Katy Newton and Sean Connelly

49th Parallel Productions

Katy Newton

Katy Newton began her career in San Francisco’s documentary film and commerical industry before moving gradually into journalism by producing interactive stories for the Oakland Tribune. One of her proudest achievements was the Not Just a Number project, an interactive community journalism initiative that took a new approach to the Tribune’s annual homocide report. The project reinvented the way the paper covered issues of violence, humanizing the numbers and connecting with readers. It was recognized with the 2007 Knight Foundation Service Journalism Award. In 2008, Newton became a video journalist at the Los Angeles Times. She has received numerous awards for her work, including a 2010 Emmy nomination, an Overseas Press Club Award and two Webby Awards: for a web series that explored the people behind the posts in the “missed connections” section of Craigslist and for a web documentary that tells the story of ex-L.A. gang members making a difference in rural Alabama.

Sean Connelly

Started a small multimedia production company with designer/documentary filmmaker Katy Newton, who happens to be my wife. We are a small two-person company so I end up wearing many hats, with a focus on programming and assisting with the design phase.