Medill School of Journalism Alumni Magazine Spring/Summer 2010 by Medill School of Journalism

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ISSUE 75 // MEDILL ALUMNI // SPRING.SUMMER.10

Nonproﬁt Organization

1845 Sheridan Road Evanston, IL 60208-2101

75 ISSUE

MURDER, SHE WROTE PAMELA SAMUELS YOUNG (MSJ81) BEST-SELLING AUTHOR OF CRIME THRILLERS

ALUMNI // SPRING.SUMMER.10

FUTURE OF NONPROFIT NEWS ORGANIZATIONS MEDILL’S NATIONAL SECURITY JOURNALISM INITIATIVE IMC UNDERGRADUATE CERTIFICATE PROGRAM www.medill.northwestern.edu

Students lay out Th e Daily Medillian, circa 1923. Photo courtesy NU Archives

MEDILL MEDILL MEDAL FOR COURAGE IN JOURNALISM

Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award

AWARDED TO DAVID ROHDE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES FOR HIS 2009 SERIES “HELD BY THE TALIBAN”

PRESERVE YOUR INDEPENDENCE… WRITE BOLDLY AND TELL THE TRUTH FEARLESSLY. – Joseph Medill, 1869

Don Schultz

David Protess

Medill congratulates IMC Professor Don Schultz and Journalism Professor David Protess, recipients of the first Distinguished Faculty Achievement Awards. This honor recognizes a colleague who has had an outstanding record of accomplishment at the school and a lasting impact on the professions Medill serves.

SPRING.SUMMER.10

CONTENTS FEATURES

FICTION AFICIONADOS Alumni shift to a different form of writing

POWER OF NETWORKS Medill’s social media curriculum

CAREER BUILDERS IMC09 grads share successful job-hunting tales

15 18

IN EVERY ISSUE

MEDILL NEWS

JOURNALISM PERSPECTIVES: NONPROFIT NEWS SITES

CLASS NOTES

06 WHAT’S YOUR STORY?

FACULTY PROFILE: JOSH MEYER

09 FREELANCER’S COLUMN

IN CLASS: IMC UNDERGRAD CERTIFICATE

REFLECTIONS: A REPORTER RETURNS FROM HAITI

OBITUARIES

MEDILL ALUMNI // SPRING.SUMMER.10

FROM THE EDITOR

:: FROM THE EDITOR Every spring, I clean out my closet, making room for new outfits and rediscovering favorite sundresses. I try to apply this same housekeeping approach to each issue of Medill magazine. In the following pages you will see new departments, such as Medill News (page 5) and a column devoted to freelancers (page 9), alongside old standbys, such as Journalism Perspectives. If you’re curious about the sustainability of nonprofit news sites popping up around the country, fl ip to page 26. The cover story introduces you to Pamela Samuels Young (MSJ81), a best-selling author of legal thrillers. She is one of those extraordinarily productive people who seem to operate on more than 24 hours in a day. Samuels Young, who works full time as an attorney, has published four books in the past four years and is working on a fifth. But she isn’t the only alum who has made a foray into fiction. The cover story (page 10) also features a comic book writer, a playwright and a novelist. I invite you to turn to page 21 and meet Josh Meyer, director of education and outreach for the Medill National Security Journalism Initiative, a program to improve education in national security reporting and research. Based in D.C., Meyer will teach classes on covering confl icts and lead an investigative reporting project in the fall. He comes to Medill from the Los Angeles Times, where he spent 20 years as an investigative reporter and staff writer. After Sept. 11, he created a multidisciplinary terrorism beat in the paper’s Washington bureau and knows a thing or two about chasing stories—literally. He once followed O.J. Simpson down I-405 during the infamous slow-speed police chase in 1994. The article on page 15 is a must-read for anyone who wonders how Medill has incorporated social media into its curriculum, what faculty have to say about new technology and how alumni are using these tools on the job. Speaking of social media, I encourage you to reconnect with classmates and network with fellow graduates through our groups on LinkedIn, Medill Alumni and Medill IMC. For a list of upcoming events in cities near you, check out the Medill School Alumni Facebook fan page. If you aren’t already following Medill on Twitter, find us at @MedillSchool. And please continue sending your updates to medillnotes@gmail.com—because we want to hear from you!

EDITORIAL STAFF Managing Editor Angela Dee Kwan (MSJ09) Editor Belinda Lichty Clarke (MSJ94) Photographer Tommy Giglio (BSJ09) Editorial Assistant Katie Park (BSJ12) Contributors Christina Capecchi (MSJ07) Esther Marianyi Chapman (BSJ90) Alice C. Chen (MSJ04) Alexis Grant (MSJ05) Todd Johnson (BSJ08, MSJ09) Lisa Smith Parro (MSJ02) Jessica Prois (MSJ09) Peter Sachs (MSJ06) Laura Schocker (BSJ08, MSJ09) Chris Serb (MSJ96) Matt Villano (BSJ97)

Please send story pitches and letters to the editor to: Angela Dee Kwan 1845 Sheridan Road Evanston, IL 60208 adkwan@u.northwestern.edu

Printed by Schneider Graphics Bensenville, Illinois www.schneider-graphics.com Angela Dee Kwan (MSJ09) Managing Editor

:: MEDILL NEWS

The Medill School of Journalism welcomed the following speakers, as part of The Crain Lecture Series:

David Rudd, vice president at Axis Agency, one of the nation’s leading multicultural marketing agencies (co-hosted by MAAPSO).

MEDILL NEWS

GUEST SPEAKERS

Matt Booty, president and CEO of Midway Games. Ndidi Massay (BSJ89), director of business operations at ESPN’s high school sports brand, RISE (co-hosted by NABJ).

Roxana Saberi (MSJ99), author of Between Two Worlds: My Life and Captivity in Iran, visited Evanston after making stops in New York and Washington, D.C., as part of a Medill-sponsored book tour.

Jon Lowenstein from NOOR, an international photojournalist collective headquartered in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Kai Bird (MSJ85), author of Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978.

Robert K. Elder, a Medill adjunct lecturer, and Jonathan Eig (BSJ86) presented a talk titled “Crime and Punishment,” based on their latest books. Elder wrote Last Words of the Executed, and Eig published his third book, Get Capone; The Secret Plot that Brought Down America’s Most-Wanted Gangster.

The Professional Speaker Series, a student-run IMC committee, sponsored talks by industry leaders:

Shannelle Armstrong, director of public relations at Sears, met with students for a Saturday brunch to share her experience working in the retail realm (co-hosted by MAAPSO).

Ceci Rodgers, a journalism adjunct lecturer, received a fellowship to attend the fourth annual Business Journalism Professors Seminar in Phoenix in January. Journalism Assistant Professor Jeremy Gilbert joined the faculty at the Segal Design Institute, in the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science. Gilbert (BSJ00, MSJ00) teaches interactive storytelling and human-centered design.

Brent Huffman, journalism assistant professor, screened his newest documentary, “The Colony,” at the University of Southern California in February. The ﬁlm, which is scheduled to air on Al Jazeera in June, details China’s economic colonization of Africa. Huffman teaches broadcast production and enterprise reporting.

The Qatar Foundation named Frank Mulhern, IMC professor and associate dean of research, the Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani Professor.

Broadcaster Beth Bennett was promoted to senior lecturer of journalism. She has produced two short documentary ﬁlms, “Under the Ice,” which aired on Chicago’s WTTW in February and “A Dream Foreclosed,” which was co-produced by Steve James.

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John Copeland, a senior expert in marketing at McKinsey & Company.

FACULTY

WHAT’S YOUR STORY?

:: MEDILL NEWS IMC Assistant Professor Ashlee Humphreys published her research on how legal institutions and cultural beliefs affect the adoption of new consumer practices in the March issue of the Journal of Marketing. She teaches consumer insight.

Professors Don Schultz (IMC) and David Protess (journalism) received the ﬁrst Distinguished Faculty Achievement Awards for their outstanding records of accomplishment at the school and their lasting impact on the professions Medill serves.

STUDENTS Graduate students Lauren Bohn (pictured), and Whitney Harding and undergraduate Alyssa Eisenstein (BSJ10) received scholarships from the Association for Women Journalists.

Four Knight Scholars enrolled in the MSJ program this past winter: Steven Melendez, Geoffrey Hing, Shane Shifﬂett (pictured) and Jesse Young. Medill has partnered with the Knight Foundation to train individuals exploring the intersection of journalism and technology.

Taky Ono (BSJ10) advanced to the semi-ﬁnals for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting/YouTube Contest. He was one of 10 aspiring reporters to compete for a $10,000 international reporting fellowship. His video highlights a rural town in Michigan plagued by metal-poisoned water.

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The Society of Professional Journalists recognized 11 Medill students with the 2009 Mark of Excellence Awards.

The Hearst Journalism Awards Program honored ﬁ ve Medill students for their work in TV, sports and proﬁle writing.

Medill launched the National Security Journalism Initiative in Washington, D.C., with funding from the McCormick Foundation and Carnegie Corporation. Grants worth $1.5 million will support the three-year project to improve education and training in national security reporting and research. See page 21 for more info.

Dan Fietsam (MSA88) is the chief creative ofﬁcer of Energy BBDO, in Chicago, where his clients include the Art Institute, Illinois Lottery and the White Sox. photo by Noel Haan

Creative Energy An advertising executive mixes business sense, artistic expression and social media to boost Chicago brands. Talk to some people in advertising, and they’ll probably agree that most executives cannot balance artistic inspiration and business acumen. Dan Fietsam, the chief creative officer of Energy BBDO in Chicago, is one who can. Energy’s portfolio includes big clients such as Bayer HealthCare, Dial and Wrigley, plus Chicago-area organizations, for example, the Art Institute, the Illinois Lottery and the White Sox. Every day, Fietsam (MSA88) keeps tabs on all those campaigns, guiding Energy’s creative strategy and making the most of marketing efforts in print, on TV, and on Facebook and Twitter. “Social media has forced us to really think about how brands behave with their audience,” Fietsam says. “Obviously, brands have to be a lot more transparent now. They have to be willing to participate in conversations and not just put dumb taglines out there.”

:: WHAT’S YOUR STORY?

Social media has forced us to really think about how brands behave with their audience.

-Peter Sachs (MSJ06)

A music lover makes a career marketing symphony orchestras. Jonna Robertson tried time and time again to escape a career in classical music. And yet, 10 years after graduating from Medill, she finds herself in a position she least expected: vice president of marketing for the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra. The Tulsa native unwittingly planted her classical roots the first day she stepped foot on the Northwestern campus, where she accepted a work-study job at Pick-Staiger Concert Hall. Robertson (BSJ99) had never listened to classical music or played an instrument. But she loved live music—country and metal, that is—and figured marketing the concert hall was as close to that as she would get. “The time that I spent there—I didn’t know this at the time—it was really critical to where I ended up,” says Robertson, 33, who worked at Pick-Staiger during all four years at Northwestern. After graduation, she moved to Austin, Tex., “to pursue her rockand-roll dream,” hoping to promote popular music. But the only job she could find was back in Chicago as marketing coordinator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Jonna Robertson (BSJ99) recently accepted a job as vice president of marketing for the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra.

But the Chicago Symphony Orchestra lured her back later that year for a higher position: director of marketing. “I tried unsuccessfully on multiple occasions to get away from [classical music],” Robertson says. “It’s one of those things where… the universe

The time that I spent there at Pick-Staiger Concert Hall was really critical to where I ended up. “The last thing I wanted to do was move back,” she says. “I had to admit defeat.” Robertson took the position, and four years later, another opportunity came knocking, giving her a chance to deviate from her unintentional classical music niche. She was recruited to serve as director of marketing for the Ravinia Festival, Chicago’s summer concert series, which hosts a mix of popular and classical music.

makes a decision for you and you didn’t even know it, and you come to find out later there was this path you didn’t even realize you were going to follow.” In February, after five years with the Chicago symphony, she joined the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, where she oversees marketing and ticket sales, including a multimillion dollar budget. - Alexis Grant (MSJ05)

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When the Art Institute of Chicago wanted to bring more Chicago residents through its doors last year, Fietsam helped create the Red Cube Project, distributing 500 8-inch cubes around the city. They were meant to be found, picked up, carried around and taken home. Residents could follow instructions on the cubes to complete art projects, for instance, taking a picture of their cube at sunrise or relaying it to faraway places such as Hawaii and Italy. Then, participants could upload photos and leave comments on a custom social networking site for the Art Institute. “That’s an example of what I’m most excited about in terms of finding where I think creative marketing and communications are going,” Fietsam says. He credits Medill with giving him a holistic perspective on advertising, even before the creation of the IMC program, emphasizing management and business smarts in addition to creative chops. And it shows, his clients say. “The creative force in advertising agencies can come from pretty intimidating people,” says Barton Warner, the vice president of marketing and new business for Bayer. “To a commercial person like me, more often than not you feel like you’re just not in the same room. In Dan there’s a warmth and a pragmatism with him. He’s one of the few people who can bridge that and kind of connect one [side of the business] with the other,” he adds.

The Sweet Sound of Success

WHAT’S YOUR STORY?

Make no mistake, Fietsam says, social media is here to stay, but that doesn’t mean marketing and advertising teams should jump to those platforms first when working up a campaign. Those efforts only work if they fit with the client’s goals.

WHAT’S YOUR STORY?

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Giving Voice to the Underrepresented In the glossy world of New York magazines, one editor is working to reduce the stigma of child welfare involvement. Media coverage of egregious child welfare cases often results in the stereotyping of biological parents whose children go into foster care. Nora McCarthy (BSJ97) hopes to change these perceptions with Rise, a magazine that highlights and explores the experiences of these parents in today’s society.

sensitive topics, some experts agree that the magazine gives a powerful voice to underrepresented members of the child welfare system. “It provides a vehicle for parents to be seen as flesh and blood individuals, with real life difficulties that they have struggled to overcome,” says David Tobis, executive

I wanted to ﬁnd a way for foster parents to tell each other their stories as a way of giving them hope. But rather than hire professional journalists to tell stories, McCarthy, 34, turns to parents themselves. Many Rise writers have had their kids removed; only some have had their children returned. “I wanted to find a way for parents to tell each other their stories as a way of giving them hope; to tell them what steps to take and how to do it,” McCarthy says. Recent issues illustrate the subjects the magazine covers: fathers’ rights and roles, parenting from prison, recovering from sexual abuse and handling an investigation. With Rise paying attention to such

director of the Fund for Social Change, a nonprofit in New York. “Rise enables [these] parents to be seen in their totality, not as two-dimensional stereotypes.” In 2005, McCarthy was working for Youth Communication, a New York-based nonprofit that helps teenagers hone their writing skills. While editing Represent, one of the organization’s magazines written by teens in foster care, an idea hit her: Why not start another publication for the people on the other side of the equation—the biological parents? For McCarthy, this endeavor was no

Rise founder Nora McCarthy (left) and editorial board member Youshell Williams host a reading for magazine stories about domestic violence.

stretch. Inspired by writers Alex Kotlowitz (now a Medill senior lecturer), Isabel Wilkerson and Tracy Kidder, who taught one of her classes, McCarthy knew at an early age that she wanted to practice journalism to address big-picture problems. “The reason you become a journalist is because you want to write about social issues and use your writing as a path toward social change,” she says. With this as her mantra, McCarthy secured a $15,000 grant from the Child Welfare Fund and received clearance from Youth Communication Publisher Keith Hefner to produce an inaugural issue. The response to the first book was overwhelming—parents and agencies were hounding Youth Communication for copies. “All of a sudden, it was as if someone was telling these people, ‘You have some dignity and some rights,’” Hefner says. “For the first time, I think a lot of them felt like they had someone on their side.” Read the latest issue at risemagazine.org. -Matt Villano (BSJ97)

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For Whom the Bell Tolls It takes a special lady to receive an invitation to ring the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange. On April 1, 2009, that woman was Evelyn Y. Davis, a prominent shareholder activist. Davis, who has “a little bit of stock in a lot of companies,” is very involved with

the financial crisis. “I have a lot of financial stocks,” she says. “I’m going after the legal fees. They are outrageous. People talk about bonuses. That’s a drop in the bucket compared with legal fees.” Davis’ donation to Medill helps support graduate journalism students who are interested in financial reporting. This year’s recipients include Tey-Marie Astudillo, Thomas Forrest, Graydon Gordian, Zachary Koeske and Amber Lindke.

Davis examines the revolving doors of organizations, such as Congress, the SEC and other regulatory agencies. She says that officials make important decisions that affect companies then turn around and land jobs at the same firms they just benefited. Since 1965, Davis has been the editor of the financial newsletter Highlights and Lowlights. She has lived in Washington, D.C., for 28 years. “I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else,” she says.

:: FREELANCER’S COLUMN

FREELANCER’S COLUMN

Writing about the Man How Neil Chethik became the go-to guy for all things male. movement. The women’s movement had started in the 1960s, and by the 1980s, men were responding, he explains. Chethik started writing stories about male perspectives on relationships, family and work. “I knew I had to find a specialty if I was going to strike out on my own.” He got married in 1987, and his wife accepted a job as a minister in

I KNEW I HAD TO FIND A SPECIALTY IF I WAS GOING TO STRIKE OUT ON MY OWN. Lexington, Ky. After they moved, Chethik decided to freelance again because he wanted more control over his writing. He noticed there were many syndicated columns on women’s issues, but all of the men’s columns were in the sports and business pages. So he decided to craft a column about men’s personal lives. Chethik wrote three columns on spec and sent the package to about 100 newspapers. He followed up by phone and eventually convinced the Detroit Free Press to pick up his VoiceMale column. Then other

A television special based on Neil Chethik’s (BSJ79) book, Fatherloss, will air on PBS this Father’s Day, June 20.

newspapers came calling, and the Universal Press Syndicate published the weekly column for four years. At its peak, Chethik’s column ran in about 35 newspapers, including The Seattle Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The [Cleveland] Plain Dealer. Every week he wrote about a topic, such as divorce, grief, sexual harassment and domestic violence. By 1997, the Internet was taking off, and writers started earning less. Chethik retired the column and wrote his first book, Fatherloss: How Sons of All Ages Come to Terms with the Deaths of Their Dads, in 2001. He put out a second book, VoiceMale: What Husbands Really Think About Their Marriages, Their Wives, Sex, Housework, and Commitment, in 2006. His niche has been so successful that some journalists quote him as the expert, which has led to additional opportunities. These days, Chethik spends half his time pursuing his passion of book writing and public speaking. With his remaining time, he acts as a writing coach and a communications consultant, roles that still fall into his core area. If any of his pursuits dry up, he has others to fall back on. Looking back, Chethik says he has faced a lot of rejection and insecurity, but the sense of control and fulfi llment far outshine the challenges. “I feel overall I’ve made a good deal.” -Alice C. Chen (MSJ04)

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The first time Neil Chethik tried to make a career out of freelancing, he failed. “I thought if I was a good writer, I could be a good freelancer,” Chethik (BSJ79) says. But he discovered he needed more than solid reporting skills. Chethik lacked the ability to pitch stories and the specific niche that transformed his career from fledgling to flourishing. Nearly three decades after leaving Medill, Chethik is an accomplished journalist, author and speaker on men’s issues. Th is Father’s Day, June 20th, a PBS special based on his fi rst book, Fatherloss, is expected to air on stations across the country. And while the media industry continues to suffer, Chethik, 52, says that 2009 was his best financial year yet. He earned around $70,000— which goes a long way in a place like Kentucky, where he bought his fi rst home for $52,000 in 1991. (His advice to freelancers: Keep overhead low.) Worn out from his first reporting job, a six-year stint at the Tallahassee Democrat, Chethik moved to Miami Beach to become a freelancer. But he found that operating costs were too high—phone calls and computer equipment were much more expensive in the mid-80s. And he made two huge mistakes: He tried living solely off journalism assignments and covered too broad a geographic beat. It was hard to label yourself the expert on South Florida, he recalls. Chethik spent weeks pitching and writing stories, earning less than what he made in a week of vacation at his old job. “I was wandering around,” he says. After a year of struggling to make it on his own, he quickly accepted a job at the San Jose Mercury News in 1985. He stayed there for six years, covering politics and features, with an emphasis on psychology. There he noticed an underreported beat—the men’s

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COVER STORY

One Craft, Many Callings MEDILL ALUMNI // SPRING.SUMMER.10

Medill alumni publish crime thrillers, comic books, plays and more. By Jessica Prois (MSJ09)

Most authors merely aspire to breathe life into their stories. But Pamela Samuels Young literally turned her fiction into reality. An attorney married to a plumber, Samuels Young wrote the main characters of her first novelâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a female lawyer wed to an electricianâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;before she ever met her husband.

COVER STORY

The Museum of African-American Art in Los Angeles hosts a book event for Pamela Samuels Young (MSJ81). The best-selling author of legal thrillers reads excerpts from Murder on the Down Low and her latest novel, Buying Time. photos by Tommy Giglio (BSJ09)

being preachy,” she emphasizes. “But it’s a message that’s there: Women need to take responsibility for their bodies.” And her entrepreneurial spirit extends beyond the narrative. Samuels Young, 52, also runs her own publishing company that only issues her books. She had secured a more prominent agent for Murder on the Down Low after her first two books were released, but she was not having much

stigma attached. But she ended up taking his advice for both Murder on the Down Low and her latest novel, Buying Time, selling more copies than her first two books. Her coworker and friend Ellen Farrell, a product law attorney for Toyota, calls the author Superwoman. “I’m surprised her books have not caught the attention of a major publisher,” Farrell says. “It’s just a matter of time before we lose her.” Samuels

across people who tell me “Running something interesting that would make a great story is exactly like getting a tip and running back to the newsroom.

“

luck selling it. Her husband suggested she self-publish the book, and she admits to vacillating on the decision because of the

Young dedicated Buying Time to Farrell, who read all three drafts of the book. An avid mystery fan, Farrell says she knows good

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“I tease him and tell him I wrote him into my life,” says Samuels Young (MSJ81), a former journalist turned full-time attorney at Toyota and best-selling author of legal thrillers. But it’s not just the relationships in her novels that reflect her own story. Her books are personal on a deeper level: As an African-American legal fiction fan who was bothered—even frustrated—that she didn’t see women or minorities as high-profile attorneys in her favorite reads, she resolved to do something about it. Samuels Young, who is based in Los Angeles, has published four books in four years, and has appeared on Essence magazine’s best sellers list. Originally from Compton, Calif., Samuels Young’s literary ambition reaches past the characters; she also crafts her stories with an informative backbone, she says. Her third book, Murder on the Down Low, weaves in a cautionary tale regarding AIDS, as she learned that the disease is the leading cause of death for African-American women ages 25 to 34. “The story doesn’t end up

COVER STORY

writing. “Pam’s characters are much more like real people than other books, even by very well-known authors.” The characters in her books are inspired by both people she knows and through research, Samuels Young says. She recounts a party where she met a viatical broker—someone who makes money selling terminally ill patients’ life insurance policies—and used that as the basis for Buying Time. “Running across people who tell me something interesting that would make a great story is exactly like getting a tip and running back to the newsroom,” she says. She feels she owes much of her success to the five years she spent as a television news writer at WXYZ-TV in Detroit and KCBS-TV in LA. Samuels Young says her ability to drop the reader into the story comes from the speed and compelling manner required to tell the news. Although she cites Maya Angelou as one of her favorite writers, she says she had to find her own snappier voice. “I did struggle trying

to be a poetic, literary writer, and it wasn’t a talent I had,” she says. “I spent years taking a wire story or reporter notes and boiling it down into 30 seconds to grab the viewer.” Poetic or not, Samuels Young has an engaging writing style, her coworker says. “I think a lot of lawyers like to think we write well. And we may in the legal context,” Farrell says. “But translating that into an enjoyable fiction read is very, very difficult. Of those who have tried to do it, I don’t know of any who have done it as well as Pam has.” Not only has Samuels Young balanced her writing career with full-time work as a lawyer, but she has also received numerous accolades, including the 2010 fiction award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. She has also been invited to attend more than 100 book clubs and other speaking engagements. However, success did not always come easily. Samuels Young’s first literary attempt took three years; she felt so proud that she

made copies at Kinko’s to give to family and friends. But people avoided giving her feedback, and now she realizes why. “I still have the manuscript, and I’m so embarrassed I was handing this out,” she says. “I knew nothing about story structure.” So she took a writing course at UCLA, where the instructor advised her to outline a novel similar to her own. After visualizing the nuances in the structure of John Grisham’s The Firm, she says it became “crystal clear” that she needed to change her approach to storyline. She took another year to finish her first published novel, Every Reasonable Doubt, and felt confident this time around. “People didn’t run from me; people told me they couldn’t put it down; people asked if friends could read it,” she laughs. “It taught me a valuable lesson: If you write a book people like, they’re going to tell you.” Read excerpts of her novels at pamelasamuels-young.com.

MEDILL ALUMNI // SPRING.SUMMER.10

Gerry FitzGerald Gerry FitzGerald, the president of a Massachusetts-based ad agency, jokes that in his business, the writing gets finished when the client is riding up the elevator. His day job is quite the departure from his recent undertaking—a 522-page novel he published in 2009. FitzGerald (MSA77) says he lives for writing ads, but he loves fiction, too. The 61-year-old devoted 10 years to researching and writing his first and only book so far, The Pie Man. Set in West Virginia’s Appalachian coal fields, the novel centers around mountaintop removal mining, a process that blasts away the summit ridge of a mountain to retrieve coal. The remnants are pushed into streams, a process that FitzGerald calls “an absolute ecological, social and political tragedy.” The story weaves together the themes of environmental advocacy, love, family and heartbreak. “I wouldn’t consider myself a dyedin-the wool environmentalist. I don’t go around with ‘save the whale’ bumper stickers or anything,” he says. “But I look

at it as a question of fairness. This kind of thing shouldn’t happen in America where we take one area of the country and say, ‘Screw you.’ ” Dissatisfied by many best sellers he was reading, FitzGerald was prompted to write his own book. “I never really cared about the characters, so I didn’t care what happened to them,” he says. “I wanted the books where you feel like you lost your best friend.” FitzGerald, whose current project is a novel about three women climbing K2 Mountain, also teaches business classes as an adjunct instructor at Western New England College. “A lot of people in the advertising business want to just break out and do something in fiction,” he says. “You’re not writing about the product, or the company or a press release about an event. You have control. You’re the king.” The Pie Man can be purchased at Amazon.com.

Gerry FitzGerald (MSA77) spent 10 years researching and writing his ﬁrst book, The Pie Man, set in West Virginia’s Appalachian coal ﬁelds.

COVER STORY

Michele Lowe

Playwright Michele Lowe (BSJ79) was nominated twice for the 2010 Steinberg/ATCA New Play Awards.

New York-based writer Michele Lowe never takes the same route twice. Th is philosophy, when applied to her career path, might explain how she ended up where she is. Formerly a senior vice president of BBDO advertising firm in Manhattan, she now describes herself as the “happiest playwright in the world.” Lowe (BSJ79) has two works up for the 2010 Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award—an unprecedented pair of nominations for any playwright. One of the pieces, Inana, is about the efforts of an Iraqi museum director and his wife to preserve pieces of their culture before the U.S. incursion. “I would always sit and look at my plays and I would think ‘Nope, not this one. Th is isn’t the one.’ It wasn’t until Inana that I could sit and say, ‘Yes, you got it.’ ” And she is not the only fan. Lowe has received praise from The New York Times and Variety magazine, among others. She became interested in writing theater more than 20 years ago and

never looked back. After working in advertising for seven years, she admits it was difficult giving up a secretary and car service, but she knew she made the right move. “It was just time to do something different that I wanted to do from my heart,” she says. Lowe never considered a career as a writer until she met her eighth-grade teacher, Ms. Bushey. “She was six feet tall with big glasses,” Lowe reminisces. “She said to me, ‘You could write children’s books.’ ” Now she sees much of that same interest in her 14-year-old daughter, whom Lowe predicts might become a director. “At first I thought, ‘Oh no, it’s so painful…you’re dealing with so much rejection.’ But then I realized,” she says, “it’s the family business.” View a list of her plays at michelelowe.net. Jessica Prois (MSJ09) is a Las Vegas-based freelance writer.

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(Left to right) Actors Neal Huff, Megan Byrne, Carole Healey, Jessica Love and Tamara Hoffman perform a reading of one of Lowe’s plays, Map of Heaven. photo by Kyle Malone

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COVER STORY

Tips for Burgeoning Authors

Russell Lissau Most business reporters don’t become traders. Most political writers don’t run for office. But for Russell Lissau, writing features about comic books helped him break into the field as an author. And he didn’t land his work on just any publisher’s desk—he started with DC Comics. Lissau (BSJ93) has been a full-time staff writer covering urban affairs for the Daily Herald, located in Chicago’s northwest suburbs, for almost 17 years. A lifelong comics fan, he has written on the topic for many publications including Chicago magazine and The Miami Herald. These assignments exposed him to writers, editors and illustrators who encouraged him to take up the craft. “I just laughed it off and said, ‘No, I just like going to the store and buying my comics,’ ” he says. “Until I had an idea for a story.” Lissau pitched a Superman story about life as a journalist in Metropolis, where the hero’s alter ego works as a reporter, to DC Comics. But the editor already had a Superman writer and asked for other ideas. “I could write the heck out of Batman,” Lissau recalls. After a year of pitching, he received his fi rst assignment in 2005 for Batman Allies Secret Files and Origins. He then completed six issues for a series titled The Batman Strikes! The 38-yearold says his work as a journalist will often inspire comic ideas. “I might be writing about

On publishing: Since most traditional publishers won’t take a long manuscript from a ﬁrst-time writer, Gerry FitzGerald went with a print-on-demand publisher. These require writers to make the edits, and some companies accept about ﬁve to 10 percent of submissions. “That is their form of editing,” he says. Most publishers provide you with an illustrator or a template to create your own cover. A popular print-on-demand publisher is booklocker.com. On networking: Russell Lissau recommends networking through online message boards. A comic book writer’s site that he has used is panelandpixel.com. After writing features about comic books, Russell Lissau (BSJ93) broke into the industry as an author. He recently selfpublished The 29, a story about the men who died on the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald.

a bank robbery and think, ‘What if Catwoman had robbed that bank?’ ” he says. And the thought process goes both ways. “For features, I try to use a threeact structure just like I do in comics. Up high, I introduce the characters. Second is all the drama and history, and the third act is the conclusion.” Lissau has self-published a comic book, The 29, about the men who died on the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald and has written an issue for a new Shrek series, published by Ape Entertainment. For more info, visit myspace.com/rlissau.

On playwriting: If you are serious about breaking into the business, Michele Lowe suggests enrolling in courses. “Go back to school, and not just to night school,” she says. “They’re your entrance into the theater world. The reputation and people open so many doors.” On presentation: Pamela Samuels Young recalls the best piece of advice she ever received— people do judge a book by its cover. Having a good designer is essential for self-publishers, she insists. “You have to have a professionally designed cover. You don’t want people to know it’s self-published from a mile away,” she says. A site for matching writers with cover designers is SPAWN, the Small Publishers, Artists and Writers Network at spawn.org. Listen to more NU alums share their advice on book publishing at bit.ly/cMzLoX.

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@MedillSchool Social media is taught as a valuable tool of the trade. By Lisa Smith Parro (MSJ02)

Santana says a source suggested that her “old school” pen and paper were out of place among the posh stars and their entourages. One of the photographers told her to “Put the notepad away, figure out another way to [report] because that notepad is scaring people,” she recalls. So she swapped her pen for her BlackBerry and sent her observations into the Twitterverse. “Twitter saved my life on that one,” she says. espite the emergence of new media technologies, Medill’s reputation for churning out promising journalists with solid reporting and writing skills will not change, professors assure. Forward-thinking courses

may teach students how to make the most of their 140-character Twitter posts, but the emphasis falls not on the technology itself. Instead, instructors arm students with skills that are applicable across multiple channels and methods of thinking strategically, no matter what trend takes over. “It wouldn’t make sense for Medill to teach everyone how to use Twitter,” says Jeremy Gilbert, an assistant professor of journalism. “But it makes a lot of sense to teach them that social networking tools like Twitter are a great way to help your reporting, communicate with your audience and distribute your content.” In his MSJ course, “Interactive

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edill undergraduate Elisa Santana has 844 friends on Facebook. She has been texting friends since age 13. And she jumped on the Twitter bandwagon this past December to prepare for her Journalism Residency at The Miami Herald. But even this millennial never expected that social media would help her land a front page story in the paper’s style section, Tropical Life. Santana (BSJ11) spent the winter quarter working as a features intern as part of her required JR (formerly Teaching Media). Her editor asked her to follow a group of paparazzi covering celebrity Super Bowl parties and return with a time-stamped feature. While reporting from Miami Beach,

Techniques: Digital Storytelling,” Gilbert teaches students how to tell stories that will be viewed primarily on the Web and mobile devices. He hammers home the art of writing “few but impactful words” and crafting headlines and stories that maximize search engine optimization. Knowing the key concepts and words to emphasize increases the likelihood that the target audience will find your stories. The ability to use social media and other digital skills, like nonlinear storytelling and geotagging, cannot be underestimated in today’s fiercely competitive job environment, he says. “Students leaving Medill are going to an uncertain world,” Gilbert says. “The thing that’s great about the students we get at Medill is that just by showing up in our journalism program, you’re saying you believe there is a future in journalism and you believe the skills of journalism are applicable in a digital environment or in any environment. The basic values of reporting and writing— storytelling—are as useful today as they’ve ever been. Now if you have better ways to tell those stories, better ways to communicate with readers, that’s great. That’s more than we had before.” earning how to harness the power of social media is vital to the success of Medill students, both during their academic years and beyond as they seek the latest jobs in journalism,

public relations, marketing and other communications fields. For some alumni, social media creates the opportunity to experiment with new products and tools. Medill introduced Brad Flora (MSJ08) to a journalism phenomenon that would become the basis for his social media-driven site: hyperlocal news.

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Citizen was heralded as one of Time Out Chicago’s 2010 “Chicago new essentials”—a list of things “so vital that Chicagoans suddenly can’t live without them.” In November, the Chicago Community Trust awarded Flora a $35,000 grant to upgrade the site’s software and better integrate with other social media platforms. The

It wouldn’t make sense for Medill to teach everyone how to use Twitter. But it makes a lot of sense to teach them that social networking tools like Twitter are a great way to help your reporting, communicate with your audience and distribute your content.

As part of what’s now called the Interactive Innovation Project, Flora and his classmates studied off-shoots of traditional newspapers and other startups trying to compete with mainstream organizations. The class designed an online strategy for a local newspaper in western Michigan for their final project. This capstone gave Flora the idea to launch WindyCitizen.com, a social news aggregator “like Digg, but all about Chicago.” The original site focused on some 15 Chicago-centric blogs and has since evolved into a place where people share, rate and discuss their favorite Chicago news stories and events. The homepage features 10 links that appear in order of popularity as ranked by visitors. Founded in May 2008, Windy

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money will help Windy Citizen, which has nearly 6,000 Twitter followers, expand its reach. The site’s top sources typically include traditional news outlets, such as the Chicago Sun-Times and Crain’s Chicago Business, but independent e-zines and blogs also populate the list. For many of these non-mainstream sites, the 100 to 300 readers acquired from Windy Citizen can increase daily Web traffic three- or four-fold, Flora says. The more posts or votes users contribute, the more Windy Citizen “clout points” they earn. “Local discovery is always going to be a big issue and a big problem,” Flora says. “With Windy Citizen, we put the ball in the user’s court.” owhere is audience as paramount as it is in the realm of social media. “We’ve moved from an era where content is king to an era where the audience or the crowd would be king,” says Clarke Caywood, a Medill Integrated Marketing Communications professor.

In his “Communities” course, graduate IMC students examine how to understand the relationships among an organization’s customers, employees and management within a Web 2.0 framework. Bloggers and Twitter followers are the focus groups, and crowdsourcing is a valuable means of

aniel Honigman (MSJ07), social media manager at Sears Home Electronics, works to expand the brand’s presence, create content and drive awareness. His previous job was at the public relations firm Weber Shandwick, where, as a digital supervisor, he helped clients develop social media strategies. The true power of social media, he says, lies in the ability to match stories, photos, videos and discussions with people who would find that information useful and relevant. “That was one of the big things I learned at Medill—the importance of your audience,” Honigman says. “Social media is really people plus content plus Web 2.0 technology.” Prior to joining Weber Shandwick, Honigman was literally the man behind the paper hat: Colonel Tribune, the ubiquitous social media face of the Chicago Tribune. Honigman developed Colonel Tribune while working at the the newspaper. Traffic to chicagotribune.com increased 10 percent as a result of the social media activities the company incorporated under Honigman’s leadership, he says. Honigman is the co-founder of two blogs: the3six5 (the3six5.posterous.com), a crowdsourcing diary of the year 2010, where 365 different people take turns sharing their musings over 365 days; and Old Media, New Tricks (oldmedianewtricks.com), which offers traditional journalists advice on how to use social media in their everyday work. His personal Twitter account, @danielhonigman, boasts more than 6,200 followers. Honigman doesn’t know where he will be in five years but predicts he will continue “to learn and evolve my understanding of the digital space.” He has not ruled out returning

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gaining information. As in journalism, social media allows public relations and marketing professionals to send a message to a specific audience. Such thoughtful messaging is particularly useful in reputation management and crisis management, Caywood explains. “If your reputation is being discussed in a negative context in a blog, you can lose momentum if you’re not on top of it immediately,” he says. “Your reputation gets trashed overnight. That’s the power of social media.”

to the news business. “It was really at Medill where I discovered my passion for digital storytelling,” he says. “I learned how to tell stories in a more visceral way.”

Lisa Smith Parro (MSJ02) is a public relations specialist and freelance writer in the Chicago area.

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s print circulation and broadcast viewership decline, journalists are using social media to help fi nd new audiences, essentially becoming selfmarketers. “In the old days, the aura of the [media] organization you worked for rubbed off on you. Now it goes the other way too,” says Rich Gordon, an associate professor and director of digital innovation at Medill. “Organizations that are the most trusted and valued are the ones that are associated with the people who are the most valued. You as the journalist benefit personally and the organization benefits if you become—to use a marketing term—a brand.” Gordon’s BSJ course, “Journalism and the Networked World,” and MSJ course, “Building Networked Audiences,” teach students the role of social networks in connecting individuals and disseminating information. For their final projects, students choose a content-heavy Web site; analyze how it uses social media, online communities and SEO to build its audience; and recommend improvements.

Gordon says today’s highly competitive and segmented media environment more closely resembles 1890s New York—home to 34 dailies—than that of the media conglomerate-dominated late 1990s, when mainstream organizations launched Web sites. But unlike those of the late 19th century, today’s players have the power to reach a global audience. While the media landscape is rife with choice, every content category has a leader, he says. “The dominant player comes to dominance by taking advantage of networks. It’s more visible and measurable today as our network moves to the Web.” The majority of current Medill students grew up online. Social media is not something they dabble in—but rather live in, with virtually no distinction between their personal and professional lives. But just because you join a social network does not mean you understand it, Gordon says. “It’s not something they have taken a step back from and analyzed,” he says. “But if you understand how networks behave, you’ll have some insights as to how to take advantage of the next thing that comes down the pike, whatever that might be.”

POSITIVE SIGNS

POSITIVE SIGNS On the employment front, bad news echoes everywhere. Jobless rates hover near 10 percent, the highest in almost three decades. We hear about MBAs serving coffee or working in retail for $8 an hour. Markets go up when “only” 457,000 people file first-time jobless claims in a week. Despite all the bad news, the Medill degree remains in demand at all stages of an alum’s career. Medill magazine talked to three recent IMC graduates about their successful job searches. By Chris Serb (MSJ96)

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KATE FLOYD This past fall, IMC students, like most people approaching graduation day, spent their final quarter stressed about securing a job. Not Kate Floyd. She had accepted a position at Chicago International Charter School (CICS) a month into the term. With plans to pursue a career at a nonprofit or in educational marketing, Floyd (IMC09) jumped at the chance to spend her individual residency working at CICS. “They were investing time and money in the internship, so they were hoping to find somebody who would like to take on the role of communications and marketing after graduating,” Floyd, 29, says.

CICS is a network of 13 nonprofit schools that boasts a college preparatory curriculum, serving Chicago neighborhoods that house underperforming public schools. As communications manager, Floyd says marketing these public schools within these geographic boundaries is different from the kinds of data-driven analysis that her peers perform, but can be just as challenging. “Enrollment is our priority; the main communications goal is to fill seats,” Floyd says. “We need to generate enthusiasm in the communities we’ll be serving. That involves everything from using street teams for a door-to-door campaign, to creating video materials instead of pamphlets for parents who have

19 W As communications manager at Chicago International Charter Schools, Kate Floyd (IMC09) strives to generate enthusiasm in the communities CICS serves.

the spotlight and be recognized as a thought leader among charter schools.’ And that’s how I got involved.” Her prior experience includes work at a public housing agency and other educational organizations. “When I entered Medill, I didn’t know if I’d work in consulting or on the client side, but I decided the client side was a better fit because my work would be deeper and broader,” Floyd says. She also credits her Medill education with preparing her well for a real-world marketing position. “I had a bit of experience from my previous jobs, but I never had the technical, up-to-the-minute understanding of data-driven decision making,” she says. “I picked that up at Medill, as well as the stakeholder messaging that IMC gets across so well. Those give me a level of confidence in speaking with a colleague or introducing new ideas that I never had before.”

POSITIVE SIGNS

difficulty with literacy, to simply getting the word out about what a charter school is and how we can offer prospective students something that they can’t get elsewhere.” Th roughout CICS’s 13-year history, professional marketing on this level had been something of an afterthought. Most outreach efforts relied on word of mouth. Floyd notes that the former approach was probably appropriate for CICS’s early years, but the organization’s evolution required a fresh take. “Th is mirrored IMC’s emphasis on the value of learning about stakeholders and engaging them before creating messages, before trying to market or communicate about a given organization,” Floyd says. “In terms of CICS’s marketing, [management] waited a while until they had perfected their operational side of things, honed the curriculum, the educational model, the business model. Then they said ‘We’re ready to start spreading the message, to bring ourselves into

SHIVIKA SINHA strategize and optimize their digital marketing, especially their e-mail marketing,” Sinha says. “I look at their metrics, look at what’s down and why it’s down, and come up with strategies to improve their e-mail marketing campaigns.” Like Kate Floyd, Sinha attributes her ability to compete in the job market to her Medill IMC education. She credits the tools taught in the classroom, such as data analysis and direct marketing, along with Because of her international student status, an academic environment Sinha (IMC09) felt extra pressure to conducive to fully absorbing Shivika ﬁnd a job. She now works as a senior consultant the marketing culture. at Epsilon near Boulder, Colo. “Everything I learned, I learned from scratch,” Sinha says, noting that her pre-Medill background included a bachelor’s in fine arts and a year of professional dance, with minimal exposure to marketing through an internship. “After five quarters here I could talk to product designers, insurance companies, social media outlets, traditional advertisers and e-mail marketers. I went to IMC to expand my opportunities, and in the end I was able to take the job at Epsilon because I could speak its language.”

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Like her classmates, Shivika Sinha spent much of the fall quarter focusing on her job search. But the process of finding work was complicated by her status as an international student. “That definitely created more anxiety,” says 24-year-old Sinha (IMC09), who is originally from India. “Some companies even specified that they didn’t want to hire international students because of potential problems with their visas. Everybody wants to find a job right away, but because I was an international student, I felt extra pressure not to waste time.” Sinha took advantage of Medill’s career services department, while also aggressively reaching beyond that network. She relied on personal connections for traditional methods like sending out resumes and scheduling coffee chats. “My job search was all about preparation, and speaking with as many people as I could,” Sinha says. When Epsilon recruited at Medill during her final quarter, Sinha signed up for an interview. After doing her research, making contacts and interviewing again, she received an offer to join the technology-driven direct marketing agency a few days after graduation. “I did my internship at an online marketing start-up; it was similar in terms of being in the digital space, so that helped me land the job,” Sinha says. “But another aspect that helped me was the clients who came into Medill through different direct marketing classes. I had already done e-mail campaign analysis as a student, so I already had good experience.” As a senior consultant in the office outside Boulder, Colo., Sinha analyzes the marketing efforts of Epsilon, whose clients include organizations such as JPMorgan Chase, Target and AARP. “We help these companies

POSITIVE SIGNS

GRIFFITH Patrick Griffith wasn’t actively looking for a job when he walked into Leap Wireless’s Chicago offices in June 2009. Instead, he and four classmates were seeking academic credit for their IMC Team Project, a required portion of the full-time curriculum. For their assignment, Griffith (IMC09) and his teammates were tasked with solving a specific marketing problem for Leap’s Cricket brand. The Cricket wireless communications service aims to reach the fast-growing “young, ethnically diverse and value conscious” customer base. Yet, Cricket had completed little analysis to ensure it reached that audience in the best way possible. “Our project analyzed a lot of consumer data, as well as an attitude survey, to come up with several attitudinal-based segments,” Griffith, 23, says. “That way, Cricket could categorize consumers and market to them better.” After the students finished the assignment, the Cricket associates thanked them for their work but also indicated that job opportunities were scarce. Griffith’s supervisiors said that they would be in touch if anything came up. “So I applied to every job that I could,” Griffith recalls. His approach led to several first interviews, but only a couple of follow-ups. Shortly before graduating in December, Griffith received an offer from a search engine marketing company. While mulling it over, his project director at Cricket contacted him, and Griffith mentioned the offer.

MEDILL ALUMNI // SPRING.SUMMER.10

IMC TEAM PROJECTS In the spring quarter, full-time IMC students apply to participate in an IMC Team Project (formerly IMC Residency) over the summer. Each group is then matched with a faculty adviser and a partnering company to tackle real-life marketing and communications challenges. Teams conduct research and analysis, resulting in deliverables that will impact participating organizations and their industries. During the project, students collaborate with managers and oftentimes present ﬁnal recommendations to the chief marketing ofﬁcer and other executives.

Patrick Grifﬁth (IMC09) is a consumer segment analyst at Leap Wireless, where he continues to research the work he started in summer 2009 as part of his IMC Team Project.

“Cricket decided that it didn’t want to lose me, so I got an offer within one day,” he says. “When the managers realized these segments were viable and strong, they also realized that they needed someone to continue improving them and make sure they were adopted by the entire organization.” Griffith now works in Leap Wireless’s office near Denver as a consumer segment analyst, in an extension of the work his team started this past summer. A facet of his job involves gleaning the data for strategies that target certain segments. “One project I’m working on involves seeing if certain handsets were purchased more often by specific segments, so we could target our marketing more towards them,” he says. “Other projects might involve looking at how each segment responds to different media types, or seeing if there’s a correlation between segments’ past purchases and future purchases.” Another, perhaps more important, part of Griffith’s job is education. He holds workshops with other departments to help people understand the different segments and how best to target consumers. He also serves on project teams as a segmentation expert, adding insights on how different customers might respond to new products, service changes or advertising efforts. Griffith attributes his abilities to his Medill IMC education. “I had worked at an advertising agency, but from a data management standpoint, all I knew was basic statistics,” he says. “My job requires me to do data management and implementation, and I would not have been able to do the sophisticated types of analysis that I’m now doing before coming to the IMC program.” Chris Serb (MSJ96) is a Chicago-based freelance writer.

HOW TO BE YOUR OWN BRAND SPRING.SUMMER.10 // MEDILL ALUMNI

HE’S GOT THE SCOOP

JOSH MEYER BRINGS 20-PLUS YEARS OF INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING EXPERIENCE TO MEDILL’S NEW NATIONAL SECURITY JOURNALISM INITIATIVE. By Laura Schocker (BSJ08, MSJ09)

MEDILL ALUMNI // SPRING.SUMMER.10

FACULTY PROFILE

n July 4, 2001, Los Angeles Times reporter Josh Meyer broke a chilling story. He had spent the past 18 months covering the case of the “Millennium Bomber,” Al-Qaeda terrorist Ahmed Ressam, who had been arrested in December 1999 at the Canadian border with a car full of explosives and a plan to bomb the Los Angeles airport. But throughout Ressam’s trial, Meyer began to piece together a bigger problem—it seemed as if Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda were shifting their focus from targets overseas to the United States. Working with inside sources at the White House, Meyer finally published the story in early July, laying out the framework for a terrorism attack on U.S. soil. His reporting received criticism from the local Muslim community, while others simply ignored him. Ten weeks later, two hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center towers. For many journalists, this would have been the scoop of a lifetime. For Meyer, it was just another day in the newsroom. During his 20 years as a beat reporter for the LA Times, he helped develop stories from the Michael Jackson molestation case to the rise of Pakistani militant

groups before the Mumbai attacks in 2008. “He’s not one of those people who breaks three stories a year,” says Tom McCarthy, who was the LA Times’ deputy bureau chief in Washington, D.C., where Meyer relocated after Sept. 11. “He was breaking news week in and week out. He can really deliver.”

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his high school yearbook photographer. He attended the University of Vermont and then transferred to the University of Massachusetts, where he wrote for the school paper as a columnist. By senior year, he had completed his first investigative piece, on how the school was trying to cover up an asbestos contamination at the

MEYER’S NOT ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE WHO BREAKS THREE STORIES A YEAR. HE WAS BREAKING NEWS WEEK IN AND WEEK OUT. HE CAN REALLY DELIVER.

Staying ahead of the news has become second nature for 48-year-old Meyer, who joined the Medill faculty in January as director of education and outreach for the new National Security Journalism Initiative based in Washington. Meyer says he grew up asking about everything. His mother jokes that most children go through their terrible twos asking tons of questions—but he never grew out of it. “She thinks I’m lucky that I have a job where I get to ask a lot of questions,” he says. Growing up outside of Boston, Meyer started his journalism career as

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student center. “I like to think I caused a lot of trouble on campus, trying to hold the university accountable,” he says. “Administrators were furious, but the story was solid. Then I caught the bug and that was it.” After college, Meyer held several journalism jobs, including an internship at The Boston Globe and placements at several bureaus of United Press International, before landing at the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner and, eventually, the LA Times in late 1989. There, he covered several beats and

Josh Meyer, director of education and outreach of Medill’s new National Security Journalism Initiative, will lead graduate students in a special reporting project that focuses on the national security implications of environmental change this fall. photos by Diane Rusignola (MSJ09)

position as the director for Medill’s National Security Journalism Initiative. Though the timing was right to look into the future instead of clinging onto the traditional model, the decision to actually make the jump was not an easy one. “It was hard to leave, but this is just like a once in a lifetime opportunity to really build something that we hope will be central to the debate and the dialogue.” Laura Schocker (BSJ08, MSJ09) is a journalist working in New York City.

National Security Journalism Initiative The National Security Journalism Initiative at Medill is a three-year program funded by the McCormick Foundation and Carnegie Corporation that is geared toward improving education and training in national security reporting and research. Joining Meyer as co-directors are Professor Ellen Shearer, director of Medill’s Washington program, and lecturer Timothy McNulty, former foreign editor of the Chicago Tribune. Among the plans for the initiative, including new courses, visiting fellows and an annual symposium, Meyer will also lead a group of graduate students on an investigative project starting in September. “Essentially, I’ll be [their] Washington bureau chief,” he says. “I’m looking at this as a way to help ﬁgure out how to teach and also how to do this really important kind of journalism in this fast-changing media environment.”

Read more about the Medill National Security Journalism Initiative at medillnsj.org.

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McCarthy says, was Meyer’s talent for getting sources to call him back—and trust him with information. “I don’t know if he’s ever eaten a meal that hasn’t had some sort of ulterior source motive,” he jokes, explaining that Meyer stayed competitive with reporters at top national papers—who often had sources leaking stories to them—through his sheer resourcefulness and ability. “He not only kept even with them, but he beat them because he was flat out better than they were,” McCarthy says. Th rough his years as a journalist, Meyer’s goal has been to give more than a shallow impression of the news. Instead, he strives to get behind the story to find, “not a ‘gotcha’ story, but an intelligent scoop,” he says. He wrote a story in 2006 called “A Mystery Man Who Keeps the FBI Up at Night” about a frontline Al-Qaeda member. Lacing together firsthand anecdotes from acquaintances, information from inside government sources and his own reporting that took him as far as Trinidad, Meyer assembled an illuminating profi le of the man who former Attorney General John Ashcroft had labeled one of the most dangerous Al-Qaeda militants. After the story ran, a former editor sent Meyer a note saying the piece was one of the best things he had read on terrorism since Sept. 11. As he moved on to his next story, Meyer taped up the note in his cubicle as a reminder that the hunt for depth is always worth it. “You have to sort of scrap and struggle and be persistent and cultivate sources and spend a lot of time at night and on weekends meeting with them,” he says. “The best thing that [your sources] could ever tell you, especially when the story is very controversial, is when they call you and say, ‘Hey, you got it right.’ ” Th rough Meyer’s career, he has shared two staff Pulitzer Prizes at the LA Times and won countless other awards. But as his reporting has progressed, the world of print journalism has changed, too. Over the past few years, he has watched layoffs and budget cuts take their toll on the industry, making it more difficult to dedicate time and resources to nuanced reporting. So when he saw the opportunity to depart the world of daily reporting, he applied for a full-time

FACULTY PROFILE

began working on investigative stories, including the O.J. Simpson murder case. Police initially reported that Simpson was not a suspect in the killing of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman. But Meyer asked a source at the Los Angeles Police Department who confi rmed that Simpson was, indeed, a suspect. On June 17, 1994, Meyer learned that Simpson was part of a police chase heading southbound on the I-405. “My editor said, ‘Go get him,’ ” Meyer recalls, explaining how he caught up to Simpson’s Bronco and pulled in a few cars behind him. Despite police threats to back off, Meyer proceeded. He followed the chase to Simpson’s house where it ended in a standoff. Again, officers were unhappy with Meyer’s presence and threatened to pull his press card for crossing a police line. “They hadn’t given me any good reason to show that I couldn’t be there, so I stood my ground,” he says. “It made for a fun evening.” The coverage of the O.J. Simpson case illustrates one of Meyer’s strongest assets: the ability to develop and trust sources. Th is talent was especially important when he started to write about issues of national security and, after Sept. 11, when he created a new multidisciplinary terrorism beat in the LA Times’ Washington bureau. “In the realm of national security, there’s never a paper trail. You have to just trust that you’re going to get enough sources because if you write something that’s wrong, you’re dead,” he says. “I’ll talk to eight people who only know part of the puzzle, then I’ll piece all of that together and figure out what’s really going on.” Story by story and scoop by scoop, that list of sources has grown. Today, he estimates that he has compiled the names of several thousand people who he has met over the years into a database. “He had extra storage attached to his computer because his source lists were so enormous that his computer couldn’t handle them,” recalls John Hoeffel, who was Meyer’s line editor at the Washington bureau of the LA Times. “He saved and archived and catalogued an unbelievable number of e-mails. Josh would know someone to call on any story happening anywhere.” But more important than recordkeeping,

Lecturer Judy Franks teaches “Media/Message Delivery” as part of the IMC undergraduate certiﬁcate program.

IN CLASS

A Commitment to Communications Medill extends the IMC curriculum to undergraduates across campus, feeding student interest in an evolving ﬁeld. By Esther Marianyi Chapman (BSJ90)

MEDILL ALUMNI // SPRING.SUMMER.10

“WELCOME TO CHAOS!” That’s how adjunct lecturer Judy Franks greeted her undergrads on the second day of class in “Media/Message Delivery” this past winter. A seasoned advertising and marketing professional, Franks is neither disorganized nor unprepared. Rather, she wanted her students to know that they are going to be studying media messaging at a time when the industry is experiencing rapid and frantic change. “One of the main things I teach is how to navigate chaos,” Franks says. “The world isn’t falling apart, old media is not dying, but it’s not in a stable state. No one knows how it’s going to land. So we discuss how we can interpret what’s going on in a world where old rules are collapsing.” This commitment to making sense of integrated marketing communications, coupled with burgeoning interest by students, has expanded the IMC curriculum to the undergraduate level. In fall 2008, Medill launched an IMC Certificate

Program to allow Northwestern students to explore contemporary marketing and communications concepts and their effects on the world. Students interested in the certificate are encouraged to apply for the program after completing three prerequisite courses and two IMC core classes. Once accepted, they take one writing class and two electives. Undergraduates from colleges across NU can now register for courses, such as “Consumer Insight,” “Market Research,” “Message Strategy and Writing for Persuasion” and “Direct, Database and E-Commerce Marketing and Interactive Marketing Communications.” If those titles seem reminiscent of a business school catalogue, that is precisely the point, say students enrolled in the program. The IMC classes create a bridge between Northwestern’s traditional liberal arts learning and the world where that learning will be applied. “As an economics and political science

major, I was taking a lot of theory or linear classes,” says Justin Smith (WCAS11). “The IMC classes are very real-world, very practical. All the professors have real-world experience and a keen understanding about what’s going on in the world and what it takes to get a job in this profession.” Marty Kohr, an adjunct lecturer who teaches “Entertainment Marketing,” is just one faculty member with decades of realworld experience. For 34 years, he worked at advertising giants like DDB, Y&R and Leo Burnett before joining Medill. Kohr hesitates to say he throws out the textbook, but he admits to pushing the envelope on traditional lectures. A typical week for a student in Kohr’s class may include talking with a guest speaker from an agency; reading the latest industry news posted on the class Facebook site and Twitter feed; and referencing Super Bowl ads to discuss how businesses create buzz through viral marketing before and after the game. “The best teaching is what is happening

W Laura Vogel (WCAS10) and Rocio Reyes-Morales (SESP11) present opinions about issues

shaping today’s media. Sample topics from the class include: Can the 30-second spot be saved? Can paid content models work when consumers are used to free digital content? Is social media a transformation or a fad?

role of integrated marketing in a fragmented media world, IMC professors say their students seem more excited than confused or concerned. Today’s Medill students, and their peers throughout the university, see no difference between “old media” and “new media,” because they have been raised using

“And many of us no longer have a ‘church and state’ view about marketing versus journalism. The IMC skills translate really well into being able to communicate a message that resonates with a specific audience, whether I’m a reporter or I use it to transition to a different industry.”

IN CLASS

“MANY OF US NO LONGER HAVE A ‘CHURCH AND STATE’ VIEW ABOUT MARKETING VERSUS JOURNALISM. THE IMC SKILLS TRANSLATE REALLY WELL INTO BEING ABLE TO COMMUNICATE A MESSAGE THAT RESONATES WITH A SPECIFIC AUDIENCE, WHETHER I’M A REPORTER OR I USE IT TO TRANSITION TO A DIFFERENT INDUSTRY, SAYS NICK WELDON (BSJ10).” multiple media, including the Internet. This generation recognizes that modern journalism is as much about branding as it is about reporting or writing. And they acknowledge that understanding marketing concepts, such as branding or multiplatform delivery, will only help advance their careers as journalists, or elsewhere. Th at’s the case with Nick Weldon (BSJ10), who discovered during a job at a custom publisher that each magazine revolved around a well-developed brand and marketing strategy. “I thought it might be a good opportunity to expand on my IMC knowledge. The way the industry is now, you have to have a lot of different skills. There’s a convergence of strategic and writing skills,” Weldon says.

With the IMC Certificate’s core classes filled to capacity and an increasing number of applications, Medill itself may have become fully “integrated,” bringing the study of communications to students in all areas of the university. In the end, professors say, the goal is the same as it was 100 years ago: to teach tomorrow’s professionals how to write and distribute cohesive and compelling messages. And if there’s a bit of chaos in the meantime? Bring it on. Esther Marianyi Chapman (BSJ90) is a freelance writer based in Sacramento, Calif. W

every day,” Kohr says. “I even have a daily quiz, the ‘Student of the Game,’ to make sure students are staying in tune to what’s happening in the world, whether that be the latest launch of the iPad or the news about Comcast purchasing NBC.” One of Kohr’s students, Alexandra Finkel (BSJ11), says classes like his have taught her how to take full advantage of social networking sites. She now follows several news organizations on Twitter and shares information with fellow students through Facebook. Finkel, an editor at The Daily Northwestern, has even used this new understanding of viral video consumption to help develop an integrated marketing strategy for the paper. However, she says one of the greatest benefits of the IMC program is that it has prepared her for life after Medill—a career that may or may not be in journalism. “I think it’s hitting everyone right now that, although we want to go into journalism, that may not be where a job works out,” Finkel says. “Many Medill students have a double major or a minor. And IMC fits so well for journalism. The knowledge will help 100 percent, whether or not you end up in journalism.” Approximately 50 percent of Medill undergraduates accept journalism jobs after graduation. This statistic means half the class will land in other industries, including marketing or public relations. That reality has not been lost on Medill leadership, who realize the school must prepare students for today’s job market. While journalists may disagree about the

Jennifer Goodman Linn, former senior vice president of consumer marketing for Nickelodeon, visits as a guest judge for student presentations.

Undergraduates Amanda Blake (SOC10) and Costas Tamu Christ (WCAS10) discuss the evolving media landscape in Franks’ class.

SPRING.SUMMER.10 // MEDILL ALUMNI

Brave New World It’s an uphill battle for nonprofit media organizations, but the online frontier is re-energizing a band of ink-stained would-be retirees, who are hopping in the saddle for one final ride. By Christina Capecchi (MSJ07)

MEDILL ALUMNI // SPRING.SUMMER.10

cott Lewis has a message for that unrelenting newspaper Grim Reaper: Not so fast. “I don’t understand all these defeatists in the industry,” he says. “Everybody’s saying nobody will pay for news, and they haven’t even asked for it. It drives me nuts.” Lewis, for one, is asking. As the 33-year-old CEO of Voiceofsandiego.org, the fi rst nonprofit, Web-based news site of its kind—and the five-year-old grandparent to a half dozen similar sites—he can’t afford not to. And his request is hard to miss: Just below the banner on the site’s home page are the words “donate now.”

Once you click, you see examples of how far your dollars could go. For $35 you could buy an online ad to attract new readers to Voiceofsandiego.org. For $100 you could cover a month of subscription fees for research; for $15,000, libel and liability insurance for two years. That spirit of transparency runs throughout the operation and animates its young executive, who provides his cell number on his work voicemail, and whose cell phone message says, “Hi, this is Scott. Feel free to shoot me a text at this number.” Lewis has no corner office—the 13-person staff works in one big, open room—and no corner-office mentality; his Twitter bio says “CEO & helpful assistant to

amazing staff at Voiceofsandiego.org.” He has no formal management experience, no reservations and just a few gray hairs. It’s the traditional news business turned on its side, and it seems to be working. When you shed the printer, the paper and the bureaucratic weight, these sites suggest, you become a lot more agile. For the Voiceofsandiego.org staff, that nimbleness has spawned success: breaking news, exposing fraud and winning awards. Lewis says he receives about four inquiries a week from people inviting him to speak at a conference or others considering launching a nonprofit venture. But he isn’t popping open the bubbly yet.

Staff writer Don Terry (MSJ80) joined the W Chicago News Cooperative, a nonproﬁt Web-based outlet that launched in October 2009 and became the ﬁrst organization to produce entire pages for The New York Times.

diff di ffer eerent en nt wh when when e yyou’re ou’r’re st ou sstaring tar arin ar ingg some so meth me eth thing thin ing new,” in new, ne w,”” says says sa y Buoen, Buooen n, 59, 59, now now a something M Mi P managing i editor. di ““E E ’ MinnPost “Everyone’s thinking positive, ‘Oh, we can do this, we can…’ as opposed to being at a place where they’re retrenching and they’re just trying to get by.” Evan Smith (MSJ88), whose nearly 18 years at Texas Monthly magazine culminated with the editor-in-chief and president status, stepped down to run The Texas Tribune. “We didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into,” he says. “There was no predicate for this, no playbook to draw from. It’s vastly different and it requires that you use different muscles.” Six months after launching the site, the 44-year-old magazine veteran is still adjusting to the rapid pace of online news. “I’ve felt like Indiana Jones outrunning the boulder.” Features move from imagination to publication more quickly on the Web, which seems to beget more ideas. Buoen says he sees a major story proposal every week. But it can be hard for ink-stained refugees to shed the shackles of the traditional modus operandi. Old habits may explain why MinnPost printed a paper edition in its first months and posted a daily PDF for those who wanted to hold print

ccopies co piies p es above ab boove h i coff ffee mugs, or why h their Voiceofsandiego.org hired advertising reps. “One of the sicknesses the newspaper business brought to the online world was [the idea] that you had to hire people who had a convertible and drove to the tire stores and got people to buy ads,” Lewis says. “But that doesn’t work because the ads just aren’t worth that much, and you end up spending as much as you earn.” Funding remains the million-dollar question. These sites have been hoisted on the backs of big-name donors and foundations. Convincing average Joe donors, or members, as public radio calls them, to make smaller commitments is proving more difficult. After five years Voiceofsandiego.org claims 1,066 members. Lewis is hoping to hit 10,000 members in five or six years, which, according to public radio models, would reflect a loyal readership of 100,000; in circulation terms, that figure would represent the nation’s 83rd largest paper. Voiceofsandiego.org generated $960,000 in revenue last year, but the breakdown is not too encouraging: About 10 percent came from advertising; 10 percent from donations of $5,000 or less; 20 percent from major gifts ($5,000 or

SPRING.SUMMER.10 // MEDILL ALUMNI

“We’re hardly in the perfect situation,” he says. Some major grants supporting the operation will expire next year. It takes Lewis 10 hours and three cups of Trader Joe’s Nicaraguan coffee to get through a work day. And five years into it, he is still trying to persuade San Diegans to digitally consume their news. It’s an uphill battle to become a household brand when other news organizations are competing for the attention of your readers, and you’re still not sure what to call yourself. The nascent San Francisco-based site that will provide content for The New York Times is currently being referred to as The Bay Citizen. The Texas Tribune calls itself a “public media organization,” while the Seattle Post Globe, which provides a Yahoo e-mail address on its contact page, is a “multimedia site.” But how they describe their nature and scope is incredibly uniform: “nonprofit, nonpartisan,” comes the singsong pledge, with a focus on public policy, immigration and education—all the red meat, none of the fat. The oath of objectivity is a modest promise compared with the guarantee of quality. MinnPost offers the slogan “a thoughtful approach to news,” while Voiceofsandiego.org vows “groundbreaking investigative journalism” and “in-depth analysis.” You talk big when you need readers to pay big—and you work hard, ditching the traditional job description to roll up your sleeves and build something out of nothing. Suddenly Roger Buoen (MSJ75), who had retired from his position as deputy managing editor at the Minneapolis Star Tribune to golf every day, was rigging a phone system for MinnPost. “We had no idea whether it would work or not—and we still don’t—but there is something psychologically, inherently

MEDILL ALUMNI ALUMNI // // SPRING.SUMMER.10 SPRING.SUMMER.10 MEDILL

JOURNALISM PERSPECTIVES

more); 20 percent from foundations; and 40 percent from “advised funds,” charitable giving administered by a third party for a family or organization. That is what worries The New York Times media reporter Richard Pérez Peña about these nonprofit news ventures. “A lot of them have depended heavily on a small number of wealthy backers,” he wrote in an e-mail. “That always makes me nervous, not least because the fewer the backers, the easier it is to lose the backing.” “I think that in the long run, with few exceptions, a business has to behave like a business,” he continues. “In other words, I’d feel more confident about an operation that relies on profit than one that relies on philanthropy.” Of course, these editors realize that, as they scramble to defy gravity and make that shift. MinnPost’s revenue split is easier to swallow: roughly a third from advertisers, a third from members and a third from grants and foundations. Buoen says they are aiming to “wean ourselves off the grants and foundations” by 2012. “Then we’d be sustainable.” The equation is different for the Chicago News Cooperative, which last year became the first outside media organization to produce entire pages for The New York Times. “Thank God we have this relationship with The New York Times,” says Don Terry (MSJ80), staff writer. The 52-year-old Chicago native is working with many former colleagues from The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune at the news cooperative, but he’s not thrilled about what the arrangement allows. “They’re still getting the quality without having to pay,” he says. Insiders are quick to point out that the creation of such news cooperatives tends to coincide with the elimination of staff positions. The same month the Chicago News Cooperative was launched, for instance, The New York Times announced it would soon cut 100 newsroom jobs. “I’m happy about the present and I’m afraid about the future—more for the next generation,” Terry says. “I’m closer to retirement.” Christina Capecchi (MSJ07) is a freelance writer from St. Paul, Minn. She contributes to the The New York Times and syndicates the column Twenty Something.

NONPROFIT NEWS SITES VOICEOFSANDIEGO.ORG

ST. LOUIS BEACON

Launch date: February 2005 Start-up funding: $355,000 CEO: Scott Lewis Size of full-time staff: 13 Unique monthly visitors: 120,000 Site: voiceofsandiego.org

Launch date: April 2008 Start-up funding: $250,000 Editor: Margaret Wolf Freivogel Size of full-time staff: 13 Unique monthly visitors: 30,000 Site: stlbeacon.org

THE NEW HAVEN INDEPENDENT & THE VALLEY INDEPENDENT SENTINEL (two editions)

CHICAGO NEWS COOPERATIVE

Launch date: September 2005 (NHI), June 2009 (VIS) Start-up funding: $80,000 CEO: Paul Bass Size of full-time staff: 6 Unique monthly visitors: 72,983 Site: newhavenindependent.org

CROSSCUT PUBLIC MEDIA Launch date: April 2007 Start-up funding: $200,000 Executive director: Jill Mogen Size of full-time staff: 5 Unique monthly visitors: 60,000 Site: crosscut.com

MINNPOST Launch date: November 2007 Start-up funding: $1.1 million CEO: Joel Kramer Size of full-time staff: 15 Unique monthly visitors: 200,000+ Site: minnpost.com

Launch date: October 2009 Start-up funding: $550,000+ CEO: James O’Shea Size of full-time staff: 13 Unique monthly visitors: 10,000 Site: chicagonewscoop.org

THE TEXAS TRIBUNE Launch date: November 2009 Start-up funding: $4 million CEO: Evan Smith Size of full-time staff: 21 Unique monthly visitors: 150,000+ Site: texastribune.org

THE BAY CITIZEN Estimated launch date: late May 2010 Start-up funding: about $5.25 million CEO: Lisa Frazier Estimated size of full-time staff: 15 Site: baycitizen.org

Back from Haiti

REFLECTIONS

Reporter’s Notebook:

Fresh out of school, a digital journalist heads to Port-au-Prince to cover the aftermath of the January earthquake. By Todd Johnson (BSJ08, MSJ09)

“Is The Grio on the ground yet in Haiti?” read the text message from my dad, less than 24 hours after a 7.0-magnitude quake had shaken Haiti to its core. As a big fan of current events, my dad always wanted me to be on the frontline of any breaking news story. So when his question came, I wasn’t surprised. But he was surprised to learn that I was headed there soon. The assignment to cover the earthquake came quickly. I work as a digital journalist, otherwise known as a one-man band, for NBC’s The Grio, a video-centric news site for an African-American audience based in New York. I had been in Midtown, interviewing a local Haitian man trying to reach his grandmother in Port-au-Prince, when I noticed a half-dozen missed calls. I called back my editor, who asked if I had a passport and was willing to go to Haiti. I didn’t hesitate. “I’m down,” was all I could think to say. But what did I know about covering natural disasters or tragedies? Not much. Fresh out of graduate school and less than five months on

lly

SPRING.10 // MEDILL ALUMNI

photos by Kevin Tu

the job, I was still getting my feet wet. After reporting in Haiti, I consider them soaked. Overwhelmed does not begin to describe my mental state as I boarded a chartered plane at JFK airport that Wednesday night. I was traveling with a freelancer, Marlie Hall, a MacBook, Sony mini-DV camera, and a BlackBerry that would soon lose service. If it hadn’t been for the excitement rushing through my body and the pressure of the responsibility associated with this type of reporting, I don’t know how long I would have lasted. I landed in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, after 1 a.m. on Thursday. After sleeping a few hours at a hotel, I journeyed to another airport, La Isabela International, to fly to Port-au-Prince with another NBC News team. We were unsuccessful because the airport was not allowing planes to land; even some humanitarian aid groups were turned away. On Friday, I was unable to join an NBC vehicle convoy headed to Haiti because it was full. So Marlie and I stayed in Santo Domingo

REFLECTIONS

and spent the day reporting at a nearby hospital that was treating Haitian patients injured in the earthquake. The next day, after nearly 12 hours on the road, I finally made it to Port-au-Prince around 1:30 p.m. I was greeted by the choppy sounds of military helicopters and planes. There wasn’t much time to stop and think; we left the airport as soon as we arrived. Across the street, a new community had formed. As I would later say in a reported piece, what I saw was a “tragedy of tents.” Not because everyone was helpless, but because I saw so much of people’s strengths reduced to uncertainty. And communities like these, made up of people, open space and countless tent homes, had taken over the city. Witnessing nearly an entire city’s population walking the streets looking for family, friends and food is a hard scene to take in. If people weren’t moving, they were sitting down or settling anywhere they could: alleys, tops of buildings, sidewalks, corners and broken-down cars. What stays with me most are the small stories. I met Pierre, a 22-year-old student searching for his younger brother. Knowing his other relatives were safe, he walked through the streets asking friends and journalists like myself if we had seen “Junior.” I don’t know the first thing about finding a lost loved one, but I know what I saw in Pierre’s eyes: unwavering optimism. Though all the signs pointed to him not finding his brother, Pierre clung to the hope

that he would. That’s as simple as it gets. And there is a lesson in humility that comes with meeting someone barely younger than you, who is under the impression that you’re the one teaching a lesson. In reality, it was the opposite—I was learning from Pierre. I remember an older man, maybe in his early 70s, walking along Delmas 33 road. He stood atop what used to be a health center and held a small shovel, attempting to pick up the rubble. Barely able to keep

desperation. That’s not the whole story. I traveled to Pétionville, a suburb of Port-au-Prince, where an American school had collapsed. The building had become a refuge for dozens of families with nowhere else to go. There, I met a woman, Jeanne Ker, who lived through Hurricane Katrina and was visiting her mom when the earthquake hit. Though Jeanne was not injured, her mother was lying on the floor in a blanket, awaiting

“WE SHOULD PAUSE BEFORE WE ASSUME THERE IS ONLY ONE LAYER TO TRAGEDY, DEVASTATION BREEDING DESPERATION. THAT’S NOT THE WHOLE STORY.” his balance, he worked as if he had the strength of 10 men and women. Maybe someone he knew was trapped under the building, or maybe he felt compelled to help clean the streets. These are the stories people back home need to hear. Too often we learn of devastation and assume those who survived must be “devastated.” While this is true to an extent, it is important to realize that good can come of these situations. Sometimes, this is a tough sell. Haiti will undoubtedly take a long time to recover, but we should pause before we assume there is only one layer to tragedy, devastation breeding

medical attention. Jeanne, unwilling to leave her mom, was prepared to stay in Haiti much longer than originally planned. Talk about strength. For five days, I did what I always wanted to do: shoot, report, write and edit original content. I did not go to Haiti to chase the big network stories or provide the latest statistics on the growing death toll. I went there to try to tell the small stories well, so the big stories could be better understood. To view Todd Johnson’s stories from Haiti, visit thegrio.com.

:: CLASS NOTES

Eddie Deerfield (BSJ50) was a guest speaker at the 2009 Veterans Day program sponsored by the public library of Palm Harbor, Fla. His topic was “The Life and Times of American Airmen who Fought Nazi Germany in World War II.”

David W. Plath (BSJ52) released a new documentary video, “Can’t Go Native?” about five decades of engagement between people in a town in northeastern Japan and an American anthropologist.

John Bell (BSJ55) recently published three major articles in Mortgage Banking magazine, the official publication of the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Elida Witthoeft (BSJ79, MSJ80) was named senior coordinating producer of ESPNews. Witthoeft joined ESPN in 1998 after an 18-year newspaper career, including jobs at the Chicago Tribune, Minneapolis Star Tribune and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Patricia Lee Blackburn (BSJ74, MSJ76)

Patricia Lee Blackburn (BSJ74, MSJ76) was named vice president of corporate communications and public affairs for Ingersoll Rand, a global manufacturing company in the climate control, industrial and security markets.

64 68

Brenda Boudreaux (MSJ83)

Laura S. Washington (BSJ78, MS J80) was named president of the Woods Fund of Chicago, where she served as a board member for eight years and a board chair for three years.

Jeff Hilton (MSJ79) spoke at the natural products trade show Expo West on March 11. Hilton is a partner and co-founder of Integrated Marketing Group based in Salt Lake City.

Brenda Boudreaux (MSJ83) was appointed to a second term as a member of the Board of Directors of Northern California Public Broadcasting. She taught broadcast journalism at Medill for five years and now practices business immigration law.

We want to hear from you and so do your classmates! Send your updates to medillnotes@gmail.com or mail to Fisk Hall, 1845 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208.

SPRING.SUMMER.10 // MEDILL ALUMNI

Wallace Judd (BSJ69, MSJ70) retired after 30 years as a communications manager for Delmarva Power in Wilmington, Del. He has also worked as a communications manager for the Institute of Energy Conversion at the University of Delaware and as a reporter for The Wilmington News Journal.

Reece Hirsch (BSJ82) wrote the legal thriller The Insider. Hirsch is a partner at the law firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius in San Francisco.

Donald S. Lefler (BSJ76) became communications manager of the Electronics, Intelligence & Support group at BAE Systems, where he has worked since 2007.

Ira Berkow (MSJ64) published Summers in the Bronx: Atila the Hun and Other Yankee Stories, a collection of his sports columns and features written for The New York Times.

Art Novak (BSJ68) published the novel Doglegs through iUniverse, which gave the book its Editor’s Choice designation. Novak wrote Doglegs under a Presidential Fellowship at the Savannah College of Art and Design, where he is an advertising professor.

CLASS NOTES

Lynne Tolman (BSJ84)

Lynne Tolman (BSJ84) received the 2010 Woman of Consequence award from the city of Worcester, Mass., for her volunteer work as a board member of the nonprofit Major Taylor Association. She is also a copy editor at the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.

Andrew Bagnato (BSJ85) was named director of public relations for the Fiesta Bowl in Scottsdale, Ariz., his hometown. Bagnato covered sports for more than two decades for the Chicago Tribune and The Associated Press.

86 MEDILL ALUMNI // SPRING.SUMMER.10

Rich Pliskin (MSJ86) was elected to the board of trustees of the New Jersey chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. Pliskin, who lives in Princeton, N.J., has written humor for National Public Radio, other public radio networks, The New York Times and numerous Web sites.

Cheryl Renee Gooch (MSJ86) was appointed Dean of the School of Humanities and Fine Arts at Gainesville State College in Georgia.

Bob Bernstein (MSJ87) wrote The Adventures of Barista Boy and Bongo Baby, a coloring book about the importance of buying organic and free trade coffee, for his company, Bongo Java.

Alan Heymann (BSJ97)

Julie Judelson Diaz (BSJ89) married Eugene R. Diaz (WCAS88). The couple lives in New Jersey with their children Zane, Scarlett, Maverick and Conrad.

Kim Holstein (MSA90), president of Kim & Scott’s Gourmet Pretzels, co-hosted the Chicago’s International Women’s Day “Yes to Peace” event on March 8.

Farnaz Khadem (BSJ91, MSJ91) was promoted to senior director for public relations and corporate communications for Life Technologies Corporation in Carlsbad, Calif. Last year, San Diego Magazine named Khadem as one of “The Powers to Be” in an article on role models for the next generation.

Scott Dahl (IMC94) welcomed his son, Jacob Dahl, on March 31, 2009. Jacob joins his brothers Trevor and Charlie and sister Sarah.

Alan Heymann (BSJ97) became the director of public affairs for the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority, which serves 2.1 million customers in the metropolitan area. Heymann also recently earned his law degree from George Washington University Law School.

Elizabeth Bozdech McNab (BSJ97, MSJ97) and her husband Pete McNab welcomed their first child, Katherine Sofia McNab, on Feb. 15. They live in Alameda, Calif.

Lia (Merriweather) Rogers (BSJ97) and her husband Michael welcomed their new daughter, Nevaeh Siobhan, on Oct. 15. They live in Northbrook, Ill.

Benoit Denizet-Lewis (BSJ97) released a collection of his previously published writing, American Voyeur: Dispatches from the Far Reaches of Modern Life. He continues to write for The New York Times Magazine.

:: CLASS NOTES

CLASS NOTES

Natalie Y. Moore (MSJ99) received the Studs Terkel Community Media Award from the Community Media Workshop at Columbia College Chicago. Moore is a public affairs reporter at Chicago Public Radio.

Anna Raff (BSJ99) and Aleksey Kuznetsov welcomed their second daughter, Marie Raff Kuznetsov, on Oct. 12. Their first daughter, Kathryn, is 3 years old.

Suzanne Robitaille (MSJ00) wrote her first book, The Illustrated Guide to Assistive Technology & Devices, about technological devices for people with disabilities. Robitaille is the founder of abledbody.com and an interactive producer for Hearst Newspapers in Greenwich, Conn.

Josh Karp (MSJ01) wrote Straight Down the Middle, a memoir and book of golf tips that blends Zen and sport.

Diane Haag Libro (BSJ00) became the communications director for the Volunteers of America of North Louisiana, which specializes in adoptions, after-school programs for at-risk youth and housing for people with mental illness and developmental disabilities.

Derek Gale (MSJ02) was named director of communications at the Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Day School in Chicago. Gale also teaches copy editing classes for MediaBistro.

Anita Kothari (BSJ02) married Ryan Jaronik on Oct. 11 in Lombard, Ill. The couple lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Julie Lissner (BSJ04) married Ryan Edlefsen (WCAS02) in August in Chicago, where the couple resides.

Michelle Gabriel McGovern (BSJ04, MSJ04) married Michael McGovern on Oct. 10 in Healdsburg, Calif. The couple met at Northwesternâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s School of Law, where they graduated in 2008, and now live in Washington, D.C.

05 Jolene Loetscher (BSJ01)

Suzanne Robitaille (MSJ00)

Pushpendra Mehta (IMC05) launched vcherish.com, a media and e-publishing site that provides freelance opportunities to people ages 15 to 45.

SPRING.SUMMER.10 // MEDILL ALUMNI

Jolene Loetscher (BSJ01) received her MBA in global executive leadership from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She works for Sanford Health in media relations and runs the company DooGooders, a dog clean-up company, which recently received an ADDY Award from the South Dakota Advertising Federation.

Erin Gulden (MSJ05) was named associate managing editor of Sky, the in-fl ight magazine of Delta Air Lines. She was previously an associate editor at Mpls. St.Paul Magazine.

OBITS

:: OBITS Jane Hennessy Fortune (BSJ37), 94, of Indianapolis, died Feb. 16. In 1938, she married William Lemcke Fortune Sr., with whom she owned two weekly Indiana papers. Fortune was involved with many local civic organizations and charities, such as the Indianapolis Garden Club and the Junior League. She also was on the advisory board for the Dyslexia Institute of Indiana, where she helped found a summer day camp for kids. She is survived by four children, eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Marianne Springer Weller (BSJ38), 94, of Naples, Fla., died Jan. 23. She was the society editor for the Mansfield News Journal, where she had her own column, Marianne Says. Weller was a photographer for the Columbus Dispatch in Georgia and later studied china painting, teaching classes until age 87. Her first husband, John M. McCabe Jr., died in World War II. She was preceded in death by her second husband of 49 years, Karl E. Weller, and grandson, Thomas W. Huston. Weller is survived by two daughters, two granddaughters and two greatgranddaughters.

MEDILL ALUMNI // SPRING.SUMMER.10

June A. Meier (BSJ45), 86, of Morton Grove, Ill. Meier was treasurer of the Rogers Park Women’s Club for 20 years and president of Morton Grove Women’s Club in the early 1990s. Born June Marti, she was preceded in death by her husband August. Ruth Krause Jacobson (BSJ47), 84, of Clayton, Mo., died March 9. She was the first woman executive at the public relations firm Fleishman-Hillard in St. Louis. She was hired as the company’s 16th employee in 1955. There, her

bosses credited her with creating special events to publicize clients instead of relying on press releases. Jacobson is survived by her daughter Anne Jacobson and a grandson. Charitey Whitfield Simmons (MSJ73), 59, of Evanston, died Nov. 24. She was a journalist at the Chicago Tribune and the Louisville Courier-Journal. She graduated from Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn., where she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She also received a master’s from Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary and served as the director of pastoral care and a chaplain at The Methodist Home in Chicago. She is survived by a sister, Linda Whitfield, a niece and a nephew. Andrew Grene (MSJ92), 44, died in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where he was working for the United Nations. Grene was a political affairs officer and special assistant to Hedi Annabi, the Tunisian diplomat who lead a peacekeeping mission in Haiti. Both men died when the headquarters collapsed during January’s earthquake. A Chicago native, Grene split his childhood between Ireland and the U.S. and attended the University of Chicago. After graduating from Medill, he applied for a job with the U.N. His position took him to the Central African Republic and East Timor, where he worked to end long-standing conflicts. Grene is survived by his mother, Ethel; his wife, Jennifer; two sons, Patrick and Alex; and a daughter, Rosamund. The Andrew Grene Foundation has been established to provide educational assistance and other support in Haiti. To make a donation, visit andrewgrene.org.

Paula Trienens (BSJ47)

Paula Trienens (BSJ47), 85, of Glencoe, Ill., died Feb. 26. “She was a devoted friend and respected civic leader whose quiet influence led to cultural and community improvements that touch the lives of thousands of people,” says her longtime friend Newt Minow (SOC49, LAW50). After meeting her husband Howard at Northwestern, Trienens was founder and president of the Women’s Board of the university. She was also the president of the Women’s Board of the Field Museum, member of Medill’s Board of Advisers and a trustee of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Passionate about horticulture, she cultivated her own garden and volunteered her time with the Chicago Botanic Garden, Millennium Park and Northwestern gardens. She is survived by her husband, three children, nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.