-deportation among DACA recipients was a finalist for a 2025 ONA Award for Excellence in Social Justice Reporting.
She currently oversees the production of digital news documentaries, explainer series, and special video projects for The News Movement and The Recount. In this role, she has also produced and filmed interviews with President Joe Biden, Malala, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Governor Josh Shapiro, Senator Catherine Cortez, Michigan Secretary of State Joceyn Benson, and Stacy Abrams.
Prior to that, Kimberly produced her own documentaries on a wide range of topics, like the asylum crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, Indigenous fire practices to combat wildfires, sustainable farming practices in post-hurricane Puerto Rico, the undocumented youth movement in the U.S, and many more.
Her photography has been exhibited in Photoville (2022), the Fowler Museum at UCLA (2025-26), and The Oakland Museum of California 2025-26).
Email: kimberlyjavalos@gmail.com
Isaac Avilucea is a reporter for Axios covering Philadelphia. He covered New Jersey’s scandal-plagued capital city for The Trentonian for eight years, utilizing public-records laws for award-winning accountability reporting. He’s a member of the New Jersey Foundation for Open Government’s Board of Directors.
John Berry has been the editor of The Trentonian for more than a decade. He managed newsrooms for a decade before that as an online editor and editor at several publications.
He has been part of award-winning coverage of local, regional, and national stories. He is a photographer, writer, editor, designer, manager, web producer, videographer, and troubleshooter.
Email: jberry@trentonian.com
Neidy Gutierrez is the co-founder of Slice of Culture, an award-winning media publication in Hudson County, NJ.
She is a digital storyteller focusing on covering the diverse communities and cultures in Hudson County while creating an online space for people of color to share their stories.
She is a graduate of the Newmark J-School’s 100 Day Entrepreneurial Journalism Creators Program.
Krystal Knapp is the founder of The Jersey Vindicator, a nonpartisan, independent investigative newsroom that helps New Jersey residents understand government, policy, and power through accountability reporting and plain-English explainers.
A pioneer in local digital journalism, she previously founded Planet Princeton, a successful hyperlocal news site, after more than a decade as a staff writer for The Trenton Times. A 2019–2020 fellow at the Reynolds Journalism Institute, Krystal was also a founding board member of LION Publishers, a national organization supporting independent local news publishers.
Before becoming a journalist in 1999, she worked for Centurion, a national organization that works to free innocent people from prison. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Smith College and a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary. She also holds a certificate in entrepreneurial journalism from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism.
Email:
Steve Lubetkin is the news director for State Broadcast News. Steve has reported for several print and broadcast news organizations in New Jersey, and currently produces a daily radio-style newscast for “Radio Jersey,” a streaming Internet radio show.
In 2021, Steve received SPJ’s Howard S. Dubin Outstanding Pro Member Award for his contributions to NJ-SPJ’s website and Press ID Card program. His reporting has been honored by NJ-SPJ, the Garden State Journalists Association, and the Delaware Press Association.
From 2014 to 2019, he covered commercial real estate news in New Jersey and Philadelphia as a regional editor for ALM Media’s GlobeSt.com. Steve also has reported on-camera and produced seminar/conference videos for NJSpotlightNews.org, a public policy news coverage website focused on New Jersey government and industry.
Steve has been the computer columnist for the Jewish Community Voice of Southern New Jersey since 1996. Earlier in his career, he was a general assignment reporter for the Red Bank Register, covered rock music for the Asbury Park Press, and was a news anchor for WJLK-AM & FM in Asbury Park.
Steve is co-author, with Toronto-based podcasting pioneer Donna Papacosta, of the book, The Business of Podcasting: How to Take Your Podcasting Passion from the Personal to the Professional.
Email: steve@statebroadcastnews.com
Susmita (Suzzy) Majumder is a columnist with Presence News and an intern at Our National Conversation. With a master’s degree in professional communication, she is growing her focus on digital marketing, business, and tech reporting.
Email:
Terrence T. McDonald is editor of New Jersey Monitor. He has covered everything from Trenton politics to the smallest of municipal squabbles, exposing public corruption and general malfeasance at every level of government. One politician forced to resign in disgrace because of Terrence’s reporting called him a “political poison pen journalist.” (Photo: Mary Luvone)
Stacie Sherman is an award-winning journalist with more than three decades of experience that encompasses reporting, editing, newsroom leadership, and academia. She spent 28years at Bloomberg, with roles including bureau chief, deputy managing editor, and senior editor on the News Desk. Prior to Bloomberg, she was a reporter for the Asbury Park Press and Home News Tribune.
After leaving Bloomberg in 2025, Stacie transitioned to writing about disability issues and served as Communications Director for Autism New Jersey until July 2026. She has a personal blog and is also a published author, with her book, My Broken Road: the tangled and twisted musings of an autism mama, released in May 2024.
Stacie graduated from The College of New Jersey (then Trenton State College) in 1995 with a bachelor of arts degree in journalism. She received a master of science degree in business journalism from Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School in 2021. Stacie is a contracted adjunct professor of journalism at TCNJ.
Email: Shermanstacie@gmail.com
In loving memory: Past President John Ensslin (1953-2019)
John Ensslin was the consummate journalist. At the time of his death, he was working as a reporter for Colorado Politics in Denver. Over the course of his career, he worked as a multimedia reporter for The Record as well as for newspapers in Denver, Colorado Springs, Union City and Middletown, N.Y. He was a past national president of SPJ and served as NJ chapter president from July 2017 – June 2019.