Columbia Journalism sChool Winter 2010 - Berkeley Graduate ...

Columbia Journalism sChool 

Founded by Joseph Pulitzer Winter 2010 

axel Springer 

akademie 

exchange 

Program 

launched 

— 

The JournaliSm SChool 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 news- 

paper 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.” 

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 

— 

in oCToBer, 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 

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.

2 

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 

ThiS STory iS aBouT 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 industry- 

related 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.

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 

— 

nanCy Solomon ’86, 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 

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 

— 

WoulD you like 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: 

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 

3

4 


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 “Wel- 

come 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.”

investigative reporter Wins 2009 John Chancellor award 

— 

ken armSTrong, 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 

The ColumBia JournaliSm revieW 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. 

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 

CJr encore Fellows: life after Downsizing 

— 

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 

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. 

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. 

5

6 


Alumni Profile 

neil henry ’78 

— 

When he ThinkS aBouT The JoB 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 

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

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 

For meDia-neWS JunkieS, 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 


7

8 


From The alumni BoarD 

continued from page 7 

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. 

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. 

Cuban Blogger Barred From attending Cabot Ceremony 


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

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

helPing 

JournaliSTS 

Tell 

reTurning 

veTeranS’ 

STorieS 

— 

JournaliSTS, FaCing eConomiC ConSTrainTS, 

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. 

Isabelle Shafer ’10 

War veTeranS TranSiTion To JournaliSm 

— 

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, 

Nate Rawlings with Captain Nate Wilson 

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. 

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. 

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 

the art of storytelling with his love of flying. 

Daniel WoolFolk ’10 

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 

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. 

9

10 


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 

50th 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. 

1967 

Philip Smith is vice president for 

communications at the Ethics 

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 



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. 

William Wong is blogging on 

sfgate.com’s City Brights blog 

(http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/ 

blogs/wwong/index). 

miChele monTaS ’69 

— 

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 Secretary- 

General 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 

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. 

1976 

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 

— 

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

iCharD m. SmiTh ’70 

— 

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 



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 

— 

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. 

11

12 


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. 

1989 

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. 

1990 



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. 

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. 

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. 

1994 

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- 

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, 


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-

eBeCCa SanTana ’97 

— 

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- 

cial communications firm in New 

York. Rothstein is the director of 

LakeView Day Camp, a summer 

camp in East Brunswick, N.J. 

1999 

Kathy Chu became a foreign 

correspondent/Asia economics 

reporter for USA Today in Hong 

Kong as of Nov. 1. 

2000 



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 WFAA- 

TV 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. 

13

14 


DomeniCo monTanaro ’07 

— 

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 



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 

Newswriters Association for her 

story “Prayer: The Heart and 

Soul of 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 Anna- 

Katarina 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

ook 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 

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. 

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. 

1995 

Kelley J. Tuthill, a breast cancer 

survivor and reporter at WCVB- 

TV (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. 

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 


15

16 


Book ShelF 


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 Lebanese- 

American, too dark for 1960s 

Birmingham; the Palestinian- 

American surrounded by anti- 

Arab violence during the Iranian 

hostage crisis; the Yemeni- 

American 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. 

ClaSS noTeS 


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 

— 

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.

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. 

17

18 


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

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 African- 

American 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. 

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. 

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. 

SaTurDay, aPril 24, 2010 

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 

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

Part 1: Basics of Twitter, Facebook, 

LinkedIn 

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

Part 2: Intermediate/Advanced 

material from the course 

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. 

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. 

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 

19

Columbia University 

office of alumni relations 

graduate School of Journalism 

Room 704B 

2950 Broadway, MC 3801 

New York, NY 10027 

upcoming alumni events 

More at: www.journalism.columbia.edu/alumni 

January 19, 2010 

Boston, Mass. 

Dean of Students Sree 

Sreenivasan ’93 interviews 

President Lee C. Bollinger 

at the Museum of Fine Arts 

in Boston 

February 4, 2010 

Oxford, U.K. 

Reuters Institute lecture 

and reception with Dean 

Nicholas Lemann and 

Professor Michael Schudson 

February 10, 2010 

New York, N.Y. 

“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 Weekend 2010: april 22–25 

Nonprofit Org. 

U.S. Postage 

PaiD 

New York, NY 

Permit No. 3593 

March 18, 2010 

Philadelphia, Pa. 

Alumni Reception hosted 

by Jane eisner ’78 at her 

Merion, Pa., home.

Columbia Journalism sChool Winter 2010 - Berkeley Graduate ...

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