Columbia Journalism School - Winter 2010

Columbia Journalism School Founded by Joseph Pulitzer

Winter 2010

Axel Springer Akademie Exchange Program Launched — has launched an exchange program with Germany’s Axel Springer Akademie, the new and expanded school of journalism of Axel Springer AG, Germany’s largest newspaper publisher and third-largest magazine publisher, as well as one of the leading European media enterprises.

Through this new exchange program, journalists from the Springer Akademie will attend the Journalism School for training in investigative journalism. Professor Sheila Coronel, the director of the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism, will head the training program at Columbia. In return, every year up to 10 Columbia Journalism students and recent graduates will be hired for threemonth internships at media outlets in Germany and other locations in Europe.

Three 2009 graduates have already been offered paid internships in Russia, Germany and France as part of the first round of the program.

“Our collaboration with Axel Springer Akademie is a win-win,” said David Klatell, chair of international studies at the Journalism School. “Their young journalists will receive advanced training in investigative reporting, and our graduates will have the opportunity to work at a wide range of news organizations in Europe.”

The Journalism School

Food Journalism: Well Fed and Well Said Dean Nicholas Lemann moderated an Oct. 1 panel discussion on food journalism with (l-r) Frank Bruni ’88, The New York Times food critic from 2004 to 2009; Kelly Choi ’99, the host of Bravo TV’s “Top Chef Masters”; and Keith Goggin ’91, a partner in restaurants, including the molecular gastronomy-focused Alinea in Chicago.

Cuban Blogger Barred From Attending Cabot Prize Ceremony — the Journalism School hosted the 71st annual Maria Moors Cabot Prize for outstanding reporting on Latin America and the Caribbean. New York Times veteran Anthony DePalma, O Globo columnist Merval Pereira of Brazil, and Mexico-based Christopher M. Hawley, Latin American correspondent for USA Today and The Arizona Republic, were present to collect In October,

their awards, which include a $5,000 honorarium. Conspicuously absent from the ceremony was 34-year-old Yoani Sánchez, a Cuban journalist and the first blogger to receive recognition from the Cabot Prize board. Her 2-year-old blog, “Generacion Y,” is read widely throughout the Americas. The Cuban government continued on page 8

Columbia Journalism School is a publication of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. 2950 Broadway, MC 3801, New York, NY 10027. Tel: 212-854-9938; Fax: 212-854-3939. Nicholas Lemann, Publisher; Irena Choi Stern ’01, Editor; Elizabeth Folberth ’95, Assistant Editor/Senior Writer. To notify us of a change of address, please call the Alumni Office at 212-854-3864 or e-mail jalumni@columbia.edu.

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Columbia Journalism School Winter 2010

Nicholas Lemann

Dean’s letter —

We began the 2008–2009 academic year with an opening-day talk to the incoming Class of 2009 by Leonard Downie, Jr., who was just then stepping down after 17 years as executive editor of The Washington Post. Len spoke eloquently about his concern over the erosion of economic support for what he called “accountability journalism,” the core reportorial function of the press and what most of our students want to do in life. Afterwards, Len and I went up to my office to talk, and not long after we decided to produce a major report that would survey the landscape of accountability journalism and then suggest ways it might be supported in the future. Before long Michael Schudson, a distinguished scholar on our faculty, had signed on as co-author, and the Revson Foundation as lead funder.

Not much more than a year later, in mid-October 2009, the Downie-Schudson report was published. It is called “The Reconstruction of American Journalism.”

You can find a full text at www.journalism.columbia.edu/journalismreport.

It represents the school’s single biggest effort, in the almost seven years I have been dean, to address a larger issue in our profession.

The results have been highly gratifying. At a time when the air is thick with discussions on the future of journalism, our report stood out and gained an unusual degree of attention. There were hundreds of articles about it published all over the world — in most of the leading American publications, and as far away as France, Germany and Korea. Len and Michael have been constant and vigorous participants in discussions at the highest levels of the news business, the nonprofit sector, and government. In early February our friends at the Reuters Center in Oxford will hold a two-day conference on the report, which is meant to launch a follow-on effort for Europe, where journalism is having many of the same economic problems.

It’s a sign of both the quality of the report and of the stature of the Journalism School that it has had so much impact. We aren’t planning another report, but we are hoping to launch some new initiatives in 2010 that should maintain our central role in this all-important conversation. One, we hope, will be a follow-up to the report’s recommendation that journalism schools and their home universities find a way to be more significant producers of accountability journalism. Another will aim to generate a discussion of what’s happening in the economic market for journalism, especially digital journalism, that is as significant and helpful as the report’s discussion of public policy and journalism has been. Here’s hoping that in one of my next few dean’s letters, I will be able to report more fully on the start of these ventures.

Introducing: Columbia Journalism School —

By Michael Kubin ’05, Steve Wolgast ’92, and Andrew Pergam ’01 Alumni Board Communications Subcommittee the magazine you’re holding, but let’s begin with a bit about breath mints. One participant in a Certs TV commercial would say, “It’s a breath mint!” while the other would argue, “It’s a candy mint!” The announcer then resolved the dilemma by explaining that Certs is “Two, two, two mints in one!”

And so it is with Columbia Journalism School: It’s both the School’s publication (formerly called 116th & Broadway) as well as the newspaper for graduates (which used to be the Alumni Journal). So it’s two, two, two publications in one.

Your Alumni Board has been working on this project in conjunction with Irena Choi Stern ’01 and a professional magazine designer for over a year; our intention is for this new publication to serve our community more efficiently and effectively than before.

Specifically, you will be receiving three issues per year, each with its own focus: Fall: Back to school — what’s new Winter: What’s happening now Spring: The year’s wrap-up, and looking ahead News about alumni will be included prominently in each issue in a dedicated section. The intention is for it to be a useful and informative publication for our community; to that end we solicit and welcome alumni contributions on School- and industryrelated subjects. Current students are equally welcome to submit pieces for publication. As a reflection of the increasingly important role of the Internet, Columbia Journalism School will continue to appear online in its entirety. Its Web site (www.journalism.columbia.edu) will also be the place for you to look for breaking news. We sincerely hope you see this new publication as progress and we look forward to your comments and suggestions.

This story is about

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Dart Center 2009 Ochberg Fellows — The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma

at the Journalism School has named recipients of its 2009 Ochberg Fellowships. These fellowships were established in 1999 by the Dart Center for journalists seeking to deepen their coverage of violence and traumatic events. Fellowships are awarded to midcareer journalists in all media who have covered issues ranging from street crime, family violence and natural disasters to war and genocide.

The weeklong fellowship program was held in Atlanta in November in conjunction with the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies conference. The following Ochberg Fellows participated: Peter Cave, Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s most experienced foreign correspondent; Amy Dockser Marcus, reporter for The Wall Street Journal, who won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for a series she wrote about the physical, emotional and monetary challenges facing cancer survivors; Kari Lydersen, a staff writer for The Washington Post’s Midwest bureau; John McCusker, staff photographer at The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, part of a reporting team awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of Hurricane Katrina; Maryn McKenna, an independent journalist based in Minneapolis,

specializing in domestic and global public health and health policy; Jina Moore ’06, an independent journalist and a correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor, specializing in post-conflict and human rights reporting in Africa; Hollman Morris, a TV journalist in Colombia, recognized this year with the top award for TV reporting in Latin America; Ronke Phillips, a correspondent for ITV news in the UK; Huascar Robles Carrasquillo, who covers urban planning and environmental justice for Metro San Juan in Puerto Rico; Philip Zabriskie, independent journalist in New York City, specializing in the physical and psychological landscapes of post-conflict situations. Solange Azevedo, a reporter for Revista Epoca magazine in Sao Paulo, Brazil, was the only fellow unable to attend the program in Atlanta.

The fellowship program is named in honor of Frank Ochberg, M.D., clinical professor of psychiatry at Michigan State University and a pioneering figure in the definition and treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, Stockholm Syndrome and other responses to violence, trauma and terror. Ochberg, winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, is chairman emeritus of the Dart Center.

NPR Airs Spencer Fellow’s Documentary — a 2008-2009 Spencer Education Journalism Fellow, spent a year at the Journalism School reporting and producing “Mind the Gap: Why Good Schools Are Failing Black Students.”

The radio documentary was aired this fall

by NPR stations around the country.

“It’s the kind of ambitious and important project the Spencer Fellowship was designed to support,” said Professor LynNell Hancock, executive director of the program. “We knew that Nancy was creating something fresh and urgent during her yearlong fellowship at Columbia University. She was attempting to untangle the complexities of race, class and education policy at American schools. Her interviews with Nancy Solomon ’86,

more than a dozen white and black teachers and youth in their suburban New Jersey homes and classrooms had a piercing frankness and honesty to them, voices and ideas rarely heard on public radio.”

As Solomon bore into the question of why middle class black children lagged so far behind their white classmates, she informed her work with research and direct study with sociologists and anthropologists at Columbia and elsewhere.

“It wasn’t until I actually heard the documentary in my car on NPR that I fully understood how unique her contribution to the understanding of race, class and education policy was,” Hancock said. “And I had worked closely with her all year!”

RW1 Web sites

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to see what the fall 2009 RW1 classes are writing about?

Each class has a Web site where you can read their stories. Here’s a listing of the site names with professors and URLs: Would you like

The Bronx Ink: LynNell Hancock ’81 http://bronxink.org TheBrooklynInk: Michael Shapiro http://thebrooklynink.com City Beats: Mirta Ojito ’01 http://citybeats.info The Green Standard: Anthony DePalma and Nancy Sharkey ’81 http://greenstandardnyc.com Narrative NYC: Dale Maharidge http://narrativenyc.org Neighborhood Beat Box: Addie Rimmer ’78 http://neighborhoodbeatbox.org New York Globe: Ruth Padawer ’88 http://new-york-globe.org The New York Pulse: Rhoda Lipton ’76 and Elena Cabral ’01 http://thenypulse.com Northattan: Ann Cooper and Betsy West http://northattan.org NY Food Chain: Richard Wald http://rw1wald.cujschool.org NYC in Focus: June Cross and Laura Muha http://nycinfocus.org NYC Sentinel: Chip Scanlan ’74 and Pam Frederick ’96 http://nyc-sentinel.com Queens Rules: Judith Matloff http://queens-rules.org Queens Uncovered: Tami Luhby ’97 http://queensuncovered.com The Uptown Chronicle: Sandy Padwe http://theuptownchronicle.com The Uptowner: Paula Span http://theuptowner.org ZoomNYC: Lennart Bourin ’85 and Dody Tsiantar http://zoomnyc.org

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Columbia Journalism School Winter 2010

Faculty and Staff News —

Helen Benedict Professor Helen Benedict has published her fifth novel, “The Edge of Eden” (Soho Press, November 2009), set in the Seychelles Islands in 1960 and inspired by her parents’ anthropological field notes. The book was highly recommended by Library Journal, which noted that the author “offers distinctive crosscultural insights as well as a cadre of satiric and fascinating characters, and the result is a story that is both touching and humorous.” Benedict recently also published a nonfiction book and a related play on women in the military serving in Iraq.

David Hajdu Associate Professor David Hajdu’s latest book, “Heroes and Villains: Essays on Music, Movies, Comics, and Culture” (DaCapo Press, October 2009), is “a rollicking collection. … Hajdu’s essays never fail to amuse, please and provoke,” according to PW.com.

Hajdu has been writing definitively about the arts and pop culture for the last 13 years. His first two books were finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award and his third book, “The Ten-Cent Plague,” was named No. 1 best

book of the year on the arts by the editors of Amazon.

Steven Berlin Johnson Steven Berlin Johnson, noted digital media expert and author, is the 2009 Hearst New Media Professionalin-Residence at the Journalism School. Johnson, who joined the school this fall, will participate in classes and programs and deliver the annual Hearst lecture in April.

In his bestselling books, Johnson predicted the rise of the blogosphere and many Web 2.0 developments. His 2001 Webby Award-winning Plastic.com was one of the first sites featuring content driven by users. He is also the co-creator of Outside.In, one of the first in a new generation of hyperlocal news sites to aggregate and map news from thousands of sources. Johnson is a contributing editor to Wired magazine and writes frequently on the intersection of culture and technology.

Kim Kleman Kim Kleman, adjunct faculty member, will be teaching “Consumer Journalism” in the spring semester.

As editor-

in-chief of Consumer Reports magazine, Kleman showcases CR’s unique mix of expert, independent product testing, survey research, investigative journalism and consumer advocacy. She also serves as deputy editorial director of Consumers Union and previously served as managing editor, deputy editor and special assignments editor of Consumer Reports, shepherding award-winning investigative projects. She came to Consumers Union in 1997 from the St. Petersburg Times in Florida, where she was an award-winning editor and the subject of “Coaching Writers,” a video by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies.

Kelly McMasters Kelly McMasters, a member of the adjunct faculty, is the author of the narrative nonfiction book “Welcome to Shirley: A Memoir from an Atomic Town” (PublicAffairs, 2008), released in paperback last April. In her first book, McMasters, who obtained an M.F.A. in literary nonfiction from Columbia in 2004, juxtaposes her happy childhood in Shirley, Long Island, against the questionable safety of nearby Brookhaven National Laboratory, which leaked toxic nuclear and chemical waste into the aquifer from which the residents unknowingly drew

their well water. Her book has been featured in O, the Oprah Magazine, in The Washington Post and on “The Brian Lehrer Show” on NPR. McMasters has a B.A. from Vassar College and teaches writing at mediabistro. com and The New School as well as at the Journalism School. She is the co-director of the KGB Nonfiction Reading Series in the East Village.

Ava Seave Ava Seave, adjunct faculty member, will be teaching “Making the Business of Journalism Work” in the spring semester.

Seave is a principal of Quantum Media, a leading New York City-based consulting firm focused on marketing and strategic planning for media, information and entertainment companies. Before founding Quantum Media with four others in 1998, Seave was a general manager at three leading media companies: Scholastic Inc., The Village Voice and TVSM, the country’s largest cable listings magazine. She teaches “Strategic Management of Media” and “Media Strategy: Analysis, Innovation and Implementation” at Columbia Business School. She is the co-author (with Jonathan Knee and Bruce Greenwald) of a book titled “Curse of the Mogul: What’s Wrong with the World’s Leading Media Companies.”

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Investigative Reporter Wins 2009 John Chancellor Award — an investigative reporter whose work prompted the governor of Illinois to declare a moratorium on executions, is the recipient of the 2009 John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism. Armstrong, a staff reporter for The Seattle Times, was selected for the depth and impact of his coverage of the criminal justice system.

The John Chancellor Award is presented each year to a reporter for his or her cumulative accomplishments. The prize honors the legacy of pioneering television correspondent and longtime NBC News anchor John Chancellor. The award was presented to Armstrong on Nov. 18 at a dinner at Columbia’s Low Library in New York.

“Armstrong’s stories on capital punishment in Illinois exposed wrongdoing and saved lives,” said Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Journalism School and chair of the award’s selection committee. “He has consistently taken important local issues and Ken Armstrong,

l-r: Ira Lipman, Ken Armstrong and Dean Nicholas Lemann

brought them to national attention. This kind of tireless reporting performs a critical public service and embodies the spirit of the John Chancellor Award.”

Ken Armstrong has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist four times in four different categories: public service, national, explanatory

and investigative reporting. For the past 21 years, he has covered a range of social issues, including failures in the criminal justice system to illegally sealed court records, Orwellian conditions in the Postal Service, and the community’s complicity in protecting wayward athletes.

CJR Encore Fellows: Life After Downsizing — has selected four leading journalists as the first group of CJR Encore Fellows, a new initiative — the first of its kind in the news industry — that provides downsized professionals with a writing position as well as support to help them choose how best to use their experience in the years ahead. Their work is featured in the magazine and on CJR.org during the nine-month period beginning October 2009.

Partners of the project are The Poynter Institute, based in St. Petersburg, Fla., one of the nation’s top journalism training centers, which provides digital media and other educational opportunities tailored to the fellows’ needs; and Civic Ventures, a San Francisco-based think tank that developed the Encore concept and has created a pilot program for experienced Silicon Valley executives transitioning to the nonprofit sector. David Bank ’85 is a vice president and editor of Civic Ventures’ Encore.org.

The Columbia Journalism Review

CJR’s Encore Fellows were drawn from the senior reporting ranks of those who have recently left their jobs because of the industry’s economic condition, but who are not ready for traditional retirement. Thanks to a grant from The Atlantic Philanthropies, they receive stipends on par with other important journalism fellowships.

The inaugural 2009 CJR Encore Fellows are Lisa Anderson, Jill Drew, Terry McDermott and Don Terry. Anderson was the New York bureau chief and a national correspondent for the Chicago Tribune until December 2008. She was a features correspondent for the Tribune before that, profiling people from Brad Pitt to Nancy Reagan. Prior to the Tribune, she worked for Women’s Wear Daily, W Magazine and WCBS-TV News. Drew was an associate editor, assistant managing editor, weekend editor, Wall Street correspondent and China correspondent at The Washington Post until August 2009. Before joining The Post, she worked for seven years as

an editor and reporter for New York Newsday. McDermott worked at eight newspapers over 30 years, most recently at the Los Angeles Times, reporting from more than two dozen countries on diverse subjects. Terry has worked at the Chicago Defender, the Chicago Tribune, the St. Paul Pioneer Press and The New York Times, where he was part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 for the series “How Race Is Lived in America.”

Currently, Terry writes a weekly column for the Chicago Sun-Times.

“CJR is thrilled to be able to play a critical role not only in assisting these distinguished journalists, but our hope is that they will inspire downsized journalists across the country, who will benefit from the examples set by this inaugural class of fellows in developing their encore careers,” said Professor Victor Navasky, chairman of the Columbia Journalism Review and director of the Delacorte Center for Magazine Journalism.

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Columbia Journalism School Winter 2010

Alumni Profile

Neil Henry ’78 —

he recently took on, as dean of the University of California, Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (after leading the school on an interim basis since 2007), Neil Henry recalls the movie “Quest for Fire,” in which a group of prehistoric humans protects embers of fire in order to ensure the tribe’s survival. “I think deans and schools of journalism today are sort of like that,” Henry said. “We’re increasingly vital protectors of the flame of professional values in this field at a time when the industry is in severe distress.”

In his book, “American Carnival: Journalism Under Siege in an Age of New Media,” Henry detailed the economic impact of the When he thinks about the job

digital age on the traditional news industry, the ethical failures and growing holes in news coverage, and the repercussions for democratic society. When he became dean at Berkeley on a transitional basis, it was an opportunity to attack some of the problems he outlined in the book, while propelling the school in new and exciting directions.

A sharp 16 percent drop in state financing has required Henry to rely even more on the generosity of private donors to achieve his goals. “Desperate times call for creative responses,” Henry said.

A Ford Foundation grant enabled a retooling of the school’s core curriculum, requiring all students to learn multimedia skills as they learn news-gathering, writing

and ethics. As part of that grant, reporting classes are producing digital news sites for neglected Bay Area communities, including the cities of Richmond and Oakland, and the Mission District of San Francisco. “Our students are immersed in these communities in ways the school has not been before, reporting the news and serving the public,” Henry said. “It was largely due to these excellent projects that the school has now teamed with KQED public broadcasting in a major new initiative to build an independent nonprofit local news hub, supported by $5 million in seed funding from San Francisco businessman Warren Hellman.”

Henry believes that it is Berkeley’s role as an ethical and professional leader, and content provider, which inspired another major recent grant — from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation — which funds students’ and visiting scholars’ travel to Africa over the next two years to provide stories in all media about the food crisis on the continent. The school’s first major collaboration with Google resulted in the fall 2009 national conference at its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, focused on future business models for media and journalism.

Tom Goldstein ’69, former dean at both Berkeley and Columbia journalism schools, who hired Henry to teach at Berkeley in 1993, is not surprised at Henry’s early success: “He has an extraordinary skill set — he has infectious enthusiasm, he’s a natural teacher, a very clear explainer and an exceptionally good listener — and he’s off to a wonderful start. I think he was born to be dean at Berkeley.”

Certainly Henry’s background has prepared him well to face the challenges of adapting journalism education to these tumultuous times. Raised in Seattle, Henry earned a bachelor’s degree in political science at Princeton in 1977 and a master’s from Columbia in 1978. “Mainstream journalism was, in a sense, a new field of opportunity

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for black people back then,” Henry said.

“I loved writing, I loved learning about the world, and I felt I might have a future in the profession. Columbia helped give me focus and direction, but I also learned that reporting could be a helluva lot of fun.”

After graduation, Henry worked as a metro, national and foreign correspondent for The Washington Post and was a staff writer for Newsweek before joining the Berkeley faculty. At The Post, Henry said, “I most loved writing human interest and enterprise stories. I liked exploring the ragged edges of Washington, far removed from the political and ‘official’ scenes.”

Some of his unorthodox assignments included going undercover as a homeless person in Baltimore and Washington and as a migrant worker in North Carolina.

Later he worked on the paper’s investigative staff, then with the national staff as a feature correspondent covering places from West Virginia to Nevada, and finally he served nearly three years in Africa as The Post’s bureau chief, based in Kenya.

“Neil is extraordinarily moral and empathetic,” said Bill Hamilton, Henry’s former editor and colleague at The Post and now deputy managing editor at Politico.com.

“There isn’t an ounce of cynicism in him and that always came through in his writing. I guess I would call him a student of the human condition — he brings an unusual compassion to everything he writes and, I suspect, to everything he does at Berkeley.”

After 16 years in daily journalism, Henry decided that he wanted to return to the west coast and make time and space to do a different kind of writing. He became a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford and began teaching at Berkeley’s journalism school. He married Letitia Lawson, now a political scientist specializing in Africa at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, had a daughter Zoe, now 17, and in 2002 published an autobiographical family history, “Pearl’s Secret: A

Black Man’s Search for His White Family.”

Former student Ryan Lillis, now city hall reporter for The Sacramento Bee, recalls how Henry “connected with all his students on a personal level and how enthusiastic he was about everything.” When Charla Bear, now a producer at NPR in Washington, D.C., arrived at Berkeley, she felt intimidated and out of place. “I’m part Native American and part Alaskan native, and I come from a very low income background,” Bear said. “Because I was coming in as a real outsider, I was looking for a mentor to inspire, coach and teach me.

I really found that in Neil. He took you from wherever you were to the highest point you could reach.”

Henry doesn’t get as much time walking Hazel, his beloved golden retriever, or relaxing on the golf course as he used to, said Rob Gunnison, director of school affairs and a lecturer at Berkeley, who’s known him for 15 years. “Demand on all deans is extraordinary,” Gunnison said.

“They’re in a relentless pressure cooker, fundraising or resolving problems not able to be resolved at a different level.

It’s tough and wearing. But Neil wins a lot of points for his openness, frankness and low-key approach. He’s a half-full kind of guy. I always know when he’s coming because I hear the staff laughing down the hall. People warm to him immediately.”

Henry believes his role as a dean of journalism is to be a good consensus builder and ethical leader.

“The critical programmatic challenge I face as a dean is to communicate a sense of shared mission, responsibilities, and goals, and to ensure that we are all rowing in the same direction,” Henry said. “While we do our best to embrace change at the school, I think it’s also critical to sustain and build the kinds of things our program has always done exceptionally well, such as international reporting, magazine writing, photography, and radio and television broadcast journalism.”

Correction: In the Alumni Profile of Linda Winslow ’67, which appeared in our Fall 2009 issue, the achievements of another alumnus, Howard Weinberg ’65, were inadvertently slighted. Robert MacNeil was quoted as saying that in 1975, the first season of what became the MacNeil/Lehrer Report, “We were on very lean rations with only two producers and Linda was one of them; she did the very first program, which was on the New York City fiscal crisis.” In actuality, MacNeil said, Howard Weinberg and Linda Winslow “alternated as nightly producers on that program, with Howard doing the first night [the NYC fiscal crisis] and Linda the second.”

From the Alumni Board —

By Alexis Gelber ’80, Chair

there are days when reading Romenesko, I Want Media, The Wall Street Journal and the business section of The New York Times feels like a tour through the graveyard of journalism. The news in our world is undeniably bleak: in the last few months alone we’ve seen the demise of many prominent newspapers and magazines — not to mention the almost daily body count from layoffs, buyouts and bureau-closings at the media organizations that are still surviving.

And yet when I’m at Columbia, I find the mood is very different. There’s a sense of creativity and energy at the Journalism School, and a forwardlooking approach to the challenges facing our profession. Leonard Downie and Michael Schudson’s thoughtful report on “The Reconstruction of American Journalism” outlined a “new policy model for news,” as Dean Nicholas Lemann has said — and puts Columbia at the center of the discussion about the future of the media. At the most recent Alumni Board meeting, Dean Lemann and Academic Dean Bill Grueskin briefed us on the latest curriculum changes at the J-School.

And Columbia has assembled a dynamic group of digital-media experts who are giving students skills to create the next forms of journalism.

On the Alumni Board, we’re moving ahead in that constructive spirit. We have focused our own efforts around initiatives spearheaded by our five new subcommittees. Brief reports from the Alumni Board meeting on November 18 are as follows: 1. Communications: Formerly known as the Publications subcommittee, this group has helped formulate For media-news junkies,

continued on page 8

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Columbia Journalism School Winter 2010

From the Alumni Board

Cuban Blogger Barred From Attending Cabot Ceremony

continued from page 7

continued from page 1

the new alumni journal you’re reading now. Michael Kubin ’05, vice-chair of the Alumni Board, heads up this group and he reflects on the changes separately in this issue (see page 2).

2. Development: Despite economically tough times, subcommittee chair Margie McBride Lehrman ’70 urged us to think of 2010 as a “friend-raising” year, identifying people who might host events and eventually contribute or participate in matching-fund projects.

3. Programs: “Retraining” programs like the weeklong Digital Boot Camp or the two-day Final Cut Pro workshops, which will be reprised this winter, have received rave reviews from alums. Kudos to Arlene Morgan and her colleagues in the Department of Professional Prizes and Programs.

Cuba’s Yoani Sánchez was denied permission to attend the Awards ceremony at Columbia.

4. Awards: David Peterkin ’82 spoke about creating a new alumni award to recognize innovation and entrepreneurship in journalism. Discussions are under way about the name, timing and possible sponsorship opportunities for the award. David and his colleagues have contacted the digital media department and others about prospective candidates for this honor.

5. J-10: This group focuses on events and programs for alumni who have graduated in the last 10 years.

Rebecca Castillo ’06 reported on 3-hour classes held at the school to help recent alums hone their skills on Photoshop, WordPress and Final Cut Pro. J-10 has also put together RW1 reunions through Facebook.

As always, the Alumni Board welcomes your input and participation. We invite alums to volunteer for our subcommittees.

And to second Michael Kubin’s request (see page 2), I encourage you to contribute ideas and articles to this new publication.

refused Sánchez permission to travel to New York to receive the citation.

The Cabot citation described Sánchez as “an ordinary Cuban citizen using the Internet with extraordinary power. …

‘Generación Y’… is a pitch-perfect mix of personal observation and tough analysis which conveys better than anybody else what daily life — with all its frustrations and hopes — is like for Cubans living their lives on the island today. … For her courage, talent and great achievement in such a brief period of time, the Maria Moors Cabot board is proud to award

Yoani Sánchez a special citation for journalistic excellence.”

“Ms. Sánchez’s vivid commentaries on Cuba give us a lively sense of what is happening there,” Dean Nicholas Lemann said, in reaction to the news that Sánchez was barred from traveling to New York to attend the prize dinner. “The Cuban government ought to value Ms. Sánchez’s work as a sign that young Cubans are ready to take Cuba into a better future — one that will have the free press the Cuban people deserve.”

ON THE MOVE? UPDATE YOUR CONTACT INFO If you are changing your job or home address, let us know. We need your contact details to notify you regarding alumni programs, benefits and services, job opportunities, class reunions or related developments at the Graduate School of Journalism.

It’s easy, just go to: http://bit.ly/jschoolalumniupdate

GET A PERMANENT COLUMBIA E-MAIL ACCOUNT The Columbia Alumni Association (CAA) offers alumni free, Web-based e-mail: you@caa.columbia.edu.

More at http://alumni.columbia.edu/access/s2_2.html

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helping journalists tell returning veterans’ stories —

War Veterans Transition to Journalism

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Nate Rawlings ’10 I grew up in Tennessee and studied history at Princeton University, where I completed Army ROTC. The day I graduated I was commissioned an Army officer, and I served two yearlong tours in Iraq with the 4th Infantry Division, the first from 2005 to 2006 as a platoon leader and the second from 2008 to 2009 as an embedded combat adviser to the Iraqi Army. During my second combat tour, I contributed dispatches to NPR about our combat operations. I am a magazine concentrator at the Journalism School, and I am interested in writing about government, public policy and politics.

Nate Rawlings with Captain Nate Wilson After graduation, I plan to stay in school and complete a master’s in public policy, and I would like to write about government and politics.

journalists, facing economic constraints,

Jehangir Irani ’10 Jehangir Irani was born in Bombay, India, in 1975 and immigrated to Queens, N.Y., in 1981. In 1997, he received his B.S. in aeronautical science from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the United States Air Force. For the past decade, “Jay” Irani flew the C-130, a small, yet extremely versatile, transport aircraft, and saw three tours of combat over Iraq and Afghanistan. As a pilot engaged in the conflict, he saw a side of the war unlike anything reported in the media. To counter that, Irani began blogging for Newsday, giving a more nuanced perspective of what deployed life was really like. Irani looks forward to future assignments that will combine the art of storytelling with his love of flying.

Isabelle Shafer ’10

struggle to adequately report on the psychological cost of war borne by the men and women who serve in it — many of whom have served multiple tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan and are finding it difficult to reintegrate into the families and communities they left behind. To help local and regional news organizations improve their coverage of veterans’ issues, the Journalism School’s Continuing Education Program, the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, and the Carter Center’s Mental Health Program organized a three-day event: “When Veterans Come Home: A Workshop for Working Journalists.”

The workshop, held in January at the Carter Center in Atlanta, Ga., featured a wide range of leading mental health and policy experts, award-winning journalists and veterans’ advocates, and a keynote address by former First Lady Rosalynn Carter.

It included background briefings as well as specialized reporting-skills workshops aimed at enhancing the practical ability of local journalists to report on veterans knowledgeably, ethically and effectively. All selected participants received a full scholarship to attend the workshop in Atlanta, with preference given to journalists working at news organization based in military communities or other locations with high concentrations of veterans and veterans’ services.

The workshop was sponsored by generous grants from the McCormick Foundation and the Carter Center’s Mental Health Program.

Daniel Woolfolk ’10 My first experience with journalism was as a seventh grader in the audio video club in Nogales, Ariz. I didn’t plan on becoming a journalist as a teenager, but I learned to love writing and photography.

I spent four years in the Army and went on to study German at Arizona State University. My camera was never far from me.

After graduating, I took journalism classes at Pima Community College in Tucson, Ariz., and interned as a writer with the Tucson Citizen. At Columbia, I am now able to use my past experiences to tell multimedia stories. You can see some of them at danielwoolfolk.com.

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Columbia Journalism School Winter 2010

class notes —

1957 Madeleine M. Kunin received the Eleanor Roosevelt Medal for Public Service at Val-Kill, the former first lady’s Hyde Park retreat.

1959 Robert Lipsyte, a long-time city and sports columnist for The New York Times, is the host of “Life (Part 2),” a weekly PBS show on how the boomer generation deals with kids, parents, sex, marriage and personal reinvention as it ages in hard times.

To get your local listing, check the Web site http://www.pbs. org/lifepart2.

1960

Resource Center (Arlington, Va.).

After graduation, Smith went straight to the U.S. Navy, followed by almost 20 years at The Washington Post, then a stint as a press secretary in the U.S. Senate. Smith remarried in 2008, to a fellow Senate press secretary from across the legislative aisle.

1968 Jim Willse retired as editor of The Star Ledger (Newark, N.J.) in October. After taking off some time to travel, he will become a visiting professor at Princeton University, where he’ll conduct a seminar on the business of news.

1970

50th class reunion April 22-24, 2010!

40th class reunion April 22-24, 2010!

After Phil Hardberger ended his term as San Antonio mayor, the veteran sailor and his wife Linda set off on a trip through Middle America, from Port Aransas to the shores of Lake Michigan, finding solitude and friends along the way as they traveled upriver in a boat named Aimless.

Margie (McBride) Lehrman won another Emmy as part of the NBC News team selected for its 2008 election-night coverage.

After 30 years at NBC, Margie retired June 1.

1967

William Wong is blogging on sfgate.com’s City Brights blog (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/ blogs/wwong/index).

Philip Smith is vice president for communications at the Ethics

Michele Montas ’69

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Michele Montas has been named winner of the 2010 Dean’s Medal for Distinguished Service, which recognizes an individual who has made a significant contribution to society through his or her professional accomplishments and civic involvement.

Montas is an award-winning journalist who has dedicated her life to securing democracy and freedom in Haiti.

Appointed spokesperson for United Nations SecretaryGeneral Ban Ki-moon in January 2007, Montas formerly headed the French unit of U.N. Radio and, in 2003 to 2004, she served as the spokesperson for the president of the General Assembly.

Montas is the former editor-in-chief and anchor at Radio Haiti Inter, where she began reporting in 1973. Working with her husband, Jean Dominique, she exposed human rights abuses, political corruption and state-sponsored violence in their native Haiti. The couple’s work resulted in their arrest, harassment and forced exile.

Upon their return to Haiti in 2000, Jean Dominique was assassinated.

Montas took over the radio station but shut it down in 2003 and fled to New York after receiving death threats and surviving an attack on her home.

These events were chronicled by Jonathan Demme in a film called “The Agronomist.” With her husband no longer at her side, she continues their work of promoting democracy and human rights in Haiti.

1972

1976

Anthony Mauro has been elected chair of the executive committee of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Since 1970, the committee has offered free legal assistance to journalists in First Amendment, access, and freedom of information disputes. Mauro is Supreme Court correspondent for National Law Journal and Incisive Media.

Ed Hersh was named senior vice president, strategic planning, for Investigation Discovery, based in the New York office, responsible for creating the long-term content, production, acquisition, marketing and promotion strategy for the network. Hersh was previously chief creative officer of StoryCentric LLC, a company he founded to provide executivelevel strategic and programming

Barbara Cochran ’68

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Barbara Cochran, president emeritus of the Radio-Television News Directors Association (RTNDA), was honored in October with the Giants of Broadcasting Award from the Library of American Broadcasting.

For 28 years, Cochran, pictured here, right, with Katie Couric, was a journalist in Washington and held management positions in print, radio and television. She was managing editor of The Washington Star, vice president for news at National Public Radio, executive producer of NBC’s “Meet the Press” and vice president and Washington bureau chief at CBS News. Cochran retired as president of RTNDA in June 2009 after leading the organization for 12 years. Cochran shared some thoughts about the value of a journalism education today: “With so much change roiling the news business today, a lot of journalism students wonder whether they’re making a good career choice,” Cochran said. “I envy them because they have the opportunity to participate in a revolution — a revolution as exciting as the one I experienced when I started my career just as newsrooms were opening up to women and people of color. They will get to design the new journalism, to figure out how to use new technologies to have more impact.

They will need to master and defend the traditional standards — journalism that is accurate, ethical and meaningful. But they can be the pioneers who will invent the way to tell news in the future.”

insight to content producers and networks. Hersh joined Court TV in 2001 and spent seven years in leadership roles at the network, most recently as executive vice president, current programming and specials. Prior to his tenure at Court TV, Hersh was vice president, documentary programming for A&E Television Network, where he led the development, production and strategy for the network’s signature investigation series, including “Investigative Reports,” “American Justice” and A&E documentary specials. An award-winning journalist and producer, Hersh spent more than 16 years at ABC News in senior production roles for programming ranging from “World News Tonight with Peter Jennings” to “Vietnam: The Soldier’s Story” (for The Learning Channel) and the newsmagazine “Day One.” A two-time winner of the duPont-Columbia Award, Hersh also received an Emmy for the ABC News special “Peter Jennings Reporting: Who Is Ross Perot?” and his work has been honored by the National Association of Black Journalists, the Gabriel Awards, the National Association of Science Writers and the American Bar Association.

Gail Reed is the international director of Medical Education Cooperation with Cuba (MEDICC), an Atlanta-based nonprofit organization that develops programs

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Richard M. Smith ’70

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Richard M. Smith ’70, chairman of Newsweek, was honored with a Columbia Alumni Medal, which recognizes alumni for distinguished service of 10 years or more to the University. Smith was a member of President Bollinger’s task force on rethinking journalism education and has been a member of the Journalism School’s Board of Visitors for more than 15 years. He is pictured here with his wife Dr. Soon-Young Yoon, their daughter Song-Mee and her friend Nick Maietta.

bridging the U.S., Cuban and global medical, nursing and public health communities. She is executive editor of MEDICC Review, a quarterly journal on Cuban medicine and public health. Reed has written on social and economic issues in Cuba for the last two decades.

From 1993 to 1997, Reed regularly contributed to BusinessWeek magazine, and from 1994 to 1996, was producer in Havana for NBC News.

Joe Seldner is producing a feature film for which he wrote the script titled “Redemption,” to be directed by Tony- and Golden Globe-winning actor Brian Dennehy. The movie is based on one of the cases of Jim McCloskey, who founded and runs Centurion Ministries, an organization that has freed more than 40 wrongly convicted people in 30 years.

Seldner is also the executive producer of “Believe It or Not” for Paramount Pictures, to be directed by Chris Columbus, who directed “Mrs. Doubtfire,” “Home Alone,” two Harry Potter movies and more. But most of all, he’s loving being a grandfather to gorgeous Liliana, who turned 2 in May.

1977 Boyd F. Campbell was selected for inclusion in the 2010 edition of “The Best Lawyers in America” in the field of immigration law.

Campbell has been in private practice in Montgomery since 1988 and has served as general counsel of the Alabama Center for Foreign Investment, L.L.C., since 2006. He serves as a mentor for members of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) and is serving his second year as vice chair of AILA’s EB-5 Investors Committee.

Frances Hardin is director of communications for the Project on National Security Reform.

PNSR is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization funded by Congress to analyze and recommend how to improve the country’s national security system. Last fall, PNSR issued an 800-page report that made specific recommendations for overhauling national security.

Several of PNSR’s board members are now serving in the Obama administration, including National Security Adviser Jim Jones, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, Under Secretaries of Defense Michele Flournoy and Ashton Carter, Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg.

1978 Patricia Leigh Brown is a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University.

Based in San Francisco, Brown is a contributing writer for The New York Times and Architectural Digest. For 14 years she was a staff writer for the House & Home section of The Times in New York, where she reported on everything from prairie churches in North Dakota to basement voodoo temples in Brooklyn. She is currently working on a series of articles on Fremont, Calif., one of the country’s new “ethnoburbs.” She has been a visiting lecturer at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley. As a Loeb Fellow, Brown will study civic engagement, landscape history, urbanism, multicultural law, and the role of community in challenging economic times. She is particularly interested in the changing ethnic demographics of the suburbs and new housing models for aging baby boomers.

Jonathan Landman, a deputy managing editor of The New York Times, was named the new culture editor. For the last four

years, Landman has headed the effort to unite the printed Times and nytimes.com into a single, seamless operation. Landman served as acting culture editor in 2004 and 2005, when he reorganized the department.

He has been an editor on the newspaper’s masthead since 2003, first as assistant managing editor overseeing the paper’s longest, most ambitious reporting projects. Previously, he was the metropolitan editor, the editor of the Week in Review section, acting editor of the Sunday Business section and deputy editor of the Washington bureau. Landman joined The Times in 1987 after having been deputy city editor of the Daily News in New York and a reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times and at Newsday.

Andrés Oppenheimer won the VII ALGABA prize in biography, autobiography, memoirs and historical research for a collection of columns that ran in the newspaper and will be published in the book “The Non-United States of the Americas.” The award came with a prize of $34,404.

The pieces examined the inability of Latin American countries to integrate. Oppenheimer received the prize Oct. 21 at a ceremony in Madrid. Oppenheimer is a columnist with The Miami Herald and is a member of the team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1987.

Gloria Rubio-Cortes is now executive editor of the National Civic Review, a quarterly journal in its 98th year. She also serves as the president of the National Civic League, the co-publisher of the National Civic Review.

1980 30th class reunion April 22-24, 2010!

John Finck was appointed to the Bank Street College board. Finck and his wife, Eve Burton, vice president and general counsel for the Hearst Corporation, have two children at the school. For 15 years, Finck worked in humanitarian aid for the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement and the U.S. State Department. He directed programs that resettled 10,000 refugees a year from Asia, Africa, the Soviet Union and Eastern

Europe in 26 states. He is a founding board member of Legal Aid of Cambodia, an NGO based in Phnom Penh, and president of the Outsiders Baseball Association in the Bronx.

Fred Johnson launched “Point of Departure,” a music blog. “‘Point of Departure’ takes an eclectic approach to the music of black folks,” Johnson said. “In this podcast series we will cross boundaries, blur distinctions and bend genres in the service of finger popping, foot tapping, head bobbing and other involuntary physical responses to international, cross-generational, multicultural swing. Feel me?”

1981 Andrea Stone is joining AOL’s general news site as senior Washington correspondent.

Stone will be the team leader for the site’s Washington coverage, translating D.C. for the general reader. She was with Gannett, almost all at USA Today, for the past 25 years.

1982 Jonathan Bor is a senior editor at Health Affairs, the health policy journal, in Bethesda, Md. Before starting there last April, he had spent 20 years as a medical reporter for The Baltimore Sun (jonathansbor@gmail.com).

Anisa Mehdi, a Fulbright Scholar in Amman, Jordan, has started a

Wayne Dawkins ’80

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In May 1980, over drinks at the West End tavern, two dozen new Columbia J-School graduates promised to stay in touch even as they fanned out to opportunities near and far. Wayne Dawkins initiated the Black Alumni Network (BAN) newsletter, two pages of news and notes on one 8.5-inch by 11-inch sheet and punched out on a manual typewriter. The sheet was photocopied and mailed monthly. Dawkins, now a professor at Hampton University in Virginia, still serves as founding editor.

The newsletter mission expanded. Future classes of J-School students were cultivated and contacts made with alumni from previous classes. Staying connected — networked to each other and to the graduate school — was a guiding principle. So were minority recruitment, retention and opportunity in journalism.

In 2005, the first Black Alumni Network scholarship was awarded. It is now called the Black Alumni Network/Phyllis T. Garland scholarship, and BAN supporters are 88 percent toward their goal of endowing the scholarship.

About 90 percent of subscribers receive their monthly BAN Newsletter by e-mail. The newsletter can also be accessed from the www.journalism. columbia.edu Web site.

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Columbia Journalism School Winter 2010

blog about her experiences there (http://anisaammanjournal. blogspot.com). She directed a short film for the opening of the first national conference on disabilities in Jordan, which took place in November 2009.

1983 Emilia Askari left her reporting job at the Detroit Free Press after almost 20 years to begin a two-year master’s program in social computing and humancomputer interaction at the University of Michigan’s School of Information, which is ranked third in the country by U.S. News and World Report. Her first year’s tuition is covered by a Spectrum Scholarship from the American Libraries Association and supplemental scholarships from the University. Askari will continue to freelance and teach an environmental/public health journalism class to University of Michigan undergraduates.

William Cohan has joined Bloomberg Television as a contributing editor, providing analysis on financial issues of the day, including mergers and acquisitions, bankruptcy and private equity. Cohan is the author of two bestselling books, “House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street” and “The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Frères & Co.,” which won the 2007 FT/ Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. Previously, Cohan spent six years at Lazard Frères in New York and later became a managing director at JPMorgan Chase & Co. In addition, Cohan is a contributing editor of Fortune magazine and has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Financial Times, The Atlantic, TIME magazine and The Daily Beast.

Michael Lemonick spoke at the University of Delaware on Oct. 17 on how a poor musician’s observation led to a whole new world of scientific inquiry in “How William and Caroline Herschel Invented Modern Astronomy.”

Called “one of astronomy’s great popularizers” by The New York Times Sunday Book Review, Lemonick has been a journalist and author for more than 25 years — 20 of them at TIME magazine, where he wrote more than 50 cover stories on topics ranging from climate change to genomics to particle physics.

Today, he teaches writing at Princeton University and is the

senior staff writer for Climate Central. Lemonick has written four books on astronomy: “The Light at the Edge of the Universe” (1993); “Other Worlds” (1996), which won the American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award; “Echo of the Big Bang” (2003); and “The Georgian Star” (2008), which focuses on the Herschels and their discoveries.

Mary Lhowe was honored with the 12th annual Russell E. Dixon Volunteer of the Year Award by the Rhode Island Department of Corrections. Since 2004, Ms. Lhowe has been the volunteer program manager of the Adult Correctional Institution’s Books Beyond Program, overseeing a small but dedicated corps of volunteers who have made it possible for 100 inmates to select and record on audio cassettes up to three books for each of their children.

Once recorded, the books and tapes are mailed to the children at their homes. Lhowe is employed by visitnewengland.com, an online guide to travel and tourism in New England owned by her husband, Jonathan Lhowe.

She has spent most of her career as a reporter and editor for various newspapers.

Michael Rosenblum is chief instructor at the New York Video School. Rosenblum taught one of the most popular courses in NYU’s film school for years. He has lectured all over the world and has taught thousands of people to use video. His training has been used at places like the BBC, Oxygen, Al Gore’s Current TV, Time Warner’s NY1, and many more. He has produced hundreds of hours of television programming, and his students have gone on to use video in countless professions.

1984 Robert Camuto’s book “Corkscrewed” has received the Prix Clos de Vougeot 2009 for its French translation (called “Un Américain dans les vignes: Une ode amoureuse à la France du bien-vivre”). His book charts an odyssey into the new world of French wine, a world of biodynamic winegrowing, herbal treatments and lunar cycles. The prize includes a case of Clos de Vougeot wine presented at the historic chateau in Burgundy that bears the prize’s name.

Jim Jubak has joined MoneyShow. com as senior markets editor.

Jubak will write two columns a

week, post blog entries every weekday and produce weekly video segments about the markets, the economy and individual stocks he follows. Jubak was a Knight-Bagehot Fellow and has been in financial journalism for 25 years. He was editor of Venture magazine and senior editor at Worth magazine before joining MSN Money as senior markets editor in 1997. He has written three books, most recently “The Jubak Picks,” published by Crown Business.

Mike Watkiss has been named “Best Television Reporter” by Phoenix New Times magazine for the second year in a row and for the fourth time in the last six years. In making the selection, the magazine wrote, “It’s downright impossible to find competition for Mike Watkiss in this wrecking ball of a media market.

Watkiss, a mighty mite with a big voice and a bigger heart, is definitely old school. The guy literally pounds the pavement looking for lowdown stories about murder, mayhem, and the otherwise seamy side of life. And he’s charming — if you are not the subject of one of his stories.

Sadly street reporters like Watkiss are a dying breed, so enjoy him while you can. We love the SOB.” Watkiss said he is grateful for the recognition and touched by the sentiment.

Steve Wolgast researched academic regalia at Columbia University and wrote a paper that earned him Fellow status with the Burgon Society, a British academic group dedicated to the study of academic dress.

Wolgast, an instructor of journalism and mass communications at Kansas State University, presented his paper at a ceremony on Oct. 10 in London. The paper will also be published in the society’s peer-reviewed journal, Transactions of the Burgon Society.

1993 Malcolm Foster started his new job as AP’s Tokyo bureau chief in September after four years in Bangkok as Asia business editor for the Associated Press. He finds it’s rewarding to return to the land where he was born and raised — and he couldn’t ask for better timing with the recent big political changes in Japan, which is grappling with economic woes and how to cope with its aging, shrinking population.

Paul Schultz wrote “Eat, Drink and Be Merry” for the New York City International Fringe Festival.

The musical comedy followed Adam and Eve on their quest for food and freedom, from the Garden of Eden to the Queens of today. The first two humans are cave people, sacrificial lambs, serfs, Pilgrims, pioneers and modern shoppers.

James Earl Hardy has written the screenplay for “The Day Eazy-E Died,” which was optioned by Southern Fried Filmworks. Hardy has created memorable characters in this youthful drama set in 1990s New York City. Principal photography is scheduled to begin April of 2010 in New York City coinciding with the 15th anniversary of the passing of rap pioneer Eazy-E, founder and original member of the group N.W.A. Hardy is an author and award-winning entertainment feature writer and cultural critic whose byline has appeared in The Advocate, Entertainment Weekly, Essence, New York Newsday, Newsweek, OUT, The Source, Upscale, Vibe, The Village Voice and The Washington Post.

1990

1994

20th class reunion April 22-24, 2010!

Princess Rym Ali is preparing to open a new media institute in the kingdom of Jordan. The inaugural class of the Jordan Media Institute (JMI), which plans to open in 2010, will comprise about 20 students. The institute will begin to accept admissions by the end of this month. Ali said she had helped to establish the school, initially under the auspices of the University of Jordan, after conversations with media figures across the Arab world highlighted the need for more well-trained Arab journalists as the number of newspapers, new media publica-

1989

Rosiland Jordan anchored the Al Jazeera Network English Language Channel broadcast, “The Americas.”

1992 Tom Moore is teaching journalism as an adjunct at the York College/ City University of New York after almost 17 years at Bloomberg Radio and TV News. Moore previously worked at “The MacNeil/ Lehrer NewsHour” and NBC News.

tions, and television and radio stations was rapidly growing in the Middle East. Ali worked at media outlets including the BBC, United Press International, Dubai TV, Bloomberg and CNN. Victoria Colliver, health reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, was awarded a grant through the Dennis A. Hunt Fund for Health Journalism, a project of the USC Annenberg/California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships. She plans to use the funds to look at health inequities and life expectancy differences in the Bay Area, with particular emphasis on her home city of Oakland. Colliver and a colleague recently started a new health blog called Chron Rx (http:// www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/ chronrx/index).

Michelle Conlin was interviewed

by New York magazine about her role in the documentary “No Impact Man.” Her husband, Colin Beavan, came up with the idea for his family to live a year in New York City with as little environmental impact as possible. “But the star of the film is his wife, Michelle Conlin, a senior writer at Business Week” (http:// nymag.com/movies/features/ 58860).

Steve Schifferes will lead a new financial journalism M.A. at City University in London. Schifferes has been named the institution’s first Marjorie Deane Professor of Financial Journalism. Schifferes was economics correspondent for the BBC, where his positions included acting editor of its online business pages, issues producer for its online coverage of the last general election and producer for “On the Record” and “The Money Programme.”

Most recently he co-coordinated the BBC’s online anniversary coverage of the 2008 financial crisis.

1995 15th class reunion, April 22-24, 2010!

Fabio Bertoni has been named vice president and deputy general counsel of ALM, an integrated media company. Bertoni, who has served as counsel in the company’s legal department since 2006, will expand his role in overseeing legal activities related to corporate affairs, financing, litigation, editorial liaison and intellectual property matters. ALM is a leading pro-

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cial communications firm in New York. Rothstein is the director of LakeView Day Camp, a summer camp in East Brunswick, N.J.

Rebecca Santana ’97

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In October, Rebecca Santana, who has covered the Middle East and Russia as a reporter and editor, was named bureau chief for The Associated Press in Baghdad. Santana joined the AP in 2005 in Trenton, N.J., covering the environment, the military and religious issues.

After working at the AP’s North American desk in New York, she joined the Mideast regional desk in Cairo in late 2008, where she also undertook numerous reporting and editing assignments to Iraq. In November, on her first rotation back in the U.S., Santana reflected on the challenges of her new role in Baghdad: Iraq is safer than it was in 2004 when I was there for NBC News, but security is still a concern. My job is to help the local staff with story ideas, making sure my reporters are able to do their jobs and also remain safe.

We live and work in the same building and need to find ways to make it less claustrophobic. The administrative aspect is a challenge; something I’ve never done before; we moved into a new building and I’ve never been a contractor before — in Iraq or America. This is a really interesting time.

Drawing down the largest troop presence the U.S. has had outside its own country in a long time — to witness that happening is a great opportunity — and to see what happens to Iraq afterward. Will it become a stable democracy in the Middle East? All these things are amazing to witness.

vider of specialized business news and information, focused primarily on the legal and commercial real estate sectors.

ALM’s market-leading brands include The American Lawyer, Corporate Counsel, GlobeSt. com, Insight Conferences, Law. com, Law Journal Press, LegalTech, The National Law Journal and Real Estate Forum.

Headquartered in New York City, ALM was formed in 1997.

Carol Berman and Craig Philips Brown were married Sept. 5 in Philadelphia. Berman is a public relations consultant in Ardmore, Pa. Brown is an assistant vice president and director of internal strategic communications at the Lincoln Financial Group, an insurance company in Radnor, Pa. Micah Fink worked on a five-part documentary series on HIV/AIDS in Jamaica, which aired on PBS World Focus International News Program, funded by a consortium of groups, including the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, PBS World Focus and the Mac AIDS Foundation (http:// www.theatlantic.com/doc/ 200909u/jamaica-aids).

Dave Saldana has picked up stakes and moved to Berkeley, Calif., where he is now the senior associate for national security

and human rights at ReThink Media. In that position, he will provide strategic communications training to organizations working on addressing civil liberties and human rights abuses since 9/11, to the end that national security does not come at the expense of our rights. Saldana left Media Matters in January and married Carla Fehr, Ph.D., associate professor of philosophy and women’s studies at Iowa State University, on March 14.

They are now a bicoastal couple (if you consider the Des Moines River a coast).

Pia Sarkar is associate editor at the Daily Journal (http://www. dailyjournal.com).

1996 Jay Akasie is managing editor of Trends, a leading magazine of Middle Eastern business and politics. He was formerly the business editor of The New York Sun and has also worked at Forbes, Worth and Grant’s Interest Rate Observer (e-mail: jakasie@hotmail.com).

1997 Aliyah Baruchin won the 2009 Excellence in Epilepsy Journalism Award, an international award given by the International Bureau for Epilepsy and the biopharma-

ceutical company UCB. The award, in the print/online category, was for a story on African-Americans with epilepsy, part of a series on epilepsy and race/ethnicity for the Epilepsy Foundation’s national magazine, EpilepsyUSA. Baruchin writes frequently about race and health, and spent last year as a 2008 Kaiser Foundation Fellow in Health Media, reporting on racial disparities in health and health care.

Jabeen Bhatti has launched a new international journalism project, Associated Reporters Abroad (ARA). Started by Bhatti and four partners, including alumni Harald Franzen ’99 and Michael Levitin ’02 and based in Berlin, Germany, they are trying to reverse the decline in foreign news by linking freelance foreign correspondents with editors and news directors around the world, through the online network www.ara-network.com.

John McGrath is taking Wordie (www.wordie.org, “Like Flickr, but without the photos”) to the big time, merging with Wordnik. com.

Molly Ann Morse and Randy Rothstein were married Sept. 12 at the Plaza Hotel in New York.

Morse is a partner in Kekst & Company, a corporate and finan-

1999 Kathy Chu became a foreign correspondent/Asia economics reporter for USA Today in Hong Kong as of Nov. 1.

2000 10th class reunion April 22-24, 2010!

John Annese, a reporter for the Staten Island Advance, won first place for continuing coverage from the New York State Associated Press Association. Annese’s award is for “Youth Scourge: Prescription Drugs,” a series of in-depth stories highlighting an epidemic on Staten Island. Work on the series began after authorities broke up a 23-person prescription forgery ring that put 21,000 painkiller pills into the hands of young Staten Islanders.

Annese joined the Advance in 2004 after working at the Journal Inquirer in Manchester, Conn.

Alexa Capeloto is an assistant professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, teaching journalism and serving as faculty adviser for the college’s student newspaper.

Capeloto was enterprise editor at The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Paula Lugones, Editora Sección El Mundo, Diario Clarín (Argentina), wrote that the paper’s Route 66 project won the Funcacion Nuevo Periodismo prize as the best multimedia work in Iberoamerica in 2008.

Michelle Wong is an attorney at Lugenbuhl, Wheaton, Peck, Rankin & Hubbard in New Orleans.

Alicia Zuckerman is a senior producer/reporter/host at ZG Public Media/WLRN Radio (Fla.).

2001 Prue Clarke won a national Edward R. Murrow for feature reporting and a Gabriel award for a radio piece in Liberia. The piece was on a Liberian man intent on getting news to the majority of his countrymen who can’t read or afford a newspaper.

He came up with an ingenious blackboard newspaper that reports in simple language and symbols and has gained the largest readership of any publication

in Liberia. The piece is at www. prueclarke.com.

Josh Lipton has joined Minyanville Media as staff writer covering business and the markets.

Before joining Minyanville (www. minyanville.com), Lipton most recently was a staff writer at Forbes.com, where he covered stock market activity and trends.

Prior to that he was an assistant editor at The American Lawyer.

His articles have also appeared in Rolling Stone magazine, New York magazine and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications.

2002 Sara Clemence is deputy business editor at the New York Post.

Nicole Neroulias Gupte is the proud mother of a baby boy, Rohann Jay Gupte, born this fall.

Nicole and her husband Salil now live in Seattle, where she is still freelancing for Religion News Service and working on a book proposal.

Lynette Wilson, staff writer for Episcopal Life, has been promoted to editor/writer of the Episcopal Church’s new quarterly publication, set to debut in 2010. From 2007 to 2009, Wilson served as editor of The Episcopal New Yorker, the award-winning bimonthly publication of the Diocese of New York. She was a reporter on the Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal from 2004 to 2006, where she was a team finalist for a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of Hurricane Ivan. She has also worked as a journalist at The News-Star in Monroe, La., and The Meridian Star in Meridian, Miss., and has interned at The Christian Science Monitor.

2003 Aaron Chimbel has left WFAATV in Dallas-Fort Worth after several years to join the faculty of the Schieffer School of Journalism at his other alma mater, TCU. While at WFAA, he won five Advanced Media Emmy Awards and a National Edward R. Murrow Award.

Itai Maytal has completed his fellowship at The New York Times and, in September, started as a teaching assistant to midcareer students at the J-School taking the 10-week “Journalism and the Law” course.

Kate Pickert is a staff writer at TIME magazine covering health care.

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Columbia Journalism School Winter 2010

Newswriters Association for her story “Prayer: The Heart and Soul of Religion.”

Domenico Montanaro ’07

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After graduating from the Journalism School, Domenico Montanaro worked for CBS News in New York before moving on to NBC News in Washington, D.C. Working at CBS while going to Columbia part time, he did research and analysis for the 2006 midterm elections and then worked on production of the news magazine “48 Hours.” There, he covered the Virginia Tech shootings as well as helping produce the Walter Cronkite remembrance special. Montanaro then moved to Washington in 2007 and took a position as researcher in NBC News’ Political Unit. He covered the 2008 presidential primaries and general election, which took him to Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida, Colorado, Minnesota, Missouri, Texas, Mississippi and beyond. He tracked super delegates, ads, polling and campaign finance, as well as reporting from the field and field producing. In September 2009, Montanaro was named NBC News off-air political reporter. Montanaro appears occasionally on-air and has a weekly show that appears on the Web called “The Week Ahead,” which previews the week in politics. His work can be found at http://firstread.msnbc.com. In October 2009, he and his wife Beth, a doctoral student at the University of Maryland in special education and learning disabilities, had their first child, Jack.

Angela Rozas was named Chicago bureau chief of the Chicago Tribune. Rozas was previously the paper’s crime reporter.

Michael Steel is press secretary for Senate Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio). Steel was a reporter at the National Journal Group from 2000 to 2002.

2004 Petra Bartosiewicz M.A. ’06 had a story in the November issue of Harper’s Magazine titled “The Intelligence Factory.”

Ryan Blitstein is a regular contributor to AOL’s DailyFinance, where his reporting focuses primarily on sectors with a strong presence in the Midwest, including legal/accounting, transportation/infrastructure and food/ agribusiness. Blitstein remains a Chicago-based freelancer for publications including Time and Fast Company, as well as a contributing editor at Miller-McCune.

Claire Hoffman was married to Benjamin Goldhirsh on Aug. 29 in Los Angeles. Hoffman is a contributing editor for Rolling Stone magazine and is an assistant professor of journalism at the UC Riverside. Goldhirsh is a founder and the chief executive of Good, a Web site, magazine and production company in Los

Angeles that provides coverage of social activism and culture. He is also a director of the Goldhirsh Foundation in Boston, which provides significant support for brain cancer research.

Lane Johnson left New York and his post as the photo editor at amNewYork, photo adjunct at the J-School and freelance magazine photographer in March of 2008 to travel and photograph around the world for 10 months en route to San Jose, Calif., where his fiancée, Kristy, is now attending chiropractic school and where he is inventing a new life.

Jeff Novich, an SAT tutor in New York City with Bespoke Education, conceived and created VocabSushi (http://www.vocabsushi.com).

The VocabSushi philosophy asserts you can learn the meanings of words faster, more accurately and more efficiently by reading through sentences rather than just trying to memorize definitions. It provides thousands of sentences that demonstrate any vocabulary word’s actual use in news articles. Compared to the brute force method of flashcard definitions, the tutors who developed the program believe that a deeper understanding of a word can be attained easily and straightforwardly by reading actual, interesting sentences that contain that word.

Patrick O’Connor was married to Katherine Gates Lindsey on Aug. 22 in Beaver Creek, Colo.

O’Connor is a staff writer in the Washington office of Politico, a news Web site with headquarters in Arlington, Va. Lindsey is an associate at the Washington law firm Williams & Connolly.

Tanya Rivero (Tanya Warren) is an anchor for ABC News Now, where she hosts two daily halfhour shows, “Good Morning America Health” and “Good Money.” She also covers breaking news and delivers news briefs for ABC’s 24-hour cable/ digital channel.

2005 5th class reunion April 22-24, 2010!

Jenna Lee is a Fox Business anchor, whose duties include anchoring the 5:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. “Fox Business Morning” and the 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Web show “FoxBusiness.com Live.”

2006 Kimberly Holmes has joined WXIX-TV in Cincinnati as a nightside reporter. She previously worked as the weekend anchor/ reporter at WBOC-TV in Salisbury, Md. She also just received an award from the Religion

2007 Allison Bourne-Vanneck is a sports anchor/reporter with WLNS-TV (Lansing, Mich.) and won the women’s division of the NABJ golf tournament in Tampa.

Her prize is a trip to Curacao.

Ellen Gabler has joined the investigative team at the Chicago Tribune. Gabler was with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Deena Guzder (SIPA ’08) received a Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting grant to cover commercial sexual exploitation and human trafficking in Thailand. As a freelance journalist, her articles have appeared in Mother Jones, TIME magazine, National Geographic Traveler, Ms. magazine, Common Dreams and elsewhere. She is represented

by William Clark Associates in NYC and is currently finishing her literary nonfiction book, “A Higher Calling: North American Religious Movements for Social Justice” (Chicago Review Press, 2010).

Elizabeth Landau is a writer/producer at CNN.com in Atlanta, Ga. She reports on health and science news for the site and regularly appears on CNN.com’s video portal cnn.com/live to talk about her latest stories. She recently attended a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship “boot camp” on nanotechnology at M.I.T. Amanda Rivkin had work from her “Obamaland: The New Era,” series exhibited in the 10th International Photography Gathering in the Electric Building in Aleppo, Syria, in October. Two images featured in the show, which was previously exhibited in Chicago — a portrait of Barack Obama waving to crowds through bulletproof glass on election night 2008 that previously ran as a double truck in The London Sunday Times Magazine, and a New York Times front page picture of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich in his Springfield office his final day in office — were included in the more than 6,300 images shortlisted for the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize organized by the National Portrait Gallery in London.

The two images also received an honorable mention in this year’s International Photography Awards.

Amanda recently moved to

Washington, D.C., upon receiving a significant scholarship from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service for a three-semester master’s degree program in security studies, where she will focus on terrorism and substate violence, which she hopes will enhance future coverage of regions of conflict and social upheaval beyond the well-worn narratives traditionally told by Western media. While in school, she is still accepting assignment work, and her Web site can be found at www.Amandarivkin.com.

Tamar S. Snyder won second place in the Simon Rockower 2008 Awards for Excellence in Jewish Journalism for her article entitled “Anti-Semitism 2.0 Going Largely Unchallenged.”

She covers business and philanthropy for The Jewish Week in New York.

John Soltes was recently recognized by the New Jersey Press Association and Society of Professional Journalists for his work at The Leader newspaper in northern New Jersey, where he serves as editor in chief. Soltes won first place in enterprising reporting from the NJSPJ for a piece on the state’s efforts to prepare New Jersey for a natural disaster. He also received the Wilson Barto Award for a piece entitled “The Railroad to Nowhere” and shared an award for reporting and writing a fivepart series on the controversial EnCap development in the Meadowlands region.

Sam Stein was married to Jessica Leinwand on Sept. 6 in Vermont. They met at Dartmouth College and both attended Columbia University. Leinwand earned her J.D. from Columbia Law School. The couple live in Washington, D.C. Stein, a reporter for The Huffington Post, has worked for Newsweek magazine, the New York Daily News and the investigative journalism group Center for Public Integrity.

Cassandra Vinograd was moved (with her whole team) from Brussels to London. After several months, they recently launched http://online.wsj.com/mideast.

William Wheeler and AnnaKatarina Gravgaard are in Bangladesh on a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, finishing up a five-month environmental reporting project continued on page 16

15

Book Shelf —

1956 William Beecher’s third novel, “The Acorn Dossier,” focuses on caches of weapons, including some nuclear suitcase bombs, hidden in the West, including the U.S., during the Cold War in case it suddenly turned hot. A renegade Russian general unearths some nukes and threatens to devastate some American cities unless paid a huge ransom. Two hunter killer teams — one led by the FBI, the other dispatched from Moscow — race to eliminate the general before he can trigger a possible missile exchange between the two countries.

1961 Joan Konner, dean emerita and professor emerita, has conceived and edited “You Don’t Have to Be Buddhist to Know Nothing: An Illustrious Collection of Thoughts on Naught” (Prometheus Books, October 2009).

Her first collection “The Atheist’s Bible: An Illustrious Collection of Irreverent Quotes” (ECCO Harper/Collins, 2007) was a National Bestseller. Dean Konner introduced and taught the course on “Covering Ideas.”

1964 Lewis M. Simons and his co-author Senator Christopher S. Bond have written “The Next Front: Southeast Asia and the Road to Global Peace with Islam” (John Wiley & Sons, September 2009), which argues that Southeast Asia, and especially Indonesia, will be the next hot spot in the war on terror. The authors propose that the U.S., having lost credibility with failed military efforts in the Middle East, deploy “smart power” — civilians — instead of soldiers to defuse anger and create alternatives to violent movements. Lew is married to J-School classmate Carol Seiderman Simons. He is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting and the School’s Alumni Award.

1967 Constance Rosenblum, former editor of the City section of The New York Times and currently a writer of the Habitats column for the paper’s Sunday Real Estate

section, is the author of the new book “Boulevard of Dreams: Heady Times, Heartbreak, and Hope along the Grand Concourse in the Bronx” (NYU Press, August 2009). The publication of the book, which tells the story of one of the nation’s iconic streets, coincides with the boulevard’s centennial. Details of her speaking engagements in New York City and beyond are available on the book’s Web site, http:// www.boulevard-of-dreams.com.

1978 Richard S. Ehrlich is one of the main researchers and writers of a newly published book titled “Chronicle of Thailand: Headline News since 1946” (Editions Didier Millet). The book documents, among other events, America’s often brutal involvement in Thailand during the widening U.S.Vietnam War, plus Thailand’s military dictators who napalmed their own northern hill tribes and hunted down suspected Chinese and other communists while the Southeast Asian nation was roiled by 18 coups and attempted putsches.

1984 Judith D. Schwartz has written “The Therapist’s New Clothes,” a memoir about training as a psychotherapist — and a cautionary tale about the seductions of therapy. Schwartz, a freelance writer based in Vermont, has brought this out as a publishing experiment, using the Espresso Book Machine at the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, Vt. She has a blog that explores the implications of new publishing models: http://litadventuresinpod. blogspot.com.

1985 Scott James’ latest novel, written under the pen name Kemble Scott, is now out in hardcover.

Originally launched as a digital edition, “The Sower” was the first novel sold by giant social publisher Scribd.com. That led to national media coverage, and now Numina Press is publishing the first printed edition. The time from when James signed the contract to when the book hit stores was only 29 days, a very

fast turnaround for the publishing industry. In an unusual partnership for the hardcover release, James restricted sales of books from the first printing to independent bookstores.

1988 Ingrid Abramovitch has published her first book, “Restoring a House in the City: A Guide to Renovating Town Houses, Brownstones, and Row Houses.”

The book spotlights town house renovations in 10 cities and tells how the homeowners — a glamorous group that includes the actress Julianne Moore — restored their antique houses to their original glory. Abramovitch, a former editor at House & Garden magazine, writes widely on design. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband Joel Simon (executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists) and their two daughters. For more information, please visit www.Restoringahouse.com and www.IngridAbramovitch.com.

1989 Rebecca Norris Webb and Alex Webb have published “Violet Isle: A Duet of Photographs from Cuba” (Radius Books, November 2009). This multilayered portrait of “the violet isle” — a littleknown name for Cuba inspired by the rich color of its soil — presents an engaging, at times unsettling, document of a vibrant and vulnerable land. To see a selection of images from “Violet Isle,” visit: http://www. webbnorriswebb.com.

1991 Jodie Gould has collaborated with image consultant Anna Wildermuth on “Change One Thing: Discover What’s Holding You Back and Fix It—with the Secrets of a Top Executive Image Consultant” (McGraw-Hill). Stephen Covey, author of the bestselling “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” said, “This superb book gives excellent advice to help jump-start your engine.” In addition to writing books and magazines articles, Gould is also a regular contributor to Harvard Health Publications.

1992

1995

Greg Jaffe and David Cloud have written “The Fourth Star” (Random House), about the lives of Generals Petraeus, Casey, Abizaid and Chiarelli. Jaffe is the senior military reporter for The Washington Post. Collectively, their lives tell the story of the U.S. Army over the last four decades and illuminate the path it must travel to protect the nation over the next century. The careers of this elite quartet show how the most powerful military force in the world entered a major war unprepared and how the Army, drawing on a reservoir of talent that few thought it possessed, saved itself from crushing defeat against a ruthless, low-tech foe.

Kelley J. Tuthill, a breast cancer survivor and reporter at WCVBTV (Boston), has written “You Can Do This! Surviving Breast Cancer without Losing Your Sanity or Your Style.” Tuthill shared her story, from discovery and diagnosis to recovery, with Channel 5 viewers through an Emmy award-winning diary she continues to update for TheBostonChannel. com. The book was written with Elisha Daniels, also a breast cancer survivor.

1994 Sasha Abramsky has written “Breadline USA: The Hidden Scandal of American Hunger and How to Fix It” (Polipoint Press, June 2009), about the tens of millions of Americans who live in a continual state of anxiety about where their next meal is coming from and are suffering shame, despair and malnutrition. Abramsky is a freelance journalist and senior fellow at the New York City-based think tank Demos: A Network for Ideas & Action. His work has appeared in The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, New York magazine, The Village Voice, and Rolling Stone. In 2000, he was awarded a Soros Society, Crime, and Communities Media Fellowship. He is also the author of “American Furies: Crime, Punishment, and Vengeance in the Age of Mass Imprisonment,” “Hard Time Blues” and “Conned.”

Elizabeth Trostler LaBan has published her first book, “The Grandparents Handbook: Games, Activities, Tips, How-Tos, and All-Around Fun” (Quirk Books). No longer content to sit on rockers and bake cookies, today’s grandparents are involved in the lives of their grandchildren more than ever before. “The Grandparents Handbook” features dozens of activities that will guarantee hours of fun, educational quality time.

1998 Manuel Rivera-Ortiz, recognized internationally for his images of poverty and people throughout the world, is featured in the amazing new book published in Colombia titled “Colombia: Percepciones en Blanco & Negro” (Adéer Lyinad Ediciones). The book features 110 emerging photographers working throughout Colombia, South America.

Rivera-Ortiz, a documentarian dedicated to picturing stories of hardship and hope in the third world, wrote the book’s introduction. His photos marry journalism and the very personal experience of his childhood growing up poor in outposts throughout Guayama, Puerto Rico. His award-winning work, which has appeared in magazines and newspapers in the United States and abroad, can be found in the permanent collections of the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, as well as in private and corporate collections (www.rivera-ortiz.com).

2000 Chris Ballard has written his third book, “The Art of a Beautiful Game: A Thinking Fan’s Tour of the NBA” (Simon & Schuster/ Sports Illustrated Books, November 2009), which follows Ballard as he delves into the art and science of basketball, shadowing LeBron James for a week, breaking down Kobe Bryant’s killer instinct, challenging Steve Kerr to a 3-point shootout and looking at the game through the eyes of those who’ve mastered its various skills. Ballard is a senior continued on page 16

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Columbia Journalism School Winter 2010

book shelf

Class notes

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writer for Sports Illustrated who writes a weekly column for SI.com and the back-page column for the magazine every third week.

Marisa Kakoulas has written “Black Tattoo Art: Modern Expression of the Tribal” (Edition Reuss), a photographic journey across the globe in search of avant-garde tattoo art that pays homage to the ancient roots of tattooing in their contemporary interpretations. The journey begins with a look at the history of tattooing before featuring black tattoo portfolios divided into the following chapters: Neotribal, Dotwork, Art Brut, Traditional Revival and Thai/Buddhist. Kakoulas is a New York lawyer and journalist who contributes to tattoo publications as well as mainstream media. Her daily musings on tattoo culture can be found at NeedlesandSins.com.

2003 Michael Bobelian has written “Children of Armenia: A Forgotten Genocide and the Centurylong Struggle for Justice” (Simon & Schuster, September 2009), which profiles the leading players — Armenian activists and assassins, Turkish diplomats, U.S. officials — each of whom played a major role in furthering or opposing the Armenian cause, and reveals, for the first time, the events that have conspired to eradicate the “hidden holocaust” from the world’s memory, including a profound shift in U.S. foreign policy, beginning in the 1920s, that has helped stymie any attempt to hold Turkey accountable for its crimes against humanity.

Bobelian is a lawyer, journalist and grandson of Genocide survivors. His work has appeared in Forbes.com, The American Lawyer and Legal Affairs magazine, and has been featured on NPR’s “The Leonard Lopate Show.”

Geeta Dayal has published her first book, “Another Green World,” on the musician Brian Eno (Continuum, 2009). She was recently named a 2009 Fellow for the National Endowment of the Arts’ Arts Journalism Institute in Classical Music and Opera, held at Columbia this past fall.

She spent the past year teaching at Berkeley, as a Ford Foundation Fellow at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

She currently lives and works in Boston as an arts journalist.

2005 Michael C. Keller has written “Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species: A Graphic Adaptation” (Rodale), a stunning visual interpretation of one of the most famous, contested and important books of all time.

Keller and illustrator Nicolle Rager Fuller introduce a new generation of readers to Darwin’s masterwork, which has been heralded for changing the course of science and condemned for its implied challenges to religion. Including sections about the naturalist’s pioneering research, the book’s initial public reception, his correspondence with other leading scientists, as well as the most recent breakthroughs in evolutionary theory, this riveting, beautifully rendered adaptation breathes new life into Darwin’s seminal and still polarizing work.

2006 Alia Malek has written “A Country Called Amreeka: Arab Roots, American Stories” (Free Press, October 2009), which was Publishers Weekly’s “Pick of the Week.” With a remarkable ability to capture her subjects’ voices, Malek, a Syrian-American civil rights lawyer, sketches illuminating responses to her question: “What does American history look and feel like in the eyes and skin of Arab Americans?” There’s the LebaneseAmerican, too dark for 1960s Birmingham; the PalestinianAmerican surrounded by antiArab violence during the Iranian hostage crisis; the YemeniAmerican deployed to Iraq with the Marine Corps.

2007 Lauren Weber has written “In Cheap We Trust: The Story of a Misunderstood American Virtue” (Little, Brown and Co., September 2009), an exploration of cheapness and frugality in America, through the lenses of history, economics, psychology and a bit of autobiography.

Kirkus Reviews called it a welcome reading for a newly frugal world, and the September issue of O, The Oprah Magazine described it as entertaining, wide-ranging and very timely. For more information and a schedule of readings: www.laurenweber.com.

that has taken them through India, Pakistan and Nepal. Their print and multimedia work has appeared in GOOD magazine, Foreign Affairs, TIME.com, The Caravan magazine and World Politics Review.

2008 David Cohn, founder of Spot.

Us, the community funded journalism project founded less than a year ago in San Francisco, announced it is expanding to Los Angeles through collaboration with USC Annenberg’s School of Journalism.

The USC Annenberg partnership, which will integrate Spot.

Us’ innovative news delivery method with the journalism academy and strengthen ties to the local media community, is made possible by additional funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, one of the original backers of the project.

Lauren Feeney, senior multimedia producer, and Renee Feltz, multimedia producer, worked on Wide Angle’s “Eyes of the Storm,” which premiered on PBS on Aug. 19, 2009. On the heels of Burma’s release of an American prisoner and extension of the house arrest of prodemocracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, Wide Angle tells the story of orphans left to fend for themselves in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis.

Vinod K. Jose is the deputy editor of The Caravan, a longform narrative magazine recently launched in Delhi, India.

Beth Kowitt is a reporter at Fortune, where she covers a wide variety of topics from investing to the beer industry.

She was hired in April after interning for six months.

Gizem Yarbil is in Turkey. She was the correspondent for a piece that aired on “Worldfocus” in September, the first in a series about women in the Islamic world.

Six Alums Win New York State Writing Contest

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Six alumni are among the winners of the 2008-2009 New York State Associated Press Association writing contest.

Robert A. McDonald, Nicholas Phillips, Katie Bachko, Ivan Dominguez, Alex Lang and Elana Margulies, all from the Class of 2008, were members of The New York Times team that won first place in the category of in-depth reporting for their series about a disability epidemic among Long Island Railroad employees. The story was born out of an investigative seminar course taken by all six students in spring 2008, taught by Adjunct Professor Walt Bogdanovich, a three-time Pulitzer-Prize winning assistant editor for The New York Times investigative desk.

2009 Jackie Bischof has joined Reuters as an editorial research assistant for Dean Wright, global editor for ethics, innovation and news standards.

Nikolaj Gammeltoft has been hired as a reporter at Bloomberg News in New York.

Miriam Gottfried is a reporter for Barrons.com, writing about insider trading and the stock market.

Bilal Haye has launched the Web site “The Pakistan Intelligencer” (www.pakistanintelligencer. com).

Abigail Hauslohner had a 6-page story in TIME magazine.

Luis Andres Henao is working for Thomson Reuters in Buenos Aires. He was awarded Reuters Americas best story for treasuries after he nabbed an exclusive interview with Economy Minister Amado Boudou.

Jennifer Jo Janisch was hired as a reporter and assistant producer at Voice of America’s

Latin America division (television) in Washington, D.C. Habiba Nosheen has been selected as a Kroc Fellow at NPR and its member stations.

She will participate in a yearlong intensive training and reporting program. Nosheen is currently producing a documentary for “NOW on PBS.” Casey Riddle was selected as a White House intern.

Betwa Sharma is the UN/NY correspondent for the Press Trust of India, the largest newswire service in the country.

Franz Strasser is a digital producer-reporter for BBC “World News America” in Washington, D.C. With his Pulitzer Travel Fellowship, Strasser is traveling through his native eastern Germany and hosting a live video blog about the developments in economy and society 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The blog was on the BBC News main Web site and was featured on the newscast.

Anchor Matt Frei hosted the program live from Berlin on Nov. 9, when Strasser wrapped up his journey.

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In Memoriam —

1939 DeLancey Jones of Richmond, Va., formerly of Williamstown, Mass., died Aug. 25. He was 93.

He was preceded in death by his first wife, Barbara; his second wife, Catherine; and his brother, Griffith Jones. He leaves his one daughter, Deborah Walter and husband Richard of Kamas, Utah; two stepdaughters, Susie Benson and husband Taylor, and Holly Antrim and husband John Mason, both of Richmond; stepson S. Kirk Materne and wife Stuart of Naples, Fla.; sister Valerie Jones Materne of Washington, Conn.; brother Christopher Peter Jones of Wayland, Mass.; 12 grandchildren and 11 greatgrandchildren. DeLancey was a World War II Navy veteran and retired from Ohio Bell in Cleveland. After his retirement, he and Barbara lived in Williamstown, Mass. He moved to Richmond in 1997.

1943 Margaret Polk Yates Berkheimer, writer and journalist, died Aug. 13, 2009, in New York City at age 93. She is the widow of the late Dr. George A. Berkheimer and the sister of the late Eugene A. Yates Jr. and Betty Yates Shepard Ensign. She is survived by the children of her brother and sister and their children and grandchildren. She was born Dec. 9, 1915, in New Jersey, spent her early childhood years in Birmingham, Ala., came out as a debutante in NYC in 1933, and resided in Manhattan her whole adult life. She served in the OSS during WWII and wrote two mysteries published by E.P. Dutton including “The Widows Walk,” published in 1945, one of the first mysteries with Nantucket, Mass., as the setting. Mrs. Berkheimer was a devotee of Nantucket, residing there in the summers for more than 60 years and contributing to numerous Nantucket causes.

1946 Nona Mary (Rohan) Mahoney of Bristol, R.I., died Oct. 15, surrounded by her loving family. She was 86 and was preceded in death by her husband, John P. Mahoney, M.D. Mahoney was born in Boston, Mass., and graduated from Girls’ Latin School and Emmanuel College. After Columbia Journalism School, she began her career at The Boston Post, where she became women’s editor. She left

that job to start a family. Having seven children in as many years spurred her interest in early childhood education, and she founded the Blue Hill Montessori School. After her husband’s death in 1969, she studied at the Language Clinic at Massachusetts General Hospital to become certified to teach students with learning disabilities. She taught for many years at the Charles River School in Dover, Mass., and at Milton (Mass.) High School.

She also tutored students with learning disabilities. She lived in Milton for 35 years. Mahoney was also a frequent lector at Catholic masses. Her faith played a large part in her ability to accomplish so much despite having lost the use of a leg in 1955, in one of the last polio epidemics in the United States.

She was also a breast-cancer survivor. In retirement, Nona performed with Next Move Unlimited, a theater company, and one of the first professional ones, to bring performers with disabilities and their issues to the stage. She also volunteered with the Talking Information Center in Marshfield, Mass., reading newspapers and books to be broadcast on the radio for visually impaired people. She is survived by her children: James and his wife, Nancy, of Mansfield, Mass.; Sheila of Silver Spring, Md.; Stephen of Meriden, Conn.; Elizabeth of Tisbury, Mass., and her partner, Lewis Colby; Ellen Mahoney Sawyer and her husband, Scott Sawyer, of Edina, Minn.; John and his wife, Nancy, of Cranston, R.I.; and Rosemary of Athens, Greece, and her partner, Aias Tchacos. She also leaves seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

1947 Warren Leary Jr. died Aug. 17 at age 86. He was the former owner and publisher of the Rice Lake (Wis.) Chronotype, and September would have been his 50th year writing the column “Out Amongst ’Em” for that newspaper, which his father, Warren Leary Sr., and August Ender bought in 1923.

It also would have been his 70th year writing for the paper.

In 2003, Leary was inducted into the Wisconsin Newspaper Association’s Hall of Fame.

Leary began his career with the Chronotype in 1938 when, at age 16, he was getting paid 25 cents an hour to help his father with

the printing end of the business.

He graduated from Notre Dame and served in World War II, then enrolled at Columbia Journalism School. After graduation, he briefly worked at the Milwaukee Journal but soon returned to the Chronotype. The paper’s editor had contracted tuberculosis, so Leary rose to the task of editing the large weekly newspaper.

1953 William Trombley, a veteran journalist and education analyst who wrote for Life magazine and the Los Angeles Times during a five-decade career, died Sept. 6.

He was 80. Trombley had respiratory and other problems and died after a heart attack. At the Times, where he was a reporter for nearly 30 years starting in 1964, Trombley was known for reshaping the paper’s coverage of higher education, starting on the beat during a tumultuous period when the Free Speech Movement was roiling college campuses from California to New York. He also covered crucial issues in lower education, from the desegregation lawsuits that brought busing to Los Angeles schools to prickly battles over bilingual education and textbooks.

At National CrossTalk, Trombley wrote a series of in-depth articles on Kentucky’s efforts to reform its higher education system. He also wrote memorably about the obstacles facing the UC system’s newest campus at Merced, including its infringement on the habitat of several endangered varieties of fairy shrimp, “microscopic creatures that float on their backs, waving their 11 pairs of delicate legs” at frustrated UC officials. After graduating from J-School, he joined Life in 1953, working in the magazine’s New York and Chicago offices before heading its San Francisco bureau. After brief stints as bureau chief at Hugh Hefner’s short-lived Show magazine and associate editor and contributing writer at the Saturday Evening Post, he joined the Times as an education writer and was immediately swept up in coverage of the student protests of the 1960s. His stories documented the upheaval of the period, including the birth of the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley and the firing of UC President Clark Kerr. He remained on the education beat for 11 years, switching to general assignment

in 1975 and urban affairs in 1984.

During his last three years at the Times, he reported from the Sacramento bureau. Whatever his official beat, he always returned to education stories and won a number of prizes, including the John Swett Award for Media Excellence from the California Teachers Association in 1983. In addition to his wife of 55 years, Trombley is survived by daughters Patricia Trombley Ball of Montclair, N.J., and Suzanne Rice of Los Angeles, and two grandchildren.

1968 Kenneth Bacon died Aug. 15 at age 64 on Block Island, R.I. He was president of Refugees International, the Washington-based organization that serves as a global advocate for the displaced.

Bacon was a familiar figure in Washington, D.C., as chief Pentagon spokesman during the Clinton administration. He had previously worked as a reporter and editor for The Wall Street Journal, where his assignments included covering the Pentagon.

At Refugees International, Bacon helped raise the organization’s profile as an advocate for refugees in Darfur. In Iraq and Pakistan, he helped bring attention to as many as five million refugees who had abandoned their homes to escape wars and terrorism.

Despite suffering late-stage cancer, he testified as recently as June before a House committee to describe conditions in Pakistan.

He was an intern at The Wall Street Journal in 1965 and scored a rare (for an intern) page-one story about an automated car-repair system that one overheated mechanic described as “the greatest thing since girls.” He went on to join The Journal’s Washington bureau and covered defense, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Federal Reserve. He later became an editor in the Washington bureau. In 2001, explaining why he took the Refugees International job, Bacon said his interest was piqued during the Kosovo conflict in 1999, when a flood of Yugoslav refugees were cared for by international aid organizations. On Aug. 10, Refugees International announced that Bacon had endowed a new program to focus on refugees displaced by climate change. He is survived by his wife, Darcy Wheeler Bacon; two daughters,

Katharine Bacon of Brookline, Mass., and Sarah Bacon of Brooklyn, N.Y.; his father, Theodore S. Bacon of Peterborough, N.H.; a brother; and two grandchildren.

1972 Sam Brown, longtime broadcast award-winning journalist, died in August in Knoxville, Tenn. He was 59. He was honored with a Columbia Journalism School Alumni Award during Alumni Weekend in 2003. Brown was also a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Kentucky.

He was an investigative reporter and anchor at WATE-TV in Knoxville, arriving from WSM-TV in Nashville in 1974. Brown was later an anchor for WKX-TV now WVLT. His three-decade career in broadcast news was studded with honors, both locally and nationally, culminating in four Edward R. Murrow Awards for journalism excellence at radio station WNOX. Most recently, he was an adjunct professor at the University of Tennessee’s College of Communications.

1976 James C. Finkenstaedt Jr., a former Boston Globe editor on the international desk, died in Paris, France, Nov. 28 due to complications after an accidental fall. He was 55. “Jim,” (or “Clem” to his family and friends) of Norwell, Mass., and Paris, was a consummate journalist who dedicated his life to the public’s right to know and the betterment of journalism. His career took him from the Asbury Park Press to the Agence France Press, International Herald Tribune in Paris and finally to the international desk of The Boston Globe, a position from which he recently retired. A brilliant and committed journalist, he was also known for his courteous, hospitable, welcoming and open nature. He was supportive and encouraging to all he met and kept a positive outlook with a sense of humor throughout the most difficult times. He is survived by his wife, Elizabeth, and his four children, Catherine, R. Lindsay, James III and Thomas, all of Norwell, Mass.; his parents, James C. and Rose H. Finkenstaedt of Paris, France; his sister, Isabel Schelameur, and her husband, Francois, and their children, Pierre, Luke and Rose.

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Columbia Journalism School Winter 2010

ALUMNI WEEKEND 2010 —

For a list of accommodations, go to: http://alumni.columbia.edu/visit/s5_4.html To register for Alumni Weekend online, go to: http://www.journalism.columbia.edu/alumni/weekend2010 Questions? Contact the Alumni Office at 212-854-3864 or e-mail jalumni@columbia.edu

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS (subject to change) THURSDAY, APRIL 22, 2010 5:30 p.m. - 6:45 p.m.

HAPPY HOUR 7:00 p.m.

2009 HEARST NEW MEDIA LECTURE Steven Berlin Johnson, noted digital media expert and author

FRIDAY, APRIL 23, 2010 10:00 a.m. - 12 noon HOW TO DEVELOP A BOOK PROPOSAL Professor Samuel G. Freedman Freedman teaches a course on how to prepare a book proposal.

He is the author of six books, most recently “Who She Was: My Search for My Mother’s Life” (2005) and “Letters to a Young Journalist” (2006). Freedman was a staff reporter for The Times from 1981 through 1987 and currently writes the column “On Education,” as well as frequent articles on culture.

Freedman was named the nation’s outstanding journalism educator in 1997 by the Society of Professional Journalists. His class in book-writing has developed more than 35 authors, editors, and agents, and it has been featured in Publishers Weekly and The Christian Science Monitor.

12 noon - 1:30 p.m.

LUNCH Professor Samuel G. Freedman will also moderate a Lunchtime Discussion on “Do You Have a Book in You?”

1:30 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.

HOW TO START YOUR OWN BUSINESS

Professor Duy Linh Tu ’99, founder of Resolution Seven Ready to make that move to being yur own boss? Duy Linh Tu will walk you through the steps of forming your business, from incorporating to writing your business plan to making that first buck. Tu is a co-founder and the creative director of Resolution Seven, a commercial, documentary and DVD production studio. He is a writer, videographer, photographer and multimedia consultant. Prior to forming Resolution Seven, Tu founded and was the chief operations officer of Missing Pixel, an award-winning interactive production company. Tu has worked at ABC News in London and has shot for other major networks such as MTV, CBS News Productions and the Food Network, as well as for independent filmmakers. He is currently in production on two documentaries and travels to newsrooms nationally and internationally to provide consulting and training to multimedia journalists.

1:30 p.m. - 3:30 p.m.

CAREER SERVICES OPEN HOUSE Meet the staff from the Office of Career Services, and hear about programs in place to assist our community of students and graduates. Pose questions about your career and get a few pointers about transitioning to a new position or advancing in your current job. As part of the open house, Gina Boubion, Assistant Director, will offer a workshop (2:30 p.m.) on the secrets of a winning cover letter and résumé.

3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.

COVERING CONFLICT Moderated by Bruce Shapiro, executive director of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, a project of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, providing journalists around the world with the resources necessary to produce informed, innovative and ethical news reporting, drawing on a global

network of news professionals, mental health experts, educators and researchers. Shapiro will moderate a discussion with leading journalists covering conflicts and crises around the world.

4:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.

COVERING THE FINANCIAL CRISIS Moderated by Andrew Serwer ’85, managing editor, Fortune Panelists include: Michael Rapoport ’85, Special Writer, Dow Jones Newswires; Jon Markman ’80, Markman Capital Insight LLC; Jenna Lee ’05, Anchor, Fox Business Network; and Allan Dodds Frank ’70, contributor, The Daily Beast, and president, Overseas Press Club of America How have journalists covered the financial crisis? Lots of stories get written every week, but did reporters make it clear that something truly unusual was building? And if reporters hit the right notes, did any of the warnings even matter?

5:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.

DEAN’S PANEL Nicholas Lemann, Bill Grueskin, Arlene Morgan and Sree Sreenivasan ’93 Every day it becomes more obvious that journalism is undergoing a historic shift and the Journalism School has a major challenge and a major opportunity before it. Join Dean Nicholas Lemann, Academic Dean Bill Grueskin, Associate Dean Arlene Morgan and Dean of Students Sree Sreenivasan as they deliver a “state of the school” and discuss how the Journalism School is helping to shape the future of journalism.

5:00 p.m.

STUDENT-LED TOURS OF BUILDING Meet in Journalism Lobby

6:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.

ALUMNI AWARDS CEREMONY The Alumni Awards are given to

alumni of the Graduate School of Journalism for a distinguished journalism career in any medium, for an outstanding single accomplishment in journalism, for notable contributions to journalism education, or for achievement in related fields. The 2010 Alumni Award winners are: M. Charles Bakst ’67 retired as The Providence Journal political columnist. He began his journalism career while a student at Brown University, where he was the editor of The Brown Daily Herald and was an intern at The Providence Journal for three consecutive summers.

After graduating, he was an intern with Life magazine, before enrolling at the Journalism School. Following Columbia, he was an intern at the Public Broadcast Laboratory (TV) in New York until February 1968, when he began working fulltime for The Providence Journal, retiring 40 years later. From 1972 on, Bakst focused on politics for The Journal, starting with State House bureau, becoming bureau chief in late 1976; from late 1987 to early 1995 he was government affairs editor and Sunday columnist; from early 1995 on he was fulltime political columnist doing at least three columns a week. His daughter, Diane, is from the Journalism School Class of 1993.

John Quiñones ’79 is the Emmy Award-winning co-anchor of ABC newsmagazine “Primetime” and has been with the network nearly 25 years. He is the sole anchor of the “Primetime” limited series “What Would You Do?,” one of the highest-rated newsmagazine franchises of recent years. During his tenure he has reported extensively for ABC News, predominantly serving as a correspondent for “Primetime” and “20/20.” Quiñones’ has been honored with a Gabriel Award for his poignant report that followed a young man to Colombia, as he made an emotional journey to reunite with his birth mother after two decades. Other stories originating from Central America

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include political and economic turmoil in Argentina and civil war in El Salvador. During the ’80s he spent nearly a decade in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Panama reporting for “World News Tonight.” Quiñones has won seven national Emmy Awards for his “Primetime Live,” “Burning Questions” and “20/20” work. Among his other honors are the First Prize in International Reporting and Robert F. Kennedy Prize for his piece on “Modern Slavery — Children Sugar Cane Cutters in the Dominican Republic.”

Ron Suskind ’83 is a Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist, an author and teacher, who has written some of America’s most important works of nonfiction, framing national debates while exploring the complexities of human experience. His latest book, “The Way of the World” (August 2008), is a multilayered narrative about the forces at home and abroad fighting today’s battles for hope and security. His previous book, “The One Percent Doctrine” (June 2006), is the definitive work on how the U.S. government frantically improvised to fight a new kind of war after 9/11. And his book, “A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League,” which follows the three-year path of an AfricanAmerican religious honor student from a blighted Washington, D.C., high school through the end of his freshman year at Brown University, is one of the all-time most acclaimed books on the subject of race and class. It was launched by The Wall Street Journal series for which Suskind won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing.

Arnold Zeitlin ’56, visiting professor at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies in Guangzhou, China, has devoted himself to improving the performance of students and working journalists in the developing world. Zeitlin started working for the Associated Press while still a journalism student and worked as a correspondent and overseas bureau chief for the AP for nearly 30 years, covering civil wars and martial law in Nigeria, Pakistan and the Philippines. He was the pool reporter aboard the U.S. Seventh Fleet command ship for the April 1975 U.S. evacuation of Vietnam. In 1961, Zeitlin interrupted his journalism career to serve for two years as a teacher in Ghana with the first group of Peace Corps volunteers.

He wrote a book about his experi-

ence, “To the Peace Corps, With Love” (Doubleday 1965). Zeitlin’s career has taken him to Bangladesh, to launch a weekly English newspaper, to Hong Kong, for United Press International, and to China, where he has been a visiting professor and consultant to a unique English-language undergraduate journalism program at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies.

SATURDAY, APRIL 24, 2010

A special alumni award will be given to Lydia Polgreen ’00, foreign correspondent for The New York Times, for her coverage of Africa’s deadliest and most complex conflicts, from the crisis in Darfur, Chad and the Central African Republic to the continuing chaos in Congo. Polgreen is based in New Delhi and, along with a team of two other correspondents, she covers India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan and the Maldives. From 2005 to 2009, she was the West Africa correspondent for The Times. Her work in Africa has been recognized with numerous prizes, including the George Polk Award for Foreign Reporting, an Overseas Press Club award and the Livingston Award for International Reporting.

9:00 a.m. - 9:45 a.m.

Part 1: Basics of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn

1:30 p.m. - 3:30 p.m.

CAREER SERVICES OPEN HOUSE

9:45 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.

Part 2: Intermediate/Advanced material from the course

Meet the staff from the Office of Career Services, and hear about programs in place to assist our community of students and graduates. Pose questions about your career and get a few pointers about transitioning to a new position or advancing in your current job.

7:30 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.

ALUMNI AWARDS RECEPTION AND BOOK SIGNING BY ALUMNI AUTHORS Books written by alumni authors in 2009 will be on display, and alumni authors will be available to sign their books from 7:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

The Alumni Book Fair has become one of the most popular events during Alumni Weekend, with dozens of graduates participating in the book signing following the Alumni Awards ceremony. We invite authors who have published a book between April 2009 and April 2010 to participate in the Book Fair on Friday, April 23, from 7:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. in the Rotunda of Low Library. Books published by the authors will be on display and for sale during the reception. Our office will work with the Columbia University Bookstore to order copies of your book. If you would like to participate in the Alumni Book Fair or if you have any questions, please contact our office (jalumni@columbia.edu) by March 1, 2010, and we will send you a form to complete.

8:30 a.m.

CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST 9:30 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.

SOCIAL MEDIA SKILLS FOR JOURNALISTS: PRACTICAL TIPS FOR CHANGING MEDIA LANDSCAPE

Professor Sree Sreenivasan ’93, Dean of Students Having a tough time keeping up with all the technology changes around you? Worried that there’s some new tech tip, cool site or social networking tool that all your friends and family already know about but you don’t? Then this fast-paced seminar aimed at writers and other media professionals is for you. You will learn about some terrific new ideas that will make you more efficient, help you with your work, and improve your online life. You will leave with more than 10 ideas, a useful handout and a whole new outlook on technology.

After this, YOU will be the one showing off to your friends and family.

11:00 a.m. - 11:50 a.m.

CLASS PHOTOS 12 noon ALUMNI LUNCHEON Low Library Rotunda Presentation of the Dean’s Medal for Public Service to Michèle Montas ’69 Michèle Montas is an award-winning journalist who has dedicated her life to securing democracy and freedom in Haiti (see profile, page 10).

Keynote Speaker: Walt Mossberg ’70, Personal Technology Columnist, The Wall Street Journal Walter Mossberg has been the country’s most influential reviewer and commentator on technology for nearly 20 years. He is a champion of the average consumer, a skeptic of technology for its own sake, and a sharp critic of the technology companies when they fail the consumer. Just as readers have long sought informed opinions about theater, film, politics, sports and other traditional topics, they now hunger for similar guidance on

technology products and issues.

And Walt is the columnist they turn to most often, and with the most confidence. Beloved by readers, respected by the industry he covers, and widely followed across the Web, Walt Mossberg offers a shining example of how newspaper journalism can still be relevant and influential in the Internet age.

2:30 p.m.

STUDENT-LED TOURS OF BUILDING 2:30 p.m. - 3:45 p.m.

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM Dean Nicholas Lemann and Professor Michael Schudson

3:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.

Class of 1965 meeting 3:45 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.

FOX/MSNBC ET AL.: IS PARTISANSHIP JOURNALISM? Moderated by Ferrel Guillory ’70, director of the Program on Public Life Center for the Study of the American South (University of North Carolina) Panelists will include Courtney Hazlett ’05, MSNBC.com; Robert Papper ’70, Lawrence Stessin Distinguished Professor in Journalism and chair of the Department of Journalism, Media Studies and Public Relations at Hofstra University (N.Y.); and Betty Winston Baye ’80, editorial writer and columnist, The Courier-Journal (Louisville, Ky.).

5:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.

DEAN’S HAPPY HOUR FOR 25TH AND 50TH REUNION CLASSES For members of the classes of 1960 and 1985

6:30 p.m. on CLASS SOCIALS

Columbia University Office of Alumni Relations Graduate School of Journalism Room 704B 2950 Broadway, MC 3801 New York, NY 10027

Nonprofit Org. U.S. Postage PAID New York, NY Permit No. 3593

Upcoming Alumni Events More at: www.journalism.columbia.edu/alumni

January 19, 2010

February 4, 2010

February 10, 2010 New York, N.Y.

Philadelphia, Pa.

Dean of Students Sree Sreenivasan ’93 interviews President Lee C. Bollinger at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston

euters Institute lecture R and reception with Dean Nicholas Lemann and Professor Michael Schudson

“Time Stands Still” starring Laura Linney at the Manhattan Theatre Club and Talk Back with Professor Helen Benedict, author of “The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq.”

Alumni Reception hosted

by Jane Eisner ’78 at her Merion, Pa., home.

Boston, Mass.

Oxford, U.K.

Alumni Weekend 2010: April 22–25

March 18, 2010