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Nieman Reports Winter 2007 Issue Nieman Notes Class Notes 1958 1959 1963 1967 1974 1980 1985 1990 1991 1992 1994 1995 1998 2000 2002 2006 2007 2008 Sidebars —1958— J. Wesley Sullivan died on November 11th in Palm Springs, California, of a brain hemorrhage. He was 86. Sullivan spent 56 years at the Statesman Journal and The Oregon Statesman, its predecessor. For 15 years he was editor, and then he wrote editorials and columns. After his retirement in 1986, he continued writing weekly columns until 2002. Dick Hughes, the editorial page editor of the Statesman Journal, described Sullivan in an article in that paper as “absolutely passionate about journalism and about the community.” Among other ways of participating in his community, Sullivan was chairman of the Civic Buildings Committee, president of the local Red Cross chapter, and on the boards of a number of local organizations. Hughes, who edited Sullivan’s columns for years, said Sullivan was “the consummate columnist. ... He was a larger-than-life figure—albeit a highly opinionated one.” Hughes continued, “Over time, Wes became a role model. He put his family and his faith first. He cherished the outdoors, rode his bike to work, and loved hiking or spending time with his family at a cabin on the Siletz River. He welcomed every day as an adventure.” Sullivan is survived by four sons. His wife, Elsie, predeceased him. —1959— John Seigenthaler, founder of the First Amendment Center, was honored by the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) with a First Amendment Award at a dinner at the SPJ Convention and National Journalism Conference in Washington, D.C., in October. The awards are described by SPJ as a way to “recognize individuals and groups for extraordinarily strong efforts to preserve and strengthen the First Amendment.” For 43 years, Seigenthaler worked at The Tennessean, having been editor, publisher, and CEO; he is now chairman emeritus. Seigenthaler also was the founding editorial director of USA Today in 1982, retiring 10 years later. During the early 1960’s, he briefly left journalism to become administrative assistant to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in the U.S. Justice Department. He also played a role during the Freedom Rides in Montgomery, Alabama, as chief negotiator with Alabama’s governor. Seigenthaler hosts “A Word on Words,” in Nashville, Tennessee, a weekly book review program, and is the author of “James K. Polk,” published in January 2004 by Times Books. —1963— John W. (Jack) Kole died on September 15th in Arlington, Virginia, after an apparent heart attack. He was 73. Kole worked as Washington bureau chief for the Milwaukee Journal from 1970-1989. After leaving that position, he became press secretary to Rep. David R. Obey. Kole retired in 1997. Alan J. Borsuk, in the obituary he wrote about Kole for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, said that “Kole had strong and intimate knowledge of the worlds of politics and journalism and combined that knowledge with an affable personal style ....” Frank Aukofer, a colleague in the paper’s Washington bureau, said “He was a great, great political reporter, a real student of politics. He had absolute integrity and honesty.” Kole started working at the Milwaukee Journal in 1956, covering city government. He began reporting on politics in 1962 and joined the Washington bureau in 1964. In 1971, Kole was elected to the Gridiron Club. In 1985, its 100th anniversary year, he was the club’s president. Carl Schwartz, senior editor for national and international news for the Journal Sentinel and editor of many of Kole’s articles, said in Borsuk’s obituary: “Jack had two great areas of expertise, politics and economics, and strong backgrounds and sources in both areas. He was great at bringing many elements together gracefully in a story.” Kole is survived by his wife, Betty Zuege Kole, and five children. Kole died on the couple’s 51st wedding anniversary. —1967— Hiranmay (Ronu) Karlekar’s new book, “Savage Humans and Stray Dogs: A Study in Aggression” will be published by Sage in 2008. Nieman classmate Joe Mohbat along with his wife visited Karlekar in the fall. Anticipating their visit in an early October e-mail, Karlekar writes: “After a few days in Delhi, I will take them to our cottage in the hills for a stint in the Himalayas. I hope that the sky is clear and they get a view of the majestic peaks with their helmets of snow.” Karlekar, who has covered southern Asia for more than four decades, has written and edited a number of books, including “Independent India: The First Fifty Years” (1998), Bangladesh: The Next Afghanistan?” (2005), and “In the Mirror of Mandal: Social Justice, Caste, Class, and the Individual” (1992). He has also written two novels in Bengali. —1972— Robert Deitz died on September 15th of complications from brain cancer in Dallas, Texas. He was 67. Deitz began his career as journalist, editor and author in 1962, when he started as a reporter with the Herald-Leader in Lexington, Kentucky. In 1963, he moved to the Courier-Journal, where he held a number of positions over the years: political reporter, editorial writer, senior editor in the Sunday news analysis sections, director of public relations, and executive editor of the newspaper’s book publishing division, according to his obituary in the Lexington Herald and [Louisville] Courier-Journal. After spending a year as business editor of The Dallas Times Herald, Deitz became director of public relations of Dallas-Zale Corporation and then vice president of investor relations in the Dallas office of Hill and Knowlton, Inc.. He picked up his work as a journalist in 1985 when he returned to the Times Herald as executive business editor and columnist. When the paper closed in 1991, Deitz freelanced in The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, banking industry publications, and in-flight airline magazines. Deitz also wrote and collaborated on a number of books, including “Other People’s Money: The Inside Story of the S&L Mess,” “Presumed Guilty: The Tragedy of the Rodney King Affair,” and “Crisis in the Oil Patch: How America’s Energy Industry Is Being Destroyed and What Must Be Done to Save It.” Deitz is survived by his wife, Sharon K. Deitz, and three sons. —1974— Whitney Gould, who covered architecture and urban landscape for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for 12 years, has retired. Here is an excerpt from her final column, dated November 18th: “... I hope that I have played some modest role in stimulating debate about the built environment. It’s one way to encourage honest, well-proportioned, sustainable buildings and engaging public places, both of which are essential to the quality of life in Milwaukee. Good urban design shapes our neighborhoods and buttresses our sense of place; it adds worth to property; it elevates our work life. “Sad to say, there are still too many clients who undervalue that. Too often they treat inspired design as a frill, forgetting that their own reputations, along with the urban experience for the rest of us, can be blighted by poorly conceived, bottom-line buildings. And architects aren’t always willing to push clients hard enough to invest in first-rate design. “In every project, this question should be foremost in the minds of all the major players: If you knew you were going to die tomorrow, is this the building you’d want to be remembered for? And if the answer is no, what are you going to do about it? ... “For my own part, I hope that we can save reminders of where we came from even as we create memorable, 21st-century architecture. In that tension between continuity and change lies the seedbed for enormous creativity. Let’s nurture it, and embrace urban life in all of its complexity and contradiction.” —1980— Jim Boyd became the “editorial mentor” for the Minnesota Monitor, an independent online newsmagazine, this fall. He’ll be “helping shape the vision and scope of the site’s coverage” and “ working to improve the writing and news sense of its journalistic fellows,” according to an article by Paul Schmelzer of the Monitor. Boyd had been deputy editor of the Star Tribune’s editorial page for 25 years. —1985— Peg Finucane died on November 18th of an infection she developed while being treated for pancreatic cancer. [To read Mike Pride’s remembrance on behalf of her classmates, click here.] —1990— John Harwood has joined The New York Times as political writer. While remaining Chief Washington Correspondent for CNBC television, he will provide political analysis in the Times and on its Web site, nytimes.com. Harwood had worked at The Wall Street Journal since 1991 as White House correspondent, Congressional correspondent, and political editor. In addition to CNBC, he will continue to appear on MSNBC, NBC’s “Meet the Press,” and PBS’s “Washington Week in Review,” among other programs. Paolo Valentino, after what he describes as “a long and freezing road via Moscow and Berlin,” finally moved in September to Washington D.C., where he is the U.S. bureau chief for Corriere della Sera. His wife, Albina, and their three boys, Ivan (13), Giorgio (11) and Tancredi (5), are with him. He adds that they “have a large guest room,” too, for any friends who might be passing through. —1991— Tim Giago has been inducted into the South Dakota Newspaper Hall of Fame. Giago, founding publisher and editor of Indian Country Today, is the first Native American to receive this honor. Giago and three other longtime journalists from South Dakota were inducted into the hall of fame at a luncheon at the Performing Arts Center at South Dakota State University in November. Newspaper editors and publishers choose the nominees. Giago, a member of the Oglala Lakota Tribe, founded the Lakota Times in 1981 on the Pine Ridge Reservation. In an announcement by David Bordewyk of the South Dakota Newspaper Association, he notes that “Giago and his newspaper withstood firebombs, office windows shot out, and multiple death threats.” In 1992, the newspaper was renamed Indian Country Today. Giago, who was editor and publisher of the paper for 18 years, built it into the largest independent Indian newspaper before selling it in 1998. In 2000, he founded the Lakota Journal, where he worked as editor and publisher until he retired in 2004. He still writes a weekly column, “Notes from Indian Country, which appears in newspapers and Web sites across the country. —1992— Raymundo Riva-Palacio is now executive editor at El Universal, the largest newspaper in Mexico. He had been writing a column for the paper and editing the tabloid El Grafico, published by the same company. —1994— Lorie Conway brings us up to date on “Forgotten Ellis Island,” the nine-year-in-the-making film/book project produced by her company, Boston Film and Video Productions:
Melanie Sill is now editor and senior vice president of The Sacramento (Calif.) Bee; she had been executive editor and senior vice president of The News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina. As editor, Sill will be responsible for the paper’s news content, editorial pages, and Web sites. Sill had been with The News & Observer since 1982 and executive editor since 2002. She also cohosted “Headline Saturday,” a weekly television program aired on WRAL-TV in Raleigh. Under her leadership, The News & Observer received a 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for “Boss Hog: North Carolina’s Pork Revolution.” The series led to major changes in the hog farming industry in that state. —1995— Barbara Fölscher has a new book out, a political thriller entitled “Blind Faith,” published in Cape Town by Human & Rousseau. The book begins in 1989, during the last months of apartheid, and the plot weaves through those difficult years in South Africa’s history. Fölscher’s first book, “Reisgenoot,” a collection of Afrikaans short stories, was awarded the Eugene Marias Prize in 2003. Fölscher has worked for the SABC and has won a number of awards for her journalism and documentary filmmaking. She also conducts workshops on business writing and presentation skills at the London Business School and the Said Business School in Oxford. —1998— Phillip Martin, executive producer of Lifted Veils Productions, has embarked on a yearlong project, “The Color Initiative.” This series examines the global issues of politics, culture, history and society through experiences related to color. The first report in the series aired in November on Public Radio International and focused on the clothing company Benetton, whose message of integration has come into conflict with immigration realities in modern day Europe. The second report, which is to air in early December, is about race relations in the United States seen through the prism of movies exported to Taiwan. Other reports on color will air in 2008. Martin is the senior correspondent on the series. Lifted Veils is a Boston-based nonprofit radio journalism organization that explores issues that divide society. You can read about a separate Lifted Veils project in an article Martin wrote for the Fall 2006 issue of Nieman Reports. You can also read his blog at http://liftedveilsproductions.blogspot.com/. —2000— Kwang-chool Lee in now director of Korean Service, Radio Free Asia, based in Washington, D.C. He had been editor of KBS News, Korea’s public service broadcaster. He can be reached at his e-mail address, kclee@rfa.org. —2002— Roberta Baskin now leads the investigative unit for WJLA-TV, an ABC affiliate in Washington D.C.. For Baskin, this is a homecoming—she was an investigative reporter at the station in the 1980’s. “I’m excited about coming back. When I reflect on the stories that made a difference, they were almost all in local news,” Baskin said in an interview with John Maynard in The Washington Post. “The impact was greater because you are part of the community.” Baskin, most recently executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, has won more than 75 journalism awards during her broadcasting career, including two duPont-Columbia and Peabody Awards. Michele McLellan writes that she completed her work as founding director of “Tomorrow’s Workforce” and plans to travel to Cambodia. She will focus on a few consulting projects, including a new one for the Nieman Foundation’s Web site, where McLellan will serve as editor for building and launching an interactive site about best practices in journalism. See Bob Giles’s Curator’s Corner on page 3 for more information. —2006— Brent Walth, class scribe, has an update on three of his classmates: Kim Cloete has now taken over as parliamentary editor at South Africa’s national public broadcaster, the SABC. She leads a team of television and radio journalists reporting on political and economic developments in South Africa. Takashi Oshima, while in the Kennedy School of Government’s (KSG) midcareer program in 2007, helped translate “Leadership on the Line” by KSG professor Ronald Heifetz and Martin Linsky, a KSG adjunct lecturer, for a forthcoming Japanese edition. Oshima works for Fujisankei Communications International, a division of Fuji TV, in New York City, where he helps produce a cable news program for Japanese people in the United States. Altin Raxhimi was part of a six-reporter team who won the first-ever Global Shining Light Award for an investigative series called “Power Brokers,” a series that revealed manipulations in the electricity business that caused widespread shortages in Romania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria and Albania. The Canadian Association of Journalists, which sponsors the award to highlight international investigative reporting, said the series “exposed the questionable power deals cornered by shadowy businessmen operating across the Balkans. These deals brought huge profits to power traders but have resulted in exorbitant electricity rates that impoverished citizens cannot afford.” —2007— Alagi Yorro Jallow has been accepted into the Edward S. Mason Program in Public Policy and Management at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government for the 2007-2008 academic year. The Mason Program is a one-year Master in Public Administration degree program designed to give established leaders from developing countries time and opportunity to study the most demanding challenges facing their countries. Jallow is an exiled Gambian journalist and managing editor and proprietor of The Independent Newspaper in Banjul, the Gambia, West Africa. —2008— Alicia Anstead is one of three women to receive the Maryann Hartman Award, given by the University of Maine Women in the Curriculum and Women’s Studies Program. The awards are given “to recognize Maine women whose achievements in the arts, politics, business, education, healthcare and community service provide inspiration for women.” Anstead “inspires and teaches by example. Strong, determined and fearless, she is never satisfied with ‘good enough’ but instead pursues her story to the last possible interview and polishes her writing until it shines,” the person who nominated Anstead wrote. Maryann Hartman was associate professor of Speech Communication at the University of Maine and is recognized as an educator, feminist and scholar. Gaiutra Bahadur received a Media Recognition Award from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and Council for a series of stories she wrote for The Philadelphia Inquirer about Takky Zubeda, an asylum seeker from the Congo. Zubeda had been held in a county jail in Pennsylvania as an immigrant detainee for more than three years, as the government weighed her claims and then appealed a judge’s decision to grant her Convention Against Torture protection. She was released after her story ran, and the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals issued a precedential decision on the grounds for parole for asylum seekers. Fernando Rodrigues, a columnist and reporter for Folha de S. Paulo in Brazil, the newspaper with the largest daily circulation in that country, received the Comunique-se award for “print media reporter 2006-07.” The prize is awarded by a direct vote of journalists from throughout the country. This year, the organizers of the award reported that a record number of votes were cast, 77,000. Simon Wilson, editor of the Middle East bureau for BBC News, led a team that won an International Emmy Award in the news category for coverage of the 2006 war in Lebanon. The coverage also won the Prix Monte Carlo international news award. Jon Williams, the BBC world news editor, writes in the online BBC News site that “Last summer’s conflict was challenging and complicated for the BBC. It was vital for our teams to get to the heart of the story, report events as they witnessed them, and remain measured and impartial.” To do this, “reporters, producers, crews and engineers spent six weeks on both sides of the Israel/Lebanon border.” Before Wilson moved to the Middle East bureau, he covered Europe and conflicts in the Balkins. He also has spent time working in Baghdad since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Lead note: Susan Dentzer End note: David Turnley and Peter Turnley Table of contents Printer-friendly format |
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