David Brancaccio, PBS.

We’ll chat live with David Brancaccio, a special correspondent for Marketplace’s Economy 4.0 and host of the Marketplace Index, on Tuesday, Jan. 31, from 11:30 a.m-12:15 p.m. ET.

Brancaccio, a broadcaster for 33 years, was previously the anchor of public television’s NOW, an award-winning newsmagazine of investigative reporting and in-depth interviews. He also hosted California Connected.

Before joining PBS, Brancaccio was a Marketplace’s European correspondent based in London. He hosted the public radio program from 1993 to 2003. Among his beats: politics, human rights, national security, the environment, health care, and science policy.

From his Marketplace biography:

“Brancaccio specializes in telling stories important to our economy and our democracy through the eyes of the real people who live in the cross hairs of crucial issues. His accessible yet authoritative approach to investigative reporting and in-depth interviewing earned his work the highest honors in broadcast journalism, including the Peabody, the Columbia-duPont, the Emmy, and the Walter Cronkite awards.

A new version of Brancaccio’s public television special about Main Street as an engine of economic innovation called “Fixing the Future” will soon be a feature-length documentary.  He is author of a book about Americans applying their personal values to their money, entitled “Squandering Aimlessly.”

Brancaccio has a bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University and a master’s degree in journalism from Stanford University.  He has appeared on CNBC, MSNBC, and BBC television and his newspaper work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the BaltimoreSun, and Britain’s The Guardian.”

Tuesday’s chat will be on CoverItLive.  You can register below and we’ll send you a reminder as the time nears.

Come back on Tuesday with questions for Brancaccio.

Steve Rubel is EVP/Global Strategy and Insights for Edelman

We’ll chat live with Steve Rubel, executive VP for Edelman PR, AdAge columnist, Tuesday, Nov. 22, 12:30-1:15 p.m. ET.

Rubel studies the future of media and works across the firm’s practices and geographies to help clients unify their communications strategies across traditional, emerging, owned and social channels. Edelman is the world’s largest independent public relations firm.

In addition, Rubel also acts as a highly visible Edelman representative and writer on media, technology and digital culture. He speaks dozens of times each year around the world and appears frequently in the press. In addition he actively shares his observations and insights through his blog, his monthly Advertising Age column, on Twitter: @SteveRubel where he is followed by more than 58,000 and Google+ where he is in about 40,000 circles.

Rubel has been named to several prestigious lists, including: PR Week’s 40 Under 40 and The Forbes.com Web Celeb 25.

Prior to joining Edelman in 2006, Rubel worked for 15 years in a variety of marketing communications positions in corporate, non-profit and small/mid-sized PR firms.

Sign up for a reminder from CoverItLive.  Then come back with questions.  Rubel will be ready to answer anything.

Kim Barker

We’ll chat live with Kim Barker, a general assignment reporter for ProPublica who specializes in enterprise and investigative stories, on Oct. 11 from 1-2 p.m. ET.

Barker just finished her term as the Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, where she studied, wrote and lectured on Pakistan and Afghanistan and U.S. policy.

Before joining ProPublica, she was the South Asia bureau chief for the Chicago Tribune from 2004 to 2009 and was based in New Delhi and Islamabad. At the Tribune, Barker covered major stories such as the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and rising militancy in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. She began covering the region after Sept. 11, 2001, and spent two years on a project called “Struggle for the Soul of Islam,” a series about Islam that sent her to Iran, Pakistan and Indonesia.

Have questions about international reporting, ProPublica or investigative journalism? Bring them here on Oct. 11 and spend an hour chatting with Barker.

By Flickr user respres

Many journalists describe Twitter as a great tool for finding sources and stories, but if you’re new to tweeting or you’re not a constantly engaged user, it can be difficult to find either. If you’re having trouble finding conversations relevant to your beat, Twitter chats are an easy way to get started.

Twitter chats are organized with a topical hashtag and occur at regular times. The easiest way to follow a Twitter chat is to search for that hashtag during the time of the chat. If you miss a chat, you can still find the transcript with a simple hashtag search.

Twitter chats can be a bit difficult to follow at first. Everyone tweets at once, so it’s sometimes difficult to discern the context of a person’s comment or question. If you need clarification or if you want more information from a certain user, be sure to use an @ reply to avoid cluttering the chat.

Robert Swanwick created a huge Twitter chat directory to help you find relevant chats. Chats often revolve around specific market sectors, and some are far better represented than others. There are too many tech-related chats to list here, for example, but here are some that might be useful for finding stories or sources on your beat:

Business news: #HBRchat, Thursday, 1-2 p.m. (All times are Eastern)

Manufacturing: #mfgchat, Wednesdays, noon

Small business: #nfiblive, Wednesdays, 12-1 p.m.

Luxury goods: #luxurychat, 3rd Wednesday of the month

Automotive: #carchat, Wednesday,8-11 p.m.; #motorama, Wednesday, 9-11 p.m.

Personal finance: #moolah, every other Wednesday, 7-8 p.m.; #moneychat, Monday, 8-9 p.m.; #wbchat, Thurdsay, 3 p.m.

Journalism: #journchat, Monday, 8 p.m.; #wjchat, Wednesday, 8 p.m.; #jrcchat, Wednesday, noon

Did you miss it?

Here’s a transcript of our LIVE chat with Diana Henriques which she put on her website. Or check out the Replay below.

Diana Henriques has worked at The New York Times for more than two decades. In her tenure as a financial investigative reporter, she led the paper’s coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal and has now turned this mega fraud story from her beat into a book, The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust.

Less than a month after Henriques’ book hits the shelves, she’ll join us for a chat at 2 p.m. EDT on May 11. Stop by this hourlong conversation and bring your questions to learn more about covering Madoff and how you can turn your reporting into a book project.

Here’s Henriques’ bio from The New York Times:

Diana Henriques joined The New York Times in 1989 after almost 20 years’ experience elsewhere—as a government reporter at several New Jersey newspapers and as a financial reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Since then, she has largely specialized in investigative reporting on white-collar crime and market regulation. Henriques was a member of a reporting team that was named a Pulitzer finalist in 2003 for its coverage of the aftermath of the Enron scandal. Her series exposing the exploitation of American military personnel by financial service companies was a Pulitzer finalist in 2005. She was also a member of a team that won a 1999 Gerald Loeb Award for covering the near-collapse of Long Term Capital Management, a hedge fund whose troubles rocked the financial markets in 1998. She has explored the expansion of tax breaks and Congressional earmarks for religious nonprofits and helped monitor money market funds in the financial turmoil of late 2008. Henriques is also a regular lecturer at business journalism classes and workshops and, in 2003, was elected to the board of governors of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW).

Paul Steiger

Join us at 2 p.m. EDT on April 4 for a live chat with Paul Steiger, CEO and editor-in-chief of ProPublica, a nonprofit, investigative-reporting organization.

Previously, Steiger served as the managing editor of The Wall Street Journal from 1991 to 2007. During his tenure, members of the Journal’s newsroom staff were awarded 16 Pulitzer Prizes. In addition, a ProPublica reporter received a Pulitzer Prize in  2010.

Steiger is the chairman of the Committee to Protect Journalists, a nonprofit that advocates for press freedom around the globe, and a member of the steering committee of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which provides free legal assistance to journalists. From 1999 to 2007, he was a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board, serving as its chairman in his final year. He also is a trustee of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Steiger worked for 15 years as a reporter, the Washington economics correspondent, and the business editor for the Los Angeles Times, and for 26 years as a reporter and editor for The Wall Street Journal. He received a bachelor’s degree in economics from Yale University in 1964.

Bring your questions on nonprofit news organizations, business journalism and the Pulitzers for Steiger from 2-2:45 p.m. EDT on April 4.

David Boardman

Join us March 21 at 2 p.m. EDT as we chat live with David Boardman, executive editor of The Seattle Times.

As an editor for The Times, Boardman has directed three Pulitzer Prize-winning team projects and edited six other stories that were Pulitzer finalists. The winners were:

• an investigation of the federal tribal-housing program, which won the 1997 Pulitzer for investigative reporting,
• coverage of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, which won the 1990 Pulitzer for national reporting,
• coverage of the shooting deaths of four police officers , which won the 2010 Pulitzer for breaking news.

The Times’ use of digital and social-media tools in covering the shooting deaths, as well as its neighborhood blogs, won it the fourth annual APME Innovator of the Year award in 2010.

Boardman, who has worked at The Times since 1983, was promoted to the top newsroom job from managing editor in 2006. He is a 10-year director and past president of Investigative Reporters and Editors. He is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and has a graduate degree from the University of Washington.

Bring your questions here for Boardman from 2 to 2:45 p.m. EDT on March 21 on how to win a Pulitzer and how to drive innovation in your newsroom.

Marcia Parker

We’ll chat live from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. EST on Feb. 14 with Marcia Parker, West Coast editorial director for Patch.com, the hyperlocal-news venture in which AOL has invested tens of millions of dollars.

At Patch, Parker has hired more than 150 journalists herself. The venture has “hired more than 750 this past year, and as our CEO has said publicly, we aim to have 1,000 sites launched in 2011,” she said in an e-mail. “We are still hiring for the remainder of our sites planned for 2011.”

Ina recent article,  The New York Times put the pay of those journalists at $38,000 to $45,000 annually, but Parker said, “We have not discussed salary info publicly nor confirmed what the NYT reported.”

AOL's hyperlocal venture, Patch.com, is operating in 18 states and the District of Columbia.

Before joining Patch, Parker was launch manager for California Watch, part of the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting. She taught at and was assistant dean at Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. She’s been a director of programming for AOL’s small-business channel and assistant managing editor at Intuit’s Quicken.com, the personal-finance website.

She also is a veteran journalist, having been a reporter and editor with several news organizations, including Crain’s New York Business and the Contra Costa Times, where she was business editor, and then managing editor. Parker also founded  and served as editor of two magazines, one a regional  magazine and another for South Asian women.

Parker graduated from Indiana University with a degree in journalism and political science and earned a master’s degree from Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

At 1:30 p.m. EST on Feb. 14, bring your questions here for Parker on Patch, hyperlocal news, entrepreneurship and the skills you need for digital media.

Brian Storm, founder of MediaStorm.

Brian Storm‘s principal aim is to usher in the next generation of multimedia storytelling. MediaStorm is an award-winning multimedia production studio, where visual storytellers “create cinematic narratives that speak to the heart of the human condition.” Not sold? Take a look at some of their projects.

MediaStorm has won many awards, including four Webby Awards, three Emmy awards and the first duPont Award for Web-based production.

Storm received his master’s degree in photojournalism in 1995 from the University of Missouri School of JournalismPictures of the Year where he ran the New Media Lab, taught Electronic Photojournalism and produced CD-ROMs for the competition and the Missouri Photo Workshop.

If you love video or photos, you’ll want to come chat with Brian Storm.

Gittelsohn, who covers real estate for Bloomberg News, will offer tips for reporting on home sales, prices, foreclosures, mortgages, new construction, fraud schemes and other themes during the housing industry’s busiest time of year. He’ll also share exemplary articles, sources and websites to inspire and improve your reporting on real estate.

John Gittelsohn

Before joining Bloomberg News in 2009, Gittelsohn was an investigative business journalist at the Orange County Register in California. His reporting has garnered awards from the National Association of Real Estate Editors, the Society of Business Editors and Writers and the Education Writers Association. He was a 2009 finalist for a Gerald Loeb Award in business writing.

Before working at the Register, Gittelsohn was a reporter for the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and worked as a freelance writer in South Korea. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University and a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.

Check out the archive of our previous chats with former Yahoo! executive Hilary Schneider on job prospects for business journalists and personal branding with Dan Schwabel.