REPORT: Notes From… Deborah Amos
Another in our “Notes From…” series - short notes by volunteers summarizing various events around the school, to help those of us who didn’t/couldn’t attend. Watch for several other “Notes From…” throughout the year (if you have one, send it in - or let us know in advance that you’d like to do one).
Below, highlights of the opening day lecture by Deborah Amos, NPR foreign correspondent. Many thanks to volunteer notes-taker Allison Bourne-Vanneck, J2007. Feel free to drop her a note or post a comment below (free, one-time registration required).
Notes From… Deborah Amos Opening Day Lecture
By Allison Bourne-Vanneck, J2007
E-mail: apb2119[at]columbia.edu
LECTURE HALL, Aug. 21, 2006–More than 220 students, faculty and staff gathered for the J-school’s official opening day lecture on Monday morning. The speaker was Deborah Amos (see her bio), a star foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, who had just returned from an eight-week reporting trip to Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.
Dean Nicholas Lemann, who introduced her, said that for many people like him who are “chained to the ground” in New York, she was living their “fantasy life” - that of a foreign correspondent. He said, “It’s a strange but wonderful way to live and one of the most profound services a journalist can provide to the rest of the world.”
Speaking from prepared remarks, she gave a thoughtful, funny, inspirational talk and answered several questions from students.
You can listen to the entire talk at http://www.jrn.columbia.edu/students/class_lectures.asp.
Here are some of the highlights:
- It’s goals, not roles, that matter in journalism.
Her goals:
Be a good journalist; accurately report the news; get as close to reality as possible. - On covering war:
Cover a war in your career
- It will teach you about humanity.
- You will see the best and worst in people, including your colleagues.Don’t cover too many wars
- Know when it’s time to go home.
- War is an addictive beat that can dry you up and make you cynical if your not careful. - On foreign reporting:
- Learn a foreign language if you can.
- You are dependent on translators, and you really can’t get it all
- It’s tempting to rely on English speakers, but you are limiting yourself to a particular class of people. - On being a war correspondent:
- Immersion is key to understanding the country.
- You can move up in your career covering a war.
- Best way to break into covering a war is to pick yourself up and go there. - On the Middle East:
- It’s what happens to civilians that’s important.
- We need to concentrate on what happens in those communities
- Hezbollah was an outcome of the Israeli invasion in 1982, and there will be an outcome of this one again, perhaps people more radical than Hezbollah. - On journalism school:
If you learn only one thing, learn how to write a clear sentence. - On breaking into the radio industry:
- It’s difficult, but not impossible.
- Local stations over the years have developed large news departments
Certain stations, such as WNYC, WBUR, as well as those in Portland, Seattle, etc, are great places to work and from their newsrooms you can pitch stories to NPR.
She is now concertrating on covering Islam. She said, “I have come to believe there is no clash of civilizations; there is a clash within a civilization… After all this time it’s the thing that I take the most satisfaction in learning a little bit more about.”
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