It sounds cliche, but the mantra of doing "more with less" couldn't be more true for features editors today. We've endured buyouts, layoffs and cutbacks. We've taken on new duties, reinvented ourselves and nurtured others along the way.

This year's AASFE conference programming will inspire and educate. It will strengthen the bonds between large papers and small. It will send everyone home with new tools to make themselves - and their staffs - indispensable.

The "It" word of the day is multimedia. We'll start with an early-bird, hands-on workshop to teach the basics of video storytelling, from shooting footage to editing and posting on the Web. A how-to on food multimedia will take you deeper into the visual side of our food and dining coverage.

Our own worlds are turning dramatically in the direction of online initiatives. We'll hear from two speakers who a unique position in the world of the Web. Rob King, a former newspaper guy and the current editor in chief of espn.com, will talk about managing your career in this dramatically changing newspaper era. Ron Coddington, an online designer who embedded with the Life section of USA Today, will talk about bridging the two worlds and the skills we need to be successful.

Regardless of the platform, good writing and storytelling has always been our focus. Legendary cookbook editor Judith Jones will talk about her life among the greatest foodies of modern cuisine. Novelists Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and Ana Castillo will demonstrate the power of well-chosen words as they talk about their new books.

Literary journalists also will be on hand. Constance Hale, the new director of the Nieman Foundation's Narrative Program http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/events/seminars/editorsseminar08/faculty/index.html
Mimi Swartz, an executive editor of Texas Monthly magazine, and The Washington Post's David Maraniss - three writer-editors who still edit and care deeply about big-picture stories - will inspire you to shape better story ideas and share editing techniques.

Our shared day of programming with the Association of Food Journalists will offer a slate of workshops and speakers that include lifestyle, arts and entertainment and food topics. We hope it will inspire you to get more involved in food coverage, so important to all our readers.

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AASFE First Vice President
The Houston Chronicle
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Ana Castillo

Strongly influenced by her Mexican heritage, Ana Castillo, a native of Chicago, has been established as a highly acclaimed poet, novelist, essayist, editor and translator.

Castillo's most recent honor was receiving the Independent Publishers Award for Outstanding Book of the Year in 2006 for Story Teller of the Year. Her 2007 novel, The Guardians, has received high praise from reviewers around the country.

In addition, Castillo has taught creative writing, women's studies and lectured on human rights.

Ron Coddington

Ron Coddington is a visual journalist whose career spans several major U.S. newspapers, including USA Today, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and The San Jose Mercury News.

Coddington worked as art director for Knight-Ridder Tribune Graphics (now McClathcy Tribune Graphics) and KRT Interactive in Washington, D.C., before he embarked on his online career in 1995. Today, he is a senior designer at USAToday.com. The Associated Press, The Society of News Design, and The Society of Illustrators have recognized his work.

Constance Hale

Constance Hale is director of the Nieman Foundation's narrative program http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/events/seminars/editorsseminar08/faculty/index.html . She has worked as a reporter and editor at The Oakland Tribune, The (San Francisco) Examiner, Wired, and Health. Her work has also appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Dallas Morning News, The Miami Herald as well as magazines like Smithsonian, and Atlantic Monthly. She appears frequently in print and on radio as a language commentator. Her two books, Sin and Syntax and Wired Style, led one reviewer to describe her as "'Marian the Librarian' on a Harley, or E.B. White on acid."

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Award-winning novelist, short-story writer and poet Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni has been published in more than 50 magazines, including The New Yorker. Her writing has been anthologized dozens of times, and her books are read internationally, having been translated into 16 languages, including Russian and Japanese. She teaches creative writing at the University of Houston.

Judith Jones

Judith Jones is Senior Editor and Vice-President at Alfred A. Knopf Publishers. She joined the company in 1957 as an editor working primarily on translations of French writers such as Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. Over the years she has worked with many distinguished authors, including Elizabeth Bowen, John Hersey, Langston Hughes, Anne Tyler, and John Updike. She has been particularly interested in developing a list of first-rate cookbook writers and her authors in that area have included Julia Child (Judith published Julia's first book and remained her editor), James Beard and Marcella Hazan. The celebrated 18-book Knopf Cooks American series is Judith's brainchild. She is the author of The Tenth Muse, a memoir, and she is the co-author with Evan Jones (her last husband) of three books.

Matt Thompson

As deputy Web editor for The Minneapolis Star Tribune, Matt Thompson led the creation of the arts-and-entertainment website Vita.mn, winner of the 2007 and 2008 Edgie Awards for Best Entertainment Site. Before joining The Star Tribune, he won first-and third-place Best of the West awards as The Fresno Bee's first online reporter.

While pursuing a Naughton Fellowship for Online Reporting and Writing at the Poynter Institute in 2004, Matt was co-creator of the viral Flash speculative fiction short EPIC 2014, which garnered mentions in The New York Times, USA Today and Atlantic Monthly. He currently sits on Poynter's National Advisory Board. 

David Maraniss

David Maraniss is an associate editor at The Washington Post and the author of four critically acclaimed and bestselling books, including First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton. Maraniss won the Pulitzer for national reporting in 1993 for his newspaper coverage of then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton. He edited some of the stories in The Washington Post Pulitzer-winning investigation of medical abuses at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and also was part of the Post team that own a 2008 Pulitzer for the newspaper's coverage of the Virginia Tech shooting.

He has won several other notable awards for achievement in journalism, including the George Polk Award, the Dirksen Price for Congressional Reporting.

Mimi Swartz

Mimi Swartz is an executive editor of Texas Monthly and the author, with Sherron Watkins, of Power Failure, The Inside Story of the Collapse of Enron. Previously, she was a staff writer at Talk, The New Yorker and Texas Monthly. Swartz won a National Magazine Award for her story on managed care in 1995 and also received the 2006 John Bartlow Martin Award for Public Interest for Magazine Journalism for her story on tort reform.

Over the years, Swartz' work has appeared in Vanity Fair, Esquire, Slate, National Geographic and The New York Times' Op Ed page and Sunday magazine. It has also been collected in Best American Political Writing, 2006, and Best American Sportswriting, 2007. She has been a member of the Texas Institute of Letters since 1994.

Rob King

Rob King is vice president/editor in chief of ESPN.com. In this role, he is responsible for supervising all content and the overall editorial direction for the leading online sports destination and its related properties. King also manages an award-winning team of more than 200 editors, writer, designers and producers across ESPN.com and its network of related sites.

Prior to joining ESPN, King spent nearly 22 years in newspapers. Along the way, his job titles included editorial cartoonist, graphic artist, general assignment reporter, graphics editor, director of photography, presentation editor, deputy sports editor, assistant managing editor and ultimately, deputy managing editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer.