About Us

Who We Are

Pro News Coaches, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded by Wall Street Journal alumni, offers coaching, mentoring and related services to local news organizations nationwide. As independent newsrooms shrink and disappear at an alarming rate, many communities have limited access to trusted local and regional news. We work with reporters and editors to develop research and investigative skills, expand public service coverage, and strengthen the communities they serve.

Our Policies

PNC strives for transparency with its partner newsrooms, volunteer coaches, donors, administrators, vendors and board of directors.

Pro News Coaches subscribes to standards of editorial independence adopted by the Institute for Nonprofit News:
The organizations we coach, advise and edit for retain full authority over their editorial content. We maintain a firewall between news coverage decisions at the organizations we coach and advise and all sources of our revenue. Our acceptance of financial support and their acceptance of our coaching and advice does not constitute their implied or actual endorsement of our donors or their products, services or opinions.
We accept gifts, grants and sponsorships from individuals and organizations for the general support of our activities, but the news judgments of the organizations we coach and advise are made independently – not on the basis of our donor support.
The organizations we coach and advise maintain editorial control of their own coverage. They, not us nor our donors, hold ultimate control over their editorial content and its distribution.
Our organization will make public all donors who give a total of $5,000 or more per year. We will not accept any donations from donors whose names we don’t know.
Pro News Coaches is committed to transparency in every aspect of funding our organization.
Accepting financial support does not mean we endorse our donors or their products, services or opinions.
We accept gifts, grants and sponsorships from individuals, organizations and foundations to help with our general operations and special projects, both internal and outward-facing. As a 501(c)(3) organization, we can collect tax-deductible donations to PNC through our fiscal sponsor, Local Media Foundation. We may receive funds from standard government programs offered to nonprofits or similar businesses.
The news judgments of the organizations we coach and advise are made independently. They are not based on or influenced by our donors or any revenue source. Our supporters do not have any rights to assign, review or edit content.
We make public all revenue sources and donors who give $5,000 or more per year. As a news-related nonprofit, we avoid accepting charitable donations from anonymous sources, government entities, political parties, elected officials or candidates seeking public office. We will not accept donations from sources that are deemed by our board of directors to present a conflict of interest with our work, or compromise our independence.
Thank you to our major donors:
Girl Reporter Fund - Amanda Bennett
Pro News Coaches directors, officers and key personnel are obligated to conduct the affairs of the organization in line with its charitable purposes to provide pro bono editing, coaching, mentoring, convening of workshops and other services to local news organizations, and not to advance their personal interests.
We expect directors, officers and personnel to strive to avoid even the appearance of impropriety, while balancing that goal against the knowledge that these individuals at all levels are volunteering their time. Because of each person’s varied interests and community ties, their work for PNC may from time to time result in circumstances involving real or apparent conflicts of interests.
All directors, officers and key personnel should take care to disclose to PNC transactions or proposed transactions that might be considered a related-party transaction; should not accept gifts, favors, etc. from proposed transaction partners; should not give gifts except those that are consistent with proper business ethics; and should complete a disclosure statement annually.
We expect all directors, officers and key personnel to be familiar with the above PNC policies and all others that govern such potential conflicts; to identify, evaluate and address any ties that may call into question their loyalty to PNC; to protect the interests of PNC in the event that it enters into transactions that might benefit any individual’s private interests; and to assist us in avoiding and resolving any conflicts of interest.
Pro News Coaches partners with news organizations that need our coaching, advisory, mentoring and editing help. The organizations we advise retain full authority over their editorial content, including responsibility for making timely and clear corrections when an article is found to be in error.
We fully support their work and will make all efforts to assist them in correcting and clarifying any erroneous content that our advisers have been involved with.

Our Team

James Carberry

Cofounder and Board Member
James Carberry began his career as a reporter with the Berkeley Gazette and later worked as an investigative reporter with the Riverside Press-Enterprise. He reported for the Wall Street Journal for 10 years from Los Angeles and New York, covering real estate, the oil and gas industry, and other beats. He then traveled in Asia as the Singapore-based correspondent for a global oil industry newsletter and later founded his own communication firm. A cofounder of PNC, he now lives in Barcelona, Spain.
Joann Lublin

Board Member
Joann Lublin remains a regular Wall Street Journal contributor following her nearly 47-year career there in five cities. She shared its 2003 Pulitzer Prize, long covered management issues and initiated its career advice column, which ran until May 2020. She has written two books about female executives, published in 2016 and 2021. The first was “Earning It: Hard-Won Lessons from Trailblazing Women at the Top of the Business World.” The latest is “Power Moms: How Executive Mothers Navigate Work and Life.”
Prabha Natarajan

Board Member
Prabha Natarajan was with the Wall Street Journal for 17 years, most recently as a masthead editor overseeing verticals targeted at professional audiences. She was also part of the team that was named a Pulitzer finalist for the package of stories on the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre. Before joining the Journal, she worked as a reporter with the American City Business Journals, covering local companies and topics in Hawaii and Washington, D.C. She is from Chennai, India.
Bridget O'Brian

Board Member
Bridget O’Brian spent 18 years at the Wall Street Journal, including more than 12 as a reporter covering airlines, travel, Wall Street, and mutual funds. She later was stationed in CNBC’s newsroom and responsible for coordinating content-sharing between the two outlets. O'Brian started her career as a reporter for the Times-Picayune in New Orleans; after leaving the Journal she worked as a section editor at CNN Business and as editor-at-large at Columbia University’s Office of Communications and adjunct professor at Columbia Journalism School.
Kate Ortega

Board Member and Treasurer
Kate Ortega spent more than 24 years at the Wall Street Journal, leaving in 2024 after six years as assistant managing editor for operations. In that role she was responsible for working with non-news departments to ensure newsroom needs were met. She transitioned the news staff to remote work ahead of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic and back to the office afterward, and assisted in the evacuation of local colleagues from Kabul as the U.S. military pulled out of Afghanistan in 2021.
Jim Pensiero

Board Member and Chairman
F. James (Jim) Pensiero retired as deputy managing editor of the Wall Street Journal in 2015, after 31 years in leadership roles including night news editor, national copy chief, associate publisher and vice president of news operations. He accepted the newsroom’s 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting, in recognition of his role in the Sept. 12, 2001, edition. Before the Journal, Jim worked at the Burlington County Herald in Mt. Holly, N.J.; the Passaic (N.J.) Herald-News, Philadelphia’s Evening Bulletin, Time Inc. and the Associated Press.
Pauline Yoshihashi

Board Member
Pauline Yoshihashi started her career as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, detouring through Wall Street and a subsequent management stint at an internet IPO. Now she specializes in strategic and financial communications, transactions/M&A, crisis management, and media relations. She draws on her experience in news, investment banking and management to help public and private companies and their leaders connect with their most important audiences.