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Nieman Reports Spring 2008 Issue Class Notes Save the Date The Nieman Foundation is planning its 70th anniversary celebration for the fall of 2008. The weekend convocation will be held both at Lippmann House and The Charles Hotel in Harvard Square, Cambridge, on November 7-9. The events will be open to all Nieman alumni/ae and guests. More information will soon be posted on the foundation’s Web site, and through e-mail messages. For now, please be sure to put the date on your calendars. (Click date to skip to a year.) 1953 1957 1969 1974 1982 1984 1985 1990 1991 1994 1997 1998 2000 2001 2002 2004 2007 2008 Sidebars
—1953— Melvin Mencher’s book, “News Reporting and Writing,” has had its 11th edition published by McGraw Hill Higher Education. The textbook, which contains the work of a number of Nieman Fellows, remains in print form, but other material is online. Mencher writes, “Everything was in print form in the early editions. Then, the ancillaries were placed on CDs. Now only the textbook is on paper. But given the preferences of students for the screen over the printed page, I suspect the 12th edition will be available online.” —1957— Anthony Lewis’s new book, “Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment,” published by Basic Books, tells the story of how the First Amendment was established. Lewis has written extensively on the law and First Amendment issues, both during his years as a columnist for The New York Times and in books such as “Make No Law: The Sullivan Case and the First Amendment,” and “Gideon’s Trumpet,” his first book. Also, Lewis will no longer be teaching a class on the First Amendment and media law at Columbia University. “I’ll be 81 years old and will have taught that class for 25 years,” Lewis said in an article on Syracuse University’s Web site. “I just thought it was time to stop.” Frederick Pillsbury, retired Boston Globe reporter and editorial writer, died on New Year’s Day in Gardner, Massachusetts. He was 85. Pillsbury, characterized by the Globe as “a tall, patrician presence in the newsroom who punctuated conversations with his deep chuckle,” began writing newspaper editorials upon his college graduation from Harvard University, first at the Patriot Ledger, then The Boston Herald. After his Nieman year, he moved to Philadelphia to work for the Bulletin, returning to Boston and the Herald in 1964. When the Herald’s management made the decision to print an editorial endorsement close to voting time without first notifying key editorial writers, Pillsbury left the paper and started working for The Boston Globe, where he was “an immediate success” reporting on transportation, colleges and politics and writing political columns, recalled Anne Wyman, a former colleague at the paper. “Fred always struck me as being a thoughtful and open-minded person as an editorial writer .... I never heard him say a cruel word,” said Bruce Davidson, who served on the Globe’s editorial board. “Critical, yes, but cruel, no.” In addition to writing, Pillsbury’s family cited his passion for photography, music, painting and sailing. At age 68 he sailed the Atlantic with a friend, an experience he then wrote about in 1991. During World War II, after graduating from high school, he drove ambulances for the British 8th Army in North Africa and later served as a driver for the Marines. Pillsbury also published some short fictional stories. Services were held in Petersham, where Pillsbury lived, and the burial was in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The family has asked that memorial donations be sent to the Nieman Foundation. His experience here, his son Sam said, was very meaningful. —1969— Richard C. Longworth, former Chicago Tribune correspondent and now senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, is the author of a new book, “Caught in the Middle: America’s Heartland in the Age of Globalism,” published by Bloomsbury USA. Longworth, who won an Overseas Press Club Award for writing on globalization, takes a look at how globalization has transformed the great Midwestern swatch between Ohio and Iowa and what the region can do to compete in this new globalized world. —1974— Ellen Goodman has received the Ernie Pyle Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Mike Argento, president of the society, said in an article in The Boston Globe, “It’s an overdue honor. I see Ellen as one of the pioneering ... feminist columnists and a pioneer in the personal essay, where she melds personal experience with public policy arguments.” The award is named after Pyle, a war correspondent who was killed in World War II. Goodman became a reporter at the Globe in 1967 and was named a columnist four years later. Her columns went into national syndication with the Washington Post Writers Group in 1976. In 1980, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Commentary for columns on topics that included, the Globe article said, “marriage and rape, adolescence, her reflections on John F. Kennedy, the trauma of turning 40, and the problems of public distrust as exemplified by the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island.” In 1988 she received the Hubert H. Humphrey Civil Rights Award “for her dedication to the cause of racial equality.” Goodman has written a number of books and compilations of her columns, including “Turning Points,” “Close to Home,” “Keeping in Touch” and, with Nieman classmate Patricia O’Brien, “I Know Just What You Mean: The Power of Friendship in Women’s Lives.” —1982— Ramindar Singh writes, “... I have moved from Mumbai, where I ran a TV channel for three years, back to Delhi and have resumed my relationship with the Times of India: I now teach the TV journalism course to graduate students at the Times School of Journalism. Let me admit that editing the Times of India was easier work! I frequently refer my students to the Nieman Web site and back issues of Nieman Reports. This is a valuable resource ... online for journalists and journalism students globally.” —1984— D’Vera Cohn is now a senior writer for the Pew Research Center, working on reports about demographics and social trends. After taking a buyout from The Washington Post in 2006, she spent a year freelancing and doing consulting for think tanks. —1985— Philip Hilts has been named the third director of the MIT Knight Science Journalism Fellowships, effective this summer. Hilts will also replace Boyce Rensberger, the retiring fellowship director, as a professor of science writing at the graduate school. “This is the best program of its kind anywhere and has for decades been the source of enthusiasm and high standards that science journalists look to,” Hilts said in the MIT announcement. “Now it has got even more to do, helping journalists launch themselves into the electronic future, again with enthusiasm while maintaining high standards. What a great opportunity!” Hilts covered health and science at The New York Times and was a national staff writer for The Washington Post. He is now a commentator on these issues for NPR and a Spring 2008 Goldsmith Fellow at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center, where he is writing about press coverage of global health issues. His sixth book, “Rx for Survival: Why We Must Rise to the Global Health Challenge,” was published in 2005 and named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. —1990— Thomas Morgan III died on December 24th from complications of AIDS while visiting his family in Southampton, Massachusetts. He was 56. Morgan was a former reporter and editor at The New York Times and was president of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) from 1989-1991. A former Air Force lieutenant, Morgan began his journalism career as a reporter for The Miami Herald. After spending six years at The Washington Post, he moved to the Times, where he was a reporter, editor and business manager. After being treasurer of the NABJ for six years, Morgan was elected the group’s first openly gay president. With Morgan as president, the NABJ expanded its mentorship and training programs for students and established the Ethel Payne fellowship, which the Times describes as one in which members are given the means to travel to Africa to report stories. Wayne Dawkins, in his book “Rugged Waters: Black Journalists Swim the Mainstream,” said that when Morgan “became treasurer [of NABJ] in 1983, the association had 334 members and less than $50,000 in assets. When Mr. Morgan left the post in 1989, the association had 1,600 members and a $1 million stock portfolio.” Morgan retired from the Times in 1994 and spent much of his time working on issues involving AIDS. A friend, Phil Wilson, wrote in his blog: “In the years following his [NABJ] presidency, Morgan was a tireless advocate on behalf of fellow gay and HIV-positive journalists of color, both within NABJ and in the news industry at large. And he always stepped forward to help all journalists learn to cover the HIV/AIDS epidemic smartly and compassionately. ‘I want members to know,’ he told the NABJ Journal in 1995, ‘that AIDS is a disease no different than things like breast cancer or prostate cancer. It is simply a disease. We are all mortal, and we will all die of something.’” In 1995 he received a lifetime achievement award from the NABJ and was inducted into the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association Hall of Fame in 2005. Morgan is survived by his partner of 23 years, Tom Ciano, and three brothers. Dianne Solis has won the Frank del Olmo Print Journalist of the Year award from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) for her work on immigration. Solis, senior writer for The Dallas Morning News, was honored for “telling stories in ways that convey both the logic and the emotion behind the people and issues involved. Her keen understanding of the frequently emotional issues relating to immigration is apparent, as is her fairness.” The NAHJ announcement went on to say that, “In 2006, during a year when immigration was such a central and controversial topic in the national debate, Solis’s stories on immigration were rewarding reads no matter which side of the debate one takes.” The award Solis received is named after Frank del Olmo, a 1988 Nieman Fellow who died of a heart attack in 2004. Del Olmo worked for more than 30 years at the Los Angeles Times. His job as assistant to the editor of the Times put his name on the masthead—the first Latino to be in that position. The NAHJ awards were presented at the 22nd Annual Noche de Triunfos Journalism Awards Gala, which took place in Washington, D.C., in October. —1991— Rui Araujo writes: “My mandate (two years) as ombudsman of the Portuguese daily newspaper Publico is over. I’ve just finished writing another nonfiction book, about espionage in Portugal during WWII. Guy Liddell’s diaries (MI5) on Portugal are the starting point. I spent more than one year investigating the issue at the National Archives (in Kew, near London) and at the Portuguese Archives (Foreign Affairs, Navy, Army, National Archives, etc.). I mention essentially foreign intelligence activities in Portuguese territories (Continental Portugal, Azores, Madeira, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Angola and Timor) and stories of Portuguese spies—including six journalists—working for the German Secret Service. This is my seventh book. It will be published soon by Oficina do Livro, in Lisbon. “In the meantime, The Mariner’s Mirror, the journal of the Society for Nautical Research (London), should publish soon a long article I wrote about seaman Joshua Slocum in the Azores (1895). He was ‘the first man to sail single-handedly around the world.’ It is an honor. The Mariner’s Mirror is ‘internationally recognized as the preeminent English-language journal on naval and maritime history, nautical archaeology, and all aspects of seafaring and lore of the sea.’ I owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Hugh Murphy, Honorary Editor of The Mariner’s Mirror, and to the British Council in Lisbon. “My wife, Julie, is at the Portuguese Beaux Arts and keeps painting. Our son, Vincent, is a student and plays jazz and folk music.” Katherine M. Skiba is a senior writer at U.S. News & World Report and the magazine’s congressional correspondent. Most recently she was Washington correspondent for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, where she worked for 25 years covering local, state, national and foreign news. From Skiba: “I’m thrilled to join this terrific magazine and to focus on Congress, especially during this riveting election year. Story suggestions and tips are most welcome. And if you find yourself in Washington, please do give me a call.” She can be reached at: kskiba@usnews.com or 202-955-2094. —1994— Jerry Kammer agreed to a buy-out arrangement with Copley News Service in 2007 and says he is “looking for an opportunity to write about immigration, an issue I have cared about ever since I covered it in 1986 as a correspondent in Mexico for the Arizona Republic. That was the year Congress passed the now-infamous amnesty legislation that—its sponsors declared deceptively—would solve the problem of illegal immigration by penalizing employers if they hired the undocumented.” Kammer and colleague Marcus Stern received the Pulitzer for “notable work” in the “disclosure of bribe-taking that sent former Representative Randy Cunningham to prison in disgrace.” The prize was shared with staff members of the Copley News Service and the San Diego Union-Tribune. (See Kammer’s article about his investigative work on this story.) Christina Lamb has a new book, “Small Wars Permitting: Dispatches From Foreign Lands,” published by Harper Press. The book, she says, is “part reportage and part memoir of my 20 years as a foreign correspondent.... There is even a chapter about being a Nieman.” Lamb has spent the past 20 years covering conflicts everywhere from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Zimbabwe, but it’s not all war—she also writes about dancing samba in the Rio Carnival, searching for uncontacted Indians in the Amazon, and staying on fattening farms in Nigeria. She writes, “To me the real story in war is not the bang-bang but the lives of those trying to survive behind the scenes.” Lamb’s reporting has appeared in The Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph, and Financial Times. In Britain, she was named Foreign Correspondent of the Year five times and in 2007 received three major awards as foreign correspondent of the year. Her other books include “The Africa House,” “Waiting for Allah: Pakistan’s Struggle for Democracy,” “The Sewing Circles of Herat: My Afghan Years,” and “House of Stone: The True Story of a Family Divided in War-Torn Zimbabwe.” —1997— Suvendrini Kakuchi resides in Sri Lanka, as country representative of Panos South Asia (www.panossouthasia.org). Panos runs several programs for the regional media that include training, workshops and research projects to foster local journalism at a time when devastating conflicts and economic changes are gripping the region. Kakuchi, a native of Sri Lanka, spent more than two decades as a foreign correspondent in Tokyo reporting on Japan’s relations with Asia. “It’s that time in life when chasing deadlines become second choice to sharing experiences with the younger generation of journalists, especially my work in a foreign culture and the year of learning during the Nieman Foundation fellowship,” she says. —1998— Philip Cunningham writes, “We’re back in the states after 10 years in Asia, basically our first long visit since my Nieman year. I am at Cornell as a visiting fellow in the East Asia Program. After this I return to Doshisha University in Japan, where I teach journalism and film. This is a pleasant interlude for the whole family that serves to give Xuhong and the kids a chance to see what life in America, in ‘centrally isolated’ Ithaca, in any case, is all about. Jintana (9) and Ryan (5) both go to a local elementary school, Xuhong is studying advanced Japanese, and I am attending seminars and giving some lectures.” —2000— Benjamín Fernández Bogado has been appointed a Visiting Scholar 2007-2008 at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University. He is writing and doing research on how media portrayed violence in his home country, Paraguay. His most recent book, “A Sacudirse” [a “shaking up”], was a 2007 bestseller in Paraguay. In October, Benjamín will be living in Mexico as a Knight Fellow, where he plans to open a center for journalism legal studies. —2001— Sunday Dare stopped by Lippmann House on February 29th to talk with the current class of Nieman Fellows at a shop talk seminar about his book, “Guerrilla Journalism: Dispatches from the Underground.” The book, which relates the difficult circumstances he faced in reporting in Nigeria, was published by Kraft Books Limited last year. Dare is chief of the Hausa service for the Voice of America based in Washington, D.C.. Ron Stodghill is now editorial director of six magazines published by The Charlotte Observer. In early December, he left The New York Times, where he wrote for the Sunday business section, to take up this new position. On the Talking Biz News Weblog, Stodghill said, “I am pretty jazzed about this new opportunity, but saddened nonetheless to be leaving what I consider to be one of the top assignments in our industry. Even in this brief time, I have grown fond of many on the desk (especially within our close-knit boutique in Sunday Biz) and will be reaching out personally to many across BizDay over the next few days to bid farewell.” Stodghill is also a former editor in chief of Savoy magazine. —2002— Matthew Schofield has returned to McClatchy’s Kansas City Star as deputy national editor. Schofield, who began working for the Star in 1984, spent the past four years based in Berlin as European bureau chief first for Knight Ridder and then for McClatchy. During this time he reported from three-dozen countries, embedded in Iraq, and covered Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, the Israel-Hezbollah conflict and the London bombings. His previous position at the Star was senior writer. He writes: “I’ve become an editor, and while I resisted this path for a long time, convinced it would be a tortuous, soul-destroying one (okay, the soul is probably long gone), I’m finding it’s actually really interesting, and kind of fun.” Schofield also wrote that the new home he, his wife, Lorelei, and their younger children share “includes extra bedrooms and, someday we hope, actual beds. Please consider this an open invitation to drop by.” —2004— Indira Lakshmanan is senior political reporter for Bloomberg News, where she writes enterprise news and features on the presidential race. She had been a foreign correspondent for The Boston Globe for 12 years, covering a wide variety of issues and events in Latin America and Asia. She also covered wars and their aftermath in Afghanistan, Bosnia, East Timor, and Kashmir. —2007— Aboubakr Jamaï, the former publisher of Le Journal Hebdomadaire, the leading weekly newspaper in Morocco, has received the first Tully Center for Free Speech Award. He delivered an address at Syracuse University in January 2008. The center, established in the fall of 2006 at Syracuse’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, brings in speakers and other resources to further the discussion of media law issues. The center is named after journalist Joan A. Tully, a 1969 alumna of the Newhouse School, whose bequest funded the center. Jamaï has received a number of other honors, including receiving the International Press Freedom Award in 2003 from the Committee to Protect Journalists and being selected by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader for 2005. —2008— Joshua Benton and fellow Dallas Morning News reporter Holly Hacker were the winners of the 2007 Philip Meyer Journalism Award for “Faking the Grade.” The three-day series “uncovered strong evidence of cheating on standardized tests by more than 50,000 students in Texas public and charter schools,” the award announcement states. Benton and Hacker “followed up on the paper’s groundbreaking 2004 investigation of cheating at the district and school level by analyzing a huge public records database of the scores and answers of hundreds of thousands of individual students taking the tests over a two-year period. The series prompted the state to announce stricter controls over test-taking conditions in Texas schools and to adopt the cheat-detection statistical methods used by the paper.” The awards are named in honor of Philip Meyer, NF ’67, who is the Knight Chair in Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He also is the author of “Precision Journalism,” which encourages the use of social science methods in reporting and who, in his own reporting, developed and incorporated these methods. The Meyer Award was presented on February 29th in Houston, Texas, at the 2008 Computer Assisted Reporting Conference sponsored by Investigative Reporters and Editors. James E. Causey has been made a member of the editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He had been the paper’s night city editor. As a board member, he will write about urban affairs, public schools, and crime issues. Causey, who was born, raised and educated in Milwaukee, said that he will be able to bring an “institutional knowledge” to his work on the board. “I know the central city; I know the community in Milwaukee,” he said in the newspaper’s announcement of his appointment. “I’ve always lived in the central city.” Leu Siew Ying, a correspondent for the South China Morning Post based in Hong Kong, received the “grand prix” of the 2006 Natali Prize competition for her report, “From Village Protest to National Flashpoint.” Leu’s article “tells the story of villagers in Guangzhou/Southern China who try to recall their elected headman for suspected corruption.” In congratulating Leu, Louis Michel, European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid, said that “Principled and skilled journalists are vital to the defense of democracy and human rights. Without democracy, without freedom of press, development cannot be sustainable.” The awards were presented in Brussels in May 2007. Natali Prizes were also given to 14 other journalists “for their commitment to Human Rights and Democracy.” This year, the prize received a record number of nominees—1,529 from 165 countries. Lead note: Dave McNeely and Jim Henderson End note: Remembrances of Tenney Lehman Table of contents Printer-friendly format |
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