2026-27 Arkansas SPJ Board Election Survey

The Arkansas SPJ Board of Directors has 11 seats that are up for election.

Thank you for participating in the Arkansas Pro Chapter SPJ board elections. Only current national dues-paying members of SPJ who have selected to be members of the Arkansas Pro Chapter (the chapter does not charge additional dues) may vote.

Please review the candidates below and select one candidate for president, vice president and treasurer. If you choose, you can write in a candidate for each position. In addition to executive board roles, you can vote for up to 8 people for seats on the board of directors.

To learn more about the duties and responsibilities of board members, visit arkansasspj.org/officers-contact.

1.President

Sarah Campbell-Miller
Sarah Campbell-Miller, interim board president and supporter engagement specialist at the ACLU of Arkansas, is a longtime board member. She is a former senior online editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, where she was on the web team at the state's largest daily newspaper for three years. She was at Arkansas Business from 2016-2022, serving as a reporter then as assistant online editor. Sarah spent her early career days as a general assignment reporter and copy editor at The Leader in Jacksonville, Arkansas, from 2011-2016. She won Outstanding Online Editor in the 2025 Arkansas SPJ Diamond Awards competition, 19+ Arkansas Press Association reporting awards, and a third-place Green Eyeshade Award. She is also a graduate of the SPJ Ted Scripps Leadership Institute. Sarah graduated from Arkansas State University, where she was enthusiastically involved with student publication The Herald for four years, eventually serving as editor-in-chief. She also interned at The Jonesboro Sun for a year and a half. Sarah is married, has two dogs and one cat, and volunteers with the Arkansas Renaissance Festival. She also enjoys books, horror movies, Star Trek, the outdoors and kickboxing.

Other (please specify)

2.Vice President

Drew Brent
Drew Brent is a current board member, educator and former journalist based in Russellville, currently serving as the broadcast and communications instructor at Russellville High School. He is also the public address announcer for Arkansas Tech University athletics. Brent began his broadcasting career in 2006 as a studio operator for 100.9 KWKK while attending Arkansas Tech, later working at KATV Channel 7 and 103.7 The Buzz. Over two decades, he has broadcast hundreds of sporting events, including Arkansas high school state championships and NCAA Division II tournaments, and produced for Arkansas Sports Hall of Famer Steve Sullivan. Brent also built a respected print journalism career, joining The Courier in 2019 and earning praise for his coverage of a local casino ballot initiative and moderating the city's mayoral debate. His work has appeared in ABOUT Magazine and Arkansas Sports 360. In 2022, Brent launched the Cyclone Broadcasting program, growing it from 33 to nearly 130 students in three years. The program has earned state and regional honors, including the 2024 FBLA State Championship in Broadcasting and recognition in the 2025 SPJ Diamond Awards. Student Mary Stratton was the 2024 SPJ "Diamond in the Rough" Award. Brent was named the inaugural SPJ Diamond Educator of the Year in 2024 and is a three-time Russellville High School Teacher of the Year nominee. He led the rebranding of Cyclone Broadcasting into Cyclone Media, a multimedia education initiative focused on social media, podcasting, broadcasting, streaming, and yearbook production.

Other (please specify)

3.Treasurer

Rob Moritz
Rob Moritz has been on the SPJ Arkansas Chapter's board for more than 16 years, including one year as vice president. He is currently treasurer. He is also chairman of the Arkansas Freedom of Information Taskforce. Since the fall of 2014, he has been teaching journalism at the University of Central Arkansas and has organized an SPJ student chapter on the UCA campus. Prior to full-time teaching, he spent 30 years writing for newspapers in Texas, Tennessee and Arkansas, including the Arkansas Gazette, Benton Courier, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and 15 years as a state capital reporter for Stephens Media. He is married to Gwen Moritz, an editor at Arkansas Business, and they have two grown sons.

Other (please specify)

4.Select up to 8 people for board member positions

Jennifer Ellis
In addition to serving her fourth consecutive two-year term as SPJ’s Region 12 coordinator working with members throughout Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee, Jennifer is a current Arkansas SPJ board member and is serving as an appointed at-large director on the SPJ National board. She served as Arkansas SPJ president for three years from 2017-2019 and was the chair of the planning committee for the 2018 Region 12 Life and Death Journalism Conference, which contributed to her receiving the national Howard S. Dubin Outstanding Pro Member Award for the small chapter division that year. Ellis has served multiple years on SPJ’s national membership and resolutions committees and serves on the state’s Freedom of Information Act Coalition and Arkansas SPJ’s programming, contest, and marketing committees – planning events, designing flyers, assisting with the chapter’s social media and website and more, all while maintaining her work as Creative Services Managing Editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Ellis got her start with SPJ at the campus chapter at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, where she served as president and executive editor of the student newspaper, The Forum, for two years before graduating in 2013. She joined Arkansas SPJ’s board of directors in 2015, helping revive the group, and served as vice president in 2016-2017. She is a 2011 graduate of the SPJ Ted Scripps Leadership Institute. In addition to her work on the national and regional level, she hopes to continue serving Arkansas SPJ by reaching out to inactive and potential members, creating diverse programming and promoting SPJ’s mission. She enjoys the outdoors in her limited spare time: camping, fishing, easy hikes, kayaking and swimming. She is a full-time aunt, a dog mom and tends to her garden and a small flock of backyard chickens.

Sonny Albarado
Lawrence "Sonny" Albarado is a current and longtime board member, past national SPJ president and retired editor. He is the former editor-in-chief of the online news site Arkansas Advocate, part of the States Newsroom network. He has been an SPJ member since 1979. Sonny is also a longtime member of the SPJ Foundation, the charitable funding source of the Society of Professional Journalists. He has served as SPJ representative on the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. Sonny left the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette at the end of January 2020 after 12 1/2 years as the paper's top investigative editor supervising a team of four reporters. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and an honorary Doctor of Letters from Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, La.

Andrew DeMillo
Andrew DeMillo is editor-in-chief of the Arkansas Advocate and a current board member. He was the Arkansas Capital Correspondent for The Associated Press for 20 years. Prior to that, he was a staff writer for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Andrew is a graduate of the University of Georgia. He has interned at the Washington Post, the Seattle Times and Lexington Herald-Leader. He is a longtime member of SPJ and a former president of the Arkansas Pro chapter. He lives in Little Rock with his wife, Hillary and their son, Simon.

Steve Listopad
Steve Listopad, a current board member, has received honors from the Hugh M. Hefner Foundation, the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, the Journalism Education Association, and the Society of Collegiate Journalists for his work in creating the national New Voices USA legislative campaign to protect the rights of student journalists. He led the passage of laws in North Dakota in 2015 and 2017 and in Arkansas in 2019 as part of the campaign. He continues coordinating the New Voices USA website and the national campaign with the Student Press Law Center. Listopad has had a successful 25-year career as an educator at three universities. He served as an assistant professor of journalism and a student media director at the University of Jamestown and Valley City State University in North Dakota. His converged student media center at UJ was a finalist for North Dakota's annual professional entrepreneurial competition, InnovateND, and he was a Scripps fellow for Entrepreneurial Journalism in 2013. Most recently, Listopad served as a lecturer, media adviser and internship coordinator at Henderson State University in Arkansas. At HSU, his student journalists ran the only community-wide newspaper for Arkadelphia. Listopad received the AJA's Educator of the Year in 2021. He was Arkansas SPJ president in 2022-23. He also recently served as a Mitigation Specialist on capital murder cases for the Arkansas Public Defender Commission. He continues to teach journalism abroad in the summers and has taught in China, France, Italy and Norway.

I.C. Murrell
I.C. Murrell was promoted to editor of The Pine Bluff Commercial on Feb. 25, 2026. He began his second stint at The Commercial in January 2021 as a senior reporter. In 2026, he helped the newspaper transition from being part of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette to an independently printed weekly newspaper with a paywall-free website featuring breaking news. He was previously The Commercial's sports editor from 2011-15 and held the same role at The Port Arthur (Texas) News from August 2015 until his promotion to editor in October 2019. He has also worked in Mississippi, Oregon, Idaho, and Oklahoma, and has won 14 career first-place awards. Presently the vice president of the Arkansas SPJ board, Murrell earned an associate's degree in general studies and bachelor's degree in speech with a journalism collateral from the University of Arkansas at Monticello. He is running for re-election to the board.

Staci Miller
Staci Miller is the director of development for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Community Journalism Project and a current board member. She has a passion for local journalism fueled by more than 20 years at WECHO Newspapers, Inc. Previous leadership roles at the ADG include Creative Services Director, Niche Publications Director and Special Sections Manager. She has been a member of SJP since 2015 and served on its board of directors for the 2025-2026 term. Staci is a graduate of Southern Arkansas University (BA 2004) and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (MBA 2010). She is a member of Leadership Greater Little Rock Class XLI and serves on the board of directors for the Downtown Little Rock Partnership and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Alumni Association. She lives in Little Rock with her husband and little gray cat. She is running for re-election to the board.

Kyle McDaniel
Kyle McDaniel is a faculty member in the journalism program at the University of Central Arkansas, where he teaches courses focused on online and digital media. He previously served as an award-winning multimedia editor for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and produced award-winning video projects and podcast series for the publication. Kyle has also served as a faculty member in media and communication programs for other universities in addition to working for a number of media outlets across the country.

Byron Tate
Byron Tate is the managing editor of the Arkansas Times, and previously led the Pine Bluff Commercial as its editor/publisher.

Other (please specify)

5.What is your name or SPJ member number?(Required.)

Current Progress,

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