APA Spotlight

Started in broadcasting at a small radio station in Arkansas doing everything from the farm report to play-by-play broadcasts of collegiate sporting events. After two years in radio he went to work for the ABC affiliate in Columbia, South Carolina covering the state legislature. He then joined the ABC affiliate in Augusta, Georgia, as their 6 and 11 o’clock news anchor. After Augusta, he went to work for the FOX affiliate in Salt Lake City, Utah as a reporter and special projects producer. His next stop was the NBC affiliate in Kansas City, Missouri where he was the Chief Correspondent covering such stories as the Oklahoma City Bombing and the O.J. Simpson Murder Trial. Wanting to return to the Southeast, he came back to Augusta joining the NBC affiliate as the 6 and 11 o’clock news anchor. While in Augusta he covered the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Steve then came to Nashville and worked at the NBC affiliate as a reporter. After 15 years in broadcasting, Steve decided to try his hand in corporate communications. He went to work for Shoney’s Incorporated and Captain D’s Seafood restaurants as their director of corporate communications. He graduated from the National Fisheries Institute Leadership program and lobbied on behalf of the seafood industry in the nation’s capital. Steve has won numerous awards for his broadcasting and community work. He then went to work for Nissan North America where he has been the last 21 years. He currently serves as the carmakers Corporate Communications Manager for the East Region of the US. Steve has also served as a consultant for the nation’s largest Insurance companies training top executives how to deal effectively with the media in interview situations. He sat on the board of the Middle Tennessee chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation of Middle Tennessee, Columbia Academy Board of Trustees and the Southeast Region Automotive Media Association.

Ben Klayman has worked at Reuters for more than 25 years, currently as the Detroit Bureau Chief and North American Transportation Editor. In his years at the news agency, he has covered such industries as automotive, telecommunications, manufacturing, housing, general news and sports business. Before that, he worked at daily newspapers in Toledo and Youngstown, Ohio, and Salisbury, Maryland. A Washington, DC, native, Ben now considers himself a Michigander and with his son at Michigan, appropriately roots for the Wolverines despite his wife having attended The Ohio State University. He also wears purple more often as his daughter will be attending New York University. His three cats couldn’t care less.

Jamie Butters is executive editor of Automotive News, leading the reporting, editing and production of the bible of the auto industry across multiple platforms. He joined the organization as its chief content officer in 2018. Butters has covered the auto industry in Detroit for more than two decades: first at the Detroit Free Press for eight years as a reporter and editor, then serving 10 years at Bloomberg News in Detroit, mostly as an editor and team leader. His first auto show was Tokyo in ’97, when he wrote for the Lexington Herald-Leader about a new kind of car called a hybrid and how Toyota saw it as a stepping stone to cars powered purely by electricity and eventually by hydrogen fuel cells. Butters started out studying journalism at the University of Iowa, graduated with a degree in finance from the University of Kentucky and studied China and its economy as a Knight Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan.