INSIDESTORY
FALL 2011 Vol. 6, No. 1 WWW.JOURNALISM.CUNY.EDU
CUNY J-School Makes Commitment to Ethnic and Community Press By Carmel Delshad, Class of 2011
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t sprang up two months after the 9/11 attacks, a news site to give a voice to communities of New Yorkers who were unfairly tarred by the deadly actions of extremists. In short order, Voices That Must Be Heard grew beyond a predominantly Muslim audience to encompass the city’s vast array of ethnic groups. A decade later, the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism acquired the website from the New York Community Media Alliance and on Sept. 8, relaunched it as Voices of NY. Its goal remains to showcase the work of the ethnic and community press, while adding multimedia content and broader coverage. “Voices of NY offers a different take on an event or issue that may or may not be covered by the
The new Center will aim to raise journalism standards through education and training. John Smock
mainstream media,” said Editor Bernard Stein, a J-School professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. Voices of NY is part of a larger initiative by the J-School to establish a Center for Community and Ethnic Media that would serve as a hub of research, training, and professional support for community and ethnic publications in the New York City area. Overseeing the project are Executive Director Garry Pierre-Pierre, who is also publisher of The Haitian Times, and Professor Sarah Bartlett, head of the J-School’s Urban Reporting Program. [See Dean’s Corner, page 3.] The Center has several key goals. It will explore new digital tools for engaging audiences online and develop business models that can support quality journalism in the media sector. It will continue to offer training to editors, reporters, and news executives to strengthen professional skills. It will focus on activities that promote cross-cultural understanding among New York’s diverse communities. And it will find ways for students of the CUNY J-School and the city’s community and ethnic publications to work together. The School laid the
The community and ethnic media team: Voices of NY Editor Bernard Stein; Executive Director Garry PierrePierre; Urban Reporting Program Director Sarah Bartlett; Voices of NY Assistant Editor Jehangir Khattak groundwork for these efforts by raising $1.1 million from the Ford Foundation and other donors over the past year. Even as it seeks additional funds, it has been spending some of the money to offer free digital media workshops to local editors who want to enhance their publications’ websites. More than 200 journalists from about 30 news outlets such as KoreaDaily, Bangla Batrika, Gotham Gazette, The Pakistani Newspaper, and Caribbean People have taken part so far.
Last June, the School took another major step by acquiring the Voices website, along with responsibility for administering the Ippies awards, which honor excellence in ethnic and community journalism. The School will host its first Ippies ceremony on Apr. 12, 2012, in its newsroom at 219 W. 40th Street. At Voices of NY, students assist Stein and Assistant Editor Jehangir Khattak by translating articles into English and contributing their own work. Meanwhile, roughly 80 news organizations have partnered with Voices to have their stories published in English and disseminated to a wider audience online. A goal of Voices is to produce more original content that transcends neighborhood or ethnic boundaries. “The hope is that we would connect communities to each other,” Stein said, “and show them that they have issues of common concern.” n
The Voices of NY site, unveiled three days before the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, showcases the work of dozens of local publications.
2 Graduation Speaker • Cameroonian Journalist • New Smart Phone Requirement 3 CUNY Journalism Partnership • Dean’s Corner 4 Donor Roll • Tale of Two Scholarships 5 Summer Internships 6 Alumni News • On the Job in Alaska IN THIS ISSUE:
vol . 6 , no . 1
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New Yorker Editor David Remnick to Speak at 2011 Commencement
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Cameroonian Agnes Taile Starts Term as International Journalist in Residence
Smart Phones Required For All Students by Next Fall
By Evan Buxbaum, Class of 2012
By Carmel Delshad, Class of 2011
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JOHN SMOCK
John Smock
avid Remnick, longtime editor of The New Yorker, will address graduates at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism’s 2011 commencement on Dec. 14. The ceremony will take place at TheTimesCenter auditorium, adjacent to the J-School on West 41st Street in Manhattan. Remnick began his reporting career at The Washington Post in 1982 and became a staff writer at The New Yorker in 1992. He has written more than 100 stories for the magazine. Since he became editor in July 1998, the publication has won 30 National Magazine Awards. In 2000, Advertising Age named him Editor of the Year. Remnick’s most recent book, The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama, was published by Knopf Doubleday in April 2010. He is also the author of King of the World, Resurrection, and Lenin’s Tomb, for which he received both the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction and a George Polk Award for excellence in journalism. In September 2009, Remnick appeared at the CUNY J-School as part of its lunchtime Brown Bag Speaker Series, which features prominent journalists before an informal audience of students, faculty, alumni, and staff. In a conversation with Dean Steve Shepard in the newsroom, he discussed The New Yorker’s role in the changing media landscape, the future of long-form magazine journalism, and The New Yorker’s approach to covering stories. n
gnes Taile left her native Cameroon after assailants, apparently unhappy with her reporting, beat her and left her for dead. This year, Taile (pronounced Tally) will be at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism as its fifth International Journalist in Residence. Taile, 31, has received awards and accolades for her work covering government corruption, human rights abuses, and injustice in her home country. Her bold reporting and tenacity have also made her a target on multiple occasions. Three years after starting as a broadcast journalist in 2002, she became the host of a news and opinion radio program called “A vous la parole” (Have Your Say). The show was often critical of government corruption and Cameroon’s long-standing president, but promoted no political agenda. “I don’t have anything against anybody,” Taile said of her nation’s politicians. “I just want them to do their jobs.” But, according to Taile, she started receiving anonymous threatening phone calls beginning in the fall of 2006. She refused to give in to the intimidation and denounced her harassers on the air. Then came Nov. 6, 2006 —the 24th anniversary of Paul Biya’s presidency. That evening, three masked men broke into Taile’s home and abducted her at knifepoint. Taile said the men beat her, dragged her from her house, and attempted to strangle the life out of her. After being left for dead in a ravine, Taile managed to crawl home, but she sustained severe damage to her vocal chords in the attack. Her show was canceled. The assailants were never found. Taile recovered and went back to work as a national radio and television correspondent. She quickly reestablished herself as a courageous journalist 2
www.journalism.cuny.edu
with a keen eye for identifying government corruption. “They don’t like it,” she said, “but to be honest, I don’t care.” Taile spent 24 hours in prison after broadcasting voting irregularities following the 2004 presidential election. In 2008, she gained international recognition for her reporting during the conflict in Chad. As the first journalist from Cameroon to cover the violence that erupted in N’Djamena, Chad’s capital, Taile exposed the Cameroonian government’s involvement in weapons trafficking. Her work garnered widespread attention, and in 2009 she received the International Women’s Media Foundation Courage in Journalism Award. Only days after accepting the honor, Taile was again subjected to a series of menacing phone calls. The intimidation intensified in December 2009 when Taile was confronted by local police officers who taunted her by calling her “Lady Courage.” Fearing escalating threats, Taile fled to the United States where she was granted asylum. She married here and settled in New York. Her 10-year-old son had no passport when she left and, not knowing where she was going, she decided to leave him in Cameroon. She is attempting to obtain a visa for him to join her here. The International Journalist in Residence program is an initiative between the CUNY J-School and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Taile’s presence at the School will give students a personal perspective on the plight of journalists for whom freedom of the press is a matter of daily struggle. Taile said she’s equally interested in developing her investigative reporting skills and exploring entrepreneurial opportunities. In 2011, Taile launched the Cameroonian news website, Le Septentrion Info, and hopes to develop the site while at CUNY. But Taile’s mission goes beyond personal growth. She wants to return to Cameroon and help the country move forward. “There is a need for professional journalists,” she said. “The more we get tools and techniques, the better we can do it. Things can change.” n
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he smart phone has become an essential tool in reporting and disseminating news. Journalists and ordinary citizens around the globe document major happenings via mobile uploads of pictures, video, and text to the Internet. From the tsunami in Japan to the conflicts in the Middle East, some of the most dramatic coverage has come from these devices. Now, for the first time, the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism is requiring all students to own a smart phone.
This photo of an unemployed Park’s Department worker was snapped with a droid phone by student Ajai Raj (‘12) for a story on a Brooklyn food pantry.
The J-School recommends Android or iOS smart phones capable of shooting high-resolution photos and recording high-definition video. A data plan to deliver the content quickly from the field is also necessary. The new requirement will apply to next year’s incoming Class of 2013. However, the School “strongly recommended” to current students that they show up at the start of the semester with a smart phone in their pocket. Class of 2012 student Ajai Raj said his Droid has already served him well. “I’ve used my phone to record ambient sound and to take and post pictures,” he said. “It’s a great tool, and much better than carrying an audio recorder and a camera.” Associate Professor Adam Glenn, who teaches Fundamentals of Interactive Journalism, agreed that the ease of use and portability of smart phones is their biggest draw. “You stumble on a story and you have a video recorder, a camera, and a note-taking device all in your pocket,” he said. “While the pictures and the sound may not be perfect, it lets you report the story instantly with amazing versatility.” n
CUNY Schools Explore Journalism Partnership
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he CUNY Graduate School of Journalism is spearheading an effort to spotlight and support the best journalism being produced on CUNY undergraduate campuses. Faculty and student editors from a dozen CUNY schools gathered Sept. 16 at the J-School to discuss common concerns and learn more about an offer from the J-School to help move their news websites to WordPress and to provide training in using WordPress and a variety of multimedia tools. The goal is to create more attractive, videoand interactive-friendly news sites, and get undergraduate campuses on the same web platform. Many Lehman’s redesigned student site are on platforms that are difficult to use and carry significant charges. Adopting a common platform would allow undergraduate news outlets to feed their best content onto a multimedia website featuring work by students across the university. The cross-campus website could lead to easier sharing of content and could spur collaborative, cross-campus reporting projects. Student news organizations at Lehman and City Colleges recently launched new websites with help from the J-School. Several more undergraduate websites are expected to move to WordPress this academic year. n
Matthew Goldstein Chancellor, The City University of New York
Board of Advisers Roz Abrams
WCBS-TV News Anchor
Dean Baquet
Managing Editor for News of The New York Times
Merrill Brown
New Media Consultant
David Carey
President of Hearst Magazines
Connie Chung
Television Journalist and Anchor
Stephen B. Shepard Dean Judith Watson Associate Dean
Norman Pearlstine
Chief Content Officer at Bloomberg News
Howard Rubenstein
President of Rubenstein Associates
Vivian Schiller
Chief Digital Officer of NBC News Arthur Siskind Senior Adviser to News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch
Richard Stengel
Managing Editor of Time
Kevin Convey
Editor-in-Chief of the New York Daily News
David Westin
Jared Kushner
Mark Whitaker
Publisher of The New York Observer
Adam Moss
Editor-in-chief of New York Magazine
Michael Oreskes
Senior Managing Editor at the Associated Press John Paton CEO of Journal Register Company
President of ABC News Executive Vice-President and Managing Editor of CNN Worldwide
Matthew Winkler
Editor-in-Chief of Bloomberg News
Mortimer Zuckerman
Chairman and Publisher of the New York Daily News and U.S. News & World Report
INSIDESTORY
vol . 6 , no . 1
Patrick Wall Reporter John Smock Photographer Nancy Novick Designer
“I Love the Energy of a Startup”
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e are delighted to be planning the Center for Community and Ethnic Media here at the CUNY J-School. [See page 1.] It’s a great fit for a school that is rooted, spiritually as well as physically, in the most diverse city in the world. With one-third of its population foreign-born, New York is home to more than 350 community and ethnic newspapers published in some 50 languages. To cite just a few remarkable examples: the city has two Nepalese newspapers, seven Chinese publications, 14 Bangladeshi newspapers, and 54 Spanish-language publications. A driving force behind our new Center is Professor Sarah Bartlett, a gifted journalist who runs our Urban Reporting Program. A former reporter for BusinessWeek and The New York Times, she is overseeing the Center’s efforts and has already raised more than $1.1 million to develop our research and training programs. Our fiveyear goal: $5.8 million. Sarah works directly with Executive Director Garry Pierre-Pierre, founder and publisher of The Haitian Times, and Jehangir Khattak, a journalist from Pakistan who oversees our Voices of NY website, which translates and aggregates the best stories from the diverse world of ethnic media. Sarah is also a friend and close colleague. When I was editor-in-chief of BusinessWeek, she was an assistant managing editor who sat in the office next to mine. When I became founding dean of this School, I asked her, well before opening day in 2006, to help us develop the curriculum and get the School launched. She has played a major role in our success ever since. Let me tell you a bit more about Sarah, especially about how she came to be so interested in ethnic media. She was born in Buffalo, where her father was a successful Buick dealer in the 1950s and 1960s. Because her parents lived much of the time in the Bahamas, she
The planned Center for ethnic media taps Bartlett’s interest in the economic well-being of New York City. and her older brother attended elementary school for several years in Nassau – a racially and economically stratified place that left a deep impression on this girl of privilege. She intuitively grasped the importance of economic development in poorer countries and began a lifelong interest in indigenous cultures. When it came time for college, her father sat her down for a talk. A child of the Depression born to Irish immigrants, he wanted to instill in her the values he had learned the hard way — including the importance of earning your way in the world. Rather than pay her tuition, he said, he would lend her the money for her college education, and he expected her to pay him back. So instead of going to Oberlin, Sarah decided to go to school in England, where the public universities charged very modest tuition and where she could gain her degree in three years, not four. Off she went to the University of Sussex, where she earned a B.A. in political science and a Master’s in development studies. Her Master’s thesis: the role of the Bahamas as a tax haven. And yes, she repaid her father’s loan. After graduation, she worked as a researcher for Dutch filmmaker Ludi Boeken, who was filming TV
documentaries on development in Third World countries. For the next 2½ years, Sarah travelled the world — to Jamaica, the Philippines, Chile, and other hot spots. She provided background research for six documentaries that aired in Europe. She began freelancing pieces on economic development issues. “I loved the writing,” she recalls. Back in the U.S. after eight years abroad, she signed on as a researcher at Fortune magazine, then joined BusinessWeek in 1983, writing stories about finance and Wall Street. Five years later she moved to The New York Times, where, among other things, she covered the leveraged buy-
Professor Sarah Bartlett
out craze of the early 1990s, taking a leave to write a book called The Money Machine, which penetrated the world of Henry Kravis and his KKR firm. I persuaded her to return to BusinessWeek in 1992 as an assistant managing editor after the birth of her first child, Emilia, now a sophomore at Vassar. (Her son Ian is a high school senior.) At BW, she presided over many of our best investigative stories during the Wall Street scandals of the 1990s. She left BW in 1998 to join Oxygen Media, an early startup targeted to women that sought to combine television programming with the content being developed for Oxygen’s website. She quickly became editor-in-chief. In 2002, Sarah was appointed to the Bloomberg chair in business journalism at Baruch College. After I signed on to CUNY, Sarah drafted the syllabus for both the Urban Reporting Program and the Business & Economics concentration, then transferred to the faculty of the Journalism School when we opened in 2006. “I was fascinated by what journalism education could be in this new era,” she says. “I’m still learning something new every day. I love the energy of a startup.” Now she has a new startup to energize her – one that taps her longstanding interest in economic development in diverse communities. “Ethnic and community media have a civic impact and contribute to the economic wellbeing of New York City,” she notes. “We’d like to help them fulfill both functions.” To which I can only add, “Amen.”
JOHN SMOCK
Amy Dunkin Editor Carmel Delshad Reporter Jermaine Taylor Reporter
DEAN’SCORNER
Stephen B. Shepard Dean, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism
F o r m o r e i n f o r m a t i o n a b o u t t h e C U N Y G r a d u a t e S c h o o l o f J o u r n a l i s m , g o t o o u r w e b s i t e : w w w. j o u r n a l i s m . c u n y. e d u
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Gifts & pledges $1 Million + John S. and James L. Knight Foundation The Tow Foundation Anonymous Ford Foundation $100,000-$249,999 Bloomberg L.P. The Carnegie Corporation of New York The Hearst Foundations The News Corporation Foundation $50,000-$99,999 Roslyn Abrams Lambert Family Foundation John Paton Connie Chung and Maury Povich
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n behalf of the faculty and students of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, I want to thank our many friends who have supported our dream of creating one of the best graduate schools of journalism in the country. You have made it possible for our young J-School to attract a talented, diverse student body, by offering them a world-class education in the heart of New York City. The past six years have been a wonderful period of growing and learning Dean Stephen B. together. Thanks to the generosity of many good friends, we have awarded Shepard scholarships to 273 deserving students. And, unique among graduate journalism programs, we have supported our students in their paid summer internships at media companies across the U.S. and abroad – all because of the investment so many of you have made in our School. For more information about the Future Journalists Fund and ways to support the CUNY JSchool, please contact Diana Robertson, director of development, at 646-758-7814 or visit our website: journalism.cuny.edu/donate. Thank you, again, to all who have given so generously to ensure the success of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and the future of journalism. n
john smock
$250,000-$499,999
CUNY J-SCHOOL DONOR ROLL 2010-2011: Gifts made between July 1, 2010 and June 30, 2011
$25,000-$49,999 Cahill, Gordon & Reindel LLP $10,000-$24,999 Floyd Abrams Arnhold Foundation City University of New York Barry Diller, IAC Dow Jones & Company Hearst Magazines Journal Register Company Seryl and Charles Kushner Family Foundation The McGraw-Hill Companies The New York Times Company The Starr Foundation Paul W. Sturm $5,000-$9,999 The Correspondents Fund Constance Laibe Hays Family International Reporting Project Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP Press + Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting Jean and Dan Rather Howard J. Rubenstein
Schlosstein-Hartley Family Foundation Scripps Howard Foundation Lynn Povich and Stephen B. Shepard $2,500-$4,999 The Associated Press The Sidney Hillman Foundation Sherrie and David Westin $1,000-$2,499 The Atlantic Philanthropies Connie Bruck Davis Wright Tremaine LLP Jennie and Richard DeScherer Ehrenkranz Family Foundation Melanie Shorin and Greg T. Feldman William Goldman Gottsegen Family Foundation Myrna and Stephen D. Greenberg Cris Russell and Ben Heineman Hunter College Madeline and Marvin Kalb Sarah and Victor Kovner Laura and Gary Lauder Jacqueline Leo
Marion Lister Susan Lyne Anne and Victor Navasky Karen Pennar Martin E. Segal Paul Steiger $500-$999 Cristina Alesci Soma Golden and William Behr Caplin & Drysdale Ruth and Mortimer Caplin Cipa and Misha Dichter Marsha and Anthony Durniak Elizabeth A. Hylton Mary S. Kuntz Deborah and Rocco Landesman Carol and Eugene Ludwig Susan Bay and Leonard Nimoy Geraldine Baum and Michael Oreskes Research Foundation, CUNY Elizabeth M. and Robert C. Sheehan Jane Bryant Quinn and Carll Tucker
$100-$499 Kirsten S. Beckwith Aleen and Herbert Chabot Ron Chernow David Diaz Lois and Alan Fern Risa Finkel Judith Gingold and David Freeman Ruth W. Friendly Richard Glazer The Greenberg Foundation Sally N. Grinspan Nancy Bobrowitz and Timothy Harper Jody and Andrew Heyward Betsy Carter and Gary Hoenig Janklow Foundation Phyllis and Edward Kaplan Juel Janis and Roger Langsdorf Kimberly Syman and Jonathan Lyon Kathy and Richard Nettler J.L. and H.L. Rich Eric P. Ries Barbara and Stephen Rosenfeld Lisa and Joel Rubinstein
Anita and David Saunders Leslie and Howard Shapiro Mort Sheinman Judith and Earle Silber Snyder Cohn Susan and Louis Stamberg Steven L. Stenton Roselyne C. Swig Felice and Steven Wener Michael J. Wolk $1-$99 Seth Alpert Fritzie Andrade Jennifer Avins Sally Brooks Eliot Caroom Thomas F. Conlon Suzanne Ducat and Stanley Cohen Cecille and Gerald Friedler Adrienne Fulco The Fyvie Gemeinhardt Family Damian Ghigliotty Katie Honan Ella and Howard Iams Pearl and Thomas Laufer Sandra J. Lee Daniel Massey Kiernan McGrath Ruth Morss Collin Orcutt Vishal Persaud Dietra Reid Jack Schwartz Edward J. Silberfarb Margaret and Gregory Smith Marjorie and Helmut Sonnenfeldt Elizabeth Surcouf Jane S. Tennen Terri Thompson Therese Wilson and Mark Friedman Elizabeth and Michael Wolf Nancy K. and Charles M. Wolfson Judith and Larry Zepelin
How Individuals Have Contributed to the J-School’s Success By Jermaine Taylor, Class of 2011
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www.journalism.cuny.edu
Constance Laibe Hays
Sheila and Bill Lambert
ing scheme. A mother of three who was married to John Hays, a Christie’s auction house executive, she also wrote a book, The Real Thing: Truth and Power at the Coca-Cola Company. Among the students who have been named Constance Laibe Hays scholars are Bianca Seidman from the Class of 2011 and Amital Isaac from 2012. “Anytime you’re chosen to receive an award such as this, it is a huge pat on the back,” Seidman said. “When I found out more about her, I was even more pleased because she was a successful female reporter and mother who had a passion for identifying ills that needed to be exposed.” When they learned that their friend had been chosen to lead a new graduate journalism school in New York, Bill Lambert said, he and his wife had only one question: “How can we help?” Sheila Lambert added, “We were thrilled to know that someone like Steve – with all his experience and expertise – was taking on this challenge.” The Lamberts – he, a former investment banker with Wasserstein Perella; she, a former executive at Moody’s Investor Services – contributed a full-tuition scholarship for the first two years. Then, in 2008, they pledged $150,000 to endow a scholarship fund in the dean’s name. Earlier this year, they made the last payment on that pledge, and the first award from the Stephen B. Shepard Scholarship Fund will be granted to a student in next year’s incoming Class of 2013. “I am deeply touched by their friendship and generosity,” Shepard said. “They stepped up without any coaxing from me.” n
Constance hays photo: Maritza Wild Chateau
ince the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism was established in 2006, 273 students have benefited from the generosity of individuals and families who have donated money for scholarships. Our donors “have made it possible for our young J-School to attract a talented, diverse student body by offering them a world-class education in the heart of New York City,” Dean Stephen B. Shepard said. Indeed, much of the School’s success is due to the support of people such as John and Ann Laibe, parents of the late New York Times business reporter Constance Laibe Hays, and former financial industry executives Sheila and Bill Lambert, long-time friends of the dean. The Laibes first funded a scholarship in 2006 in memory of their daughter, a Harvard graduate who worked at The Times for nearly two decades until her death in 2005. They had heard about the new J-School from the New York Community Trust, which was advising the family on setting up a memorial. Recently, they told the School they were making arrangements to ensure that the scholarship continues. John Laibe said he and his wife were glad to support an award “that perpetuates the qualities that characterized Connie’s life, like her kindness and professional dignity.” Hays distinguished herself at The Times by writing “Portraits of Grief” profiles of 9/11 victims for a 2002 Pulitzer Prize-winning story package, and covering Martha Stewart’s trial and conviction in 2004 on charges of lying to federal investigators in a stock-trad-
voices from the field
Students report on their summer internships “Every story is about something broken. The roads don’t work. The government doesn’t work. And you can’t walk for more than a few minutes without arriving at a house that still bears the markings of Hurricane Katrina…It is hard to write a story without using the word “Katrina.” And one of the most important things to know is that I don’t know. That I wasn’t there, and that makes me an outsider. I tread carefully.”
—Hannah Miet Levine
The Times-Picayune, New Orleans “I worked as a reporter for five years in Vietnam before coming to the CUNY J-School. I am not unfamiliar with the job. However, covering hyperlocal and neighborhood news [in Harlem] is totally new and different from the international and diplomatic news reporting that I did in my country. I must say that this new experience has helped bring me closer to realities, to a city’s real beat, to its people’s everyday lives.”
—Tuan Nguyen
DNAinfo.com, New York “For this week’s segment on the gardens of the founding fathers, we did about half a dozen interviews with experts in the field – historians of science, agronomists, archaeologists, Thomas Jefferson experts, and authors – before winnowing things down to the two folks we’ll actually have on the show. Then comes the uncomfortable process of telling everyone else they didn’t make the cut – in the nicest possible way, of course.”
—Ian Chant
NPR’s Science Friday with Ira Flatow, New York “We were looking into some leads on prostitutes selling their services to U.N. workers in exchange for rice/goods. Clara and I went out at night with our driver Alvin and a friend of his who knew where to find girls to talk to, and vol . 6 , no . 1
Class of 2011 interns, top row: Al Barbarino, New York Daily News; An Phung, Jakarta Globe; middle: Channon Hodge (filming football legend Jim Brown,) The New York Times Video Unit; Nathan Frandino (interviewing a Chilean miner rescued last year,) The Santiago Times; Felipe Cabrera, The Star-Ledger in Newark; bottom: Alissa Ambrose, Kyiv Post; Carmel Delshad, National Public Radio in Cairo; Amy Stretten, Aboriginal Peoples Television Network in Canada. we stopped by local bars and ‘clubs’ in order to interview them. Clara and I were able to interview four girls during our two nights there. While all the girls confirmed that U.N. workers there have hired them or their companions before, the payment was in money, not rice. Clara and I are thinking of doing a radio and print piece for this story…We are thinking of pitching the story to Reuters when it is done.”
internship, and my sixth in journalism, but the good news is that when you start out sweeping floors and scraping gum off seats, there’s nowhere to go but up. This summer at Scientific American so far, I feel like I’ve gone so far up that I can glimpse heaven – and it turns out it’s right here, at these desks on every side of me, with people laughing about quarks and brain scans and asteroids like it’s their job – because it is. Maybe, someday, it will be mine.”
At the end of my second week, I shouted out a possible headline for the back cover that was used.
—Ichi Vazquez
New Narratives, Monrovia, Liberia “I’m incredibly busy, but loving every minute of it – truth be told, I already foresee the return to school as somewhat of a letdown. This is my tenth
—Lauren F. Friedman
Scientific American Mind/Scientific American, New York “My first day on the job I shadowed
one of the regular editors and I came up with two headlines that were featured prominently in the paper (“Phil-ing fine: Hughes ready for rehab”). Naturally, it’s taken a bit of time to figure out how much editing can be done to the reporters’ articles – I didn’t want to show up as an intern and slash and burn articles. In general, I line edit for spelling and grammar and lightly rewrite awkward sentences. I asked a lot of questions the first week or two to figure out what is appropriate as far as editing – and even tracked changes on one document so that an editor could see what I did and tell me if it was appropriate or too heavy-handed. (It was in the middle.) Also, at the end of my second week, I shouted out a possible headline for the back cover (“Balk of shame”) that was used, which was a thrill.”
—Matt Draper
New York Post Sports Desk, New York
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schoolnotes ALUMNI NEWS CLASS OF ’10: Amy Berryhilll is senior editor at CRN. com. Courtney Carter is a production assistant at WCBS-TV. Dan Chung is assistant producer at WBBMAM, Chicago. Jessica Courtemanche is associate producer at Dan Rather Reports. Colby Hamilton is a writer for the WNYC political blog, Empire. Christine Prentice is a reporter covering nonferrous metals at American Metal Market. Andrea Swalec is a reporter/producer for DNAinfo.com. Teresa Tomassoni was named the second Stone & Holt Weeks Fellow entitling her to spend 12 weeks at The Washington Post and 12 weeks at NPR in Washington. Peggy Truong is a reporter for International Business Times.
CLASS OF ’07: Leslie Caraballo is senior photo-video editor at Gerson Lehrman Group. A political blog edited by Andrew Greiner for NBCChicago.com won an Online News Association award for Online Topical Reporting/Blogging. Danny Massey, who covers labor for Crain’s New York Business, was named to the City Hall News list of 40 rising stars under 40.
faculty NEWS NY1 Noticias political reporter Juan Manuel Benítez (Broadcast News Writing & Production) was named to the list of 40 rising stars under 40 by City Hall News. Susan Farkas (Broadcast News Writing & Production) was nominated for an International Emmy Award for a film she co-produced on Cambodia. Prof. Jeff Jarvis, director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism, has
On the Job with Health & Science Adjunct Jennifer Smith By Patrick Wall, Class of 2011
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INSIDESTORY
Jennifer Smith wears a veil of mosquito netting during her stay last summer with ecological researchers at Toolik Lake in Alaska.
come out with a new book, Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live. Prof. Glenn Lewis, who directs the Journalism Program at York College and teaches Narrative and Feature Writing at the J-School, was elected founding chair of the CUNY Journalism Discipline Council. Dody Tsiantar (Craft of Journalism) helped launch ReinventingGreece. org, a website put together by a group of Greek-American journalism students in Athens.
which is changing and may not look like this for the rest of my lifetime,” she said. In addition to writing localized lead-up and post-trip stories for Newsday, Smith posted daily text, photos, and videos to a special Tumblr blog she created. She focused her reporting as much on the scientists as the landscape they studied. In the process, she said, she was able to practice a trick up the sleeve of every great science writer: “getting [scientists] to talk like humans.” This fall, Smith is teaching a new seven-week Introduction to Environmental Journalism course in the Health & Science Reporting Program. She plans to use her summer travel experience to sell students on the benefits of grant-funded research. She does, however, add a caveat about her Arctic excursion: “If you are a Candace Bushnell-type reporter, this would not be your favorite hang-out.” n
THE DEANS OF JOURNALISM PONDER THE FUTURE
CUNY Graduate School of Journalism 219 W. 40th Street, Third Floor New York, NY 10018
JOHN SMOCK
How will we support quality journalism in the digital age? That was the question posed to the deans of the two preeminent graduate schools of journalism in New York: Stephen B. Shepard of CUNY and Nicholas Lemann of Columbia. The discussion, led by veteran business journalist Myron Kandel, took place Oct. 5 at The Jewish Community Center in Manhattan. The deans traced the financial problems of mainstream media and the slow-to-emerge business models for digital operations. Shepard predicted that more news organizations would charge for their online content and suggested several ways they could develop new advertising revenue. “There is more good journalism produced by more people on more platforms than ever before,” he said. “We can and will find ways to monetize it.”
jennifer smith
his past summer, Jennifer Smith found herself more than 3,200 miles from home, her head shrouded in a mosquito net and a canister of “bear spray” shoved into her pocket. Smith, who covers the environment for Long Island’s Newsday and teaches environmental reporting at the CUNY J-School, said it was her favorite assignment of the year. Smith won a reporting grant from the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass. to spend 10 days in July and August embedded at an ecological research station at Toolik Lake on Alaska’s remote North Slope. During her visit, she watched scientists measure the impact of rising global temperatures on the Arctic. “It was a passport to this wonderful, isolated, amazing landscape,
Jeff Jarvis and his new book Public Parts.
John Smock
CLASS OF ’09: Rima Abdelkader is an assistant producer for a new NBC prime-time news magazine show, “Rock Center with Brian Williams,” which premiered on Oct. 31. Maria Clark is a new-media specialist for New Orleans CityBusiness. Joel Schectman is a staff writer at The Record in Hackensack, NJ.
CLASS OF ’08: Fritzi Andrade is developing web videos for Rodale magazines. Damian Ghigliotty is a reporter at FINS.com.