Description

Please note the venue change for this luncheon: Federal Way Performing Arts & Events Center

The Greater Federal Way Chamber invites you to join us in September for a moderated panel discussion on the “The Fourth Estate of Democracy.”  The keynote will feature a panel discussion on government and the role of media, moderated by Washington Solicitor General Noah Purcell. Panelists include: Melissa Santos, Staff Reporter, Crosscut; Michele Earl-Hubbard, WA Coalition for Open Government; Marcus Green, King County Reporter, Seattle Times; and Andy Hobbs, King County Editorial Director, Sound Publishing.



Solicitor General Purcell 
In 2013 Attorney General Bob Ferguson appointed Seattle attorney Noah Guzzo Purcell as the Solicitor General for the Washington State Attorney General's Office, replacing retiring Solicitor General Maureen Hart.
 
Prior to joining the office, Purcell worked as an attorney in Perkins Coie's Litigation and Appellate practices. Purcell's diverse litigation experience includes constitutional issues, antitrust claims, environmental law, preemption, campaign finance, and administrative law. Purcell served in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Office of General Counsel from 2009-2010, advising on security and immigration issues and working extensively on the federal government's challenge to Arizona's immigration law. After graduating magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review, Purcell worked as a law clerk to former U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter and U.S. Court of Appeals Judge David Tatel of the D.C. Circuit.
 
A native of Seattle, Purcell attended the University of Washington, where he received a Mary Gates Leadership Award for his work founding and running Affordable Tuition Now!, a student advocacy group dedicated to keeping tuition at UW and other state universities affordable. 

Michele Earl-Hubbard
Michele is the President and a media law attorney at Allied Law Group LLC in Seattle. She has been listed in Best Lawyers in America for First Amendment Law every year since 2007 and for First Amendment Litigation since 2012, and has been named a “Super Lawyer” since 2007.
 
Her law firm Allied Law Group LLC which she co-founded in 2007 has been named a “Best Law Firm” by U.S. News and World Report for Media and First Amendment Law every year since the rankings began in 2010. Ms. Earl-Hubbard represents clients in appeals, defamation, privacy, advertising law, copyright, prior restraint, reporter’s privilege, media antitrust matters, public records, open meetings, and open courts and runs several newsroom hotlines for newspapers throughout the Pacific Northwest.
 
She serves on the Prepublication Review Committee of the Media Law Resource Center in New York City. She is a Senior Editor and an author of the Washington State Bar Association’s Public Records Act Deskbook. Ms. Earl-Hubbard serves as a Washington State Freedom of Information Delegate for the Society of Professional Journalists and is a former member of the Board of the National Freedom of Information Coalition and a founding board member and former President of the Washington Coalition for Open Government.
 
She obtained her J.D. from Northwestern University in 1996 where she was appointed to the Order of the Coif and served as Articles Editor on the Law Review. She holds an undergraduate degree in Journalism.

Melissa Santos
Melissa is Crosscut’s staff reporter covering state politics and the Legislature. She came to Crosscut from The Seattle Times editorial board, where she wrote columns and opinion pieces focusing on state government. Prior to that, she spent eight years as a reporter at The News Tribune in Tacoma, including five years covering the state Capitol. Melissa Santos is Crosscut’s staff reporter covering state politics and the Legislature. She came to Crosscut from The Seattle Times editorial board, where she wrote columns and opinion pieces focusing on state government. Prior to that, she spent eight years as a reporter at The News Tribune in Tacoma, including five years covering the state Capitol.

Marcus Green
Marcus Harrison Green is the South King County Reporter for the Seattle Times, the co-founder of the South Seattle Emerald, a former Reporting Fellow with YES! Magazine, a past board member of the Western Washington Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and a recipient of Crosscut’s Courage Award for Culture. Growing up in South Seattle, he experienced first-hand the neglect of news coverage in the area by local media, which taught him the value of narratives. After an unfulfilling stint working in the investment world in his twenties, Marcus returned to his community determined to tell its true story, which led him to start the South Seattle Emerald, and eventually move on to cover the area as a reporter for the Seattle Times. He was named one of Seattle's most influential people by Seattle Magazine in 2016.