Laura J. Tuchman, was a visual arts columnist in California when she entered the NAJP during its inaugural year in 1994. She went on to work at MSNBC on the Internet as an arts writer and became the executive producer overseeing arts, living and travel coverage. She now works as Interactive Editor & Publisher for a New York-based global nonprofit, where she recently secured funding for an arts writing project that pairs professional journalists with aspiring young writers. The first journalists taking part in the program come from the ranks of NAJP. Her vision for the future NAJP: a multiplatform program that

1) continues its initial purpose of improving the work of mid-career arts journalists by taking them away from deadline pressures to think and explore,
2) offers specific opportunities for NAJP alum to share their expertise with other working journalists and the next generation of arts writers, and
3) takes a bold step in this age of convergence and rising diversity in newsrooms to address the often stagnant or declining state of arts journalism at general circulation media outlets by targeting publications in need of better arts coverage and educating their editors by immersing them in intensive mini-NAJP sessions alongside traditional NAJP fellows.