Project: "The Unknown Soldiers: How the Media Celebrates American Idols and Ignores American Heroes."

Bio:

An award-winning journalist who worked in local and national newsrooms for more than eight years, Tom Sileo is a nationally syndicated columnist, editor-in-chief of The Unknown Soldiers blog, and communication director at the Travis Manion Foundation.  Immediately after leaving CNN in 2009, Sileo launched his emotional, deeply personal military website dedicated to spotlighting the powerful stories of American troops serving in Afghanistan and Iraq.  In April 2011, Sileo won a second consecutive Military.com award for best war-themed blog run by a U.S. reporter.  With thousands of followers on Facebook and Twitter, The Unknown Soldiers seeks to keep America’s post-9/11 conflicts in our daily national consciousness.  In October 2011, Sileo joined the Travis Manion Foundation, an organization dedicated to honoring the fallen by challenging the living.  Sileo's first weekly newspaper column for Creators Syndicate told the story of 1st Lt. Travis Manion, a valiant U.S. Marine who was posthumously awarded the Silver Star for heroism displayed in Iraq.  Sileo spent almost five years as a copy editor for CNN, where he helped launch the network’s anchored broadband news service.  He has also served as director of story development at the USO and worked for The Associated Press, Tribune, WSPA-TV and WTVM-TV.  Sileo has a B.A. in journalism and mass media from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.