Russell Mills - Opening Keynote
Speaker
 Former
president of the Southam Newspaper Group, and current Dean of the School of Media
and Design at Algonquin College, Russell Mills, will open the
joint portion of the convention as keynote speaker on Friday, June 4.
Born July 14, 1944 in St. Thomas, Ontario, Mills earned his
B.A. in general arts in 1967 and M.A. in Sociology in 1968 from the University
of Western Ontario, working as a part-time reporter for the London Free Press
from 1964-1967 while at university.
After a stint as a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto,
Mills began his three-decade-long history with the Ottawa Citizen in
1971. He joined the staff as a copy editor, and continued being promoted through
the role of editor, and eventually became publisher in 1986.
He served as president of the Southam Newspaper Group in 1989,
responsible for all of Southam's daily and weekly newspapers, until 1992 when
he returned to the Ottawa Citizen as publisher, a position he held until
2002.
In August of 2002, Mills began an academic stage of his career
as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, and one year later joined the Algonquin
College as Dean of the School of Media and Design. He is also a visiting Professor
in the Department of Communications at the University of Ottawa.
Mills is very active in the newspaper industry and the Ottawa
community, where he is on the boards of the Ottawa Chamber Music Society, Ottawa
Health Research Institute, Great Canadian Theatre Company, Ottawa Symphony and
International Press Institute.
Roy MacGregor - BNC Awards Host
 Globe
and Mail columnist and author Roy MacGregor will be the
the guest speaker and host of the BNC awards presentations at the convention on
Saturday, June 5.
Prior to joining the Globe and Mail in 2002, MacGregor
worked for the National Post, the Ottawa Citizen, Maclean's
magazine (three separate times), the Toronto Star and The Canadian
Magazine. He has won numerous awards for his journalism, including the National
Newspaper Award, several National Magazine Awards and twice the ACTRA Award as
the best television drama writer in the country.
He is also the author of some 30 books, 17 of them in the internationally
successful Screech Owls Mystery series for young readers.
Roy MacGregor was born in the small village of Whitney, Ontario,
in 1948 and raised in the town of Huntsville, both on the edges of Ontario's Algonquin
Park. MacGregor lives in Kanata, Ontario, with Ellen. They have four children.
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Russell
Mills delivers his insights on community newspapers and the media sector based
on four decades of experience in the publishing and journalism fields. In addition
to being Dean of the School of Media and Design at Algonquin College in Ottawa,
Mills is a visiting professor in the Department of Communications at the University
of Ottawa. His wide-ranging accomplishments include a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard
University, 16 years as publisher of the Ottawa Citizen, and three years as president
of the Southam Newspaper Group. 
Guest
speaker and awards host Roy MacGregor, author and Globe and Mail columnist –
“My Experience with Community Newspapers”
