The Daily Plan-it / Dean of Students Blog, Columbia J-school

As you know, we have been doing a series of webcasts to introduce the school to incoming students. Our latest was with Sudarsan Raghavan, Baghdad bureau chief, The Washington Post . The originial announcement is below, but you can listen to the recording here.


AUDIO WEBCAST: Sudarsan Raghavan, Baghdad bureau chief, The Washington Post (bio below)

Friday, May 9, 3-4 p.m. NY time
10 p.m. Baghdad time
See local time in your city here: http://snurl.com/28191

Listen live at the link below (or by dialing 646-915-9583) or listen to a recording: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/ColumbiaJournalism/2008/05/09/MEET-AN-ALUM-Sudarsan-Raghavan

Columbia Journalism School invites you to meet an award-winning foreign correspondent. He has reported from more than 50 countries and nine war zones in Africa (where he was Knight-Ridder bureau chief), the Middle East, Asia, the former Soviet Union and Central America. Raghavan, who has won several major prizes, including the Polk Award, started his career in 1992 freelancing from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. He will discuss the situation in Iraq, his career and what he learned at Columbia. He’ll be calling in from his Baghdad home. You can ask questions via the live chatroom or the listener line, or send them in advance via e-mail to dos[at]jrn.columbia.edu

Read some of his latest stories: http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/articles/sudarsan+raghavan/

On April 12, 2007, a couple of weeks after he spoke at Columbia during a brief vacation, he nearly became a victim of one of the countless Iraq bombs we hear about. Here’s how his front-page, first-person story, “In an Instant, a Junkyard of Humanity,” began:

The bomber blew himself up no more than a few yards away. First, a brilliant flash of orange light like a starburst, then a giant popping sound. A gust of debris, flesh and blood threw me from my chair as if I were made of cardboard.
I was lying on a bed of shattered glass on the floor of the cafeteria in the Iraqi parliament building, covered with ashes and dust. Small pieces of flesh clung to my bluejeans. Blood, someone else’s, speckled the left lens of my silver-rimmed glasses. Blood, mine, oozed from my left hand, punctured by a tiny shard of glass.
“Are you okay? Are you okay?” asked Saad al-Izzi, one of The Post’s Iraqi correspondents, standing over me, his face framed by an eerie yellowish glow, his voice distant. I did not reply.
I had always thought about this moment. In Iraq, every journalist does. But I did not expect a bomber to take lives inside the Green Zone, the nerve center of the Iraqi government and its backer, the United States.

Read the whole piece - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/12/AR2007041202455.html - and listen to a six-minute audio story by him - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2007/04/12/VI2007041201194.html

Huffington Post’s Eat the Press called the piece “a must-read”: “The pure narrative movement of the piece, full of sudden temporal jumps and shifts in voice, only serves to underscore the nervy panic of the moment and its aftermath as Raghavan struggles to render the disjointed scene into something whole.”

See the transcript of a WashingtonPost.com chat with him the next day:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2007/04/12/DI2007041201708.html

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TODAY’S WEBCAST: Listen live at the link below (or by dialing 646-915-9583) or listen to a recording: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/ColumbiaJournalism/2008/05/09/MEET-AN-ALUM-Sudarsan-Raghavan

Friday, May 9, 3-4 p.m. NY time
See local time in your city here: http://snurl.com/28191 You can ask Raghavan questions via the live chatroom, or send them in advance via e-mail to ss221@columbia.edu

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YOU CAN LISTEN TO ALL OUR PREVIOUS WEBCASTS AND SEE ALL OUR RESOURCES AND FAQS FOR NEW STUDENTS at http://deanstudents.blogsome.com/2008/04/18/prepping/

It’s an alumni documentary up for the Tribeca Film Festival’s “Best World Documentary Feature” award.

What: “Baghdad High” Screening with Directors Ivan O’Mahoney and Laura Winter
When: Thursday, May 1
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Where: Stabile Student Center, Columbia Journalism School, 2950 Broadway (at 116th Broadway), New York City

“Baghdad High,” directed by Ivan O’Mahoney ‘00 and Laura Winter ‘96, is up for the Tribeca Film Festival’s Best World Documentary Feature this year. Four classmates (Kurd, Christian, Shiite, and Sunni/Shiite) in Baghdad were given cameras to document their last year in high school, resulting in a rare firsthand view of what it’s like growing up where
sectarian violence rages right outside the classroom window. Variety wrote that “the small, quotidian realities of living in a foreign-occupied, divided city are brought coolly but poignantly to life” in the film. It will screen April 29-May 3 at the Tribeca Film Festival.

For more information: http://www.tribecafilmfestival.org/tff

Prof. Sig Gissler, administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, reports that our alumni winning at a different prize ceremony last week.

It turns out that three former students — all at the NY Times – won top awards at the OPC dinner Thursday night: Andrea Elliott, J’99 (best magazine reporting), Lydia Polgreen, J2000 (best reporting on the human condition) and Damien Cave, J’98 and his wife, Diana Oliva, not a former student (best Web site coverage of international affairs).  Another grad, Jose de Cordoba, of Wall Street Journal, won a citation (honorable mention); think he graduated in the late 1970s. Not sure about anyone else.
[Update from Irena Choi Stern, director of alumni relations - another winner: Bob Drogin J’76 (best nonfiction book on international affairs for “Curveball:  Spies, Lies and the Con Man Who Caused a War”).]

It was, quietly, a great night for the j-school (and for an old RW1 prof).

The Daily Plan-it asked recent alumni to share tips about preparing for the school. Responses (some of them contradicting each other, some of them repetitive) are continuing to trickle in and will be added here throughout the semester, lightly edited for clarity. You’ll find them below, with the latest ones being added to the top. You can bookmark this posting separately by clicking on http://deanstudents.blogsome.com/2008/04/20/tips-in-the-months-before-school-i-wish-i-had/ and adding it to your favorites/bookmarks.
Send us your tips to ss221@columbia.edu (subject line = school tips)

“In the months BEFORE school, I wish I had…
(more…)

Two Columbia J-schoolers made appearances on tonight’s “Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”

Alex Kingsbury, J2004, U.S. News & World Report associate editor, was the guest on the show, talking about his recent reporting trip to Iraq:

You can read some of his Iraq pieces here: “Putting a Human Face on the American Military Presence in Baghdad” and “Tragically Little Help for Sick and Wounded Civilians in Baghdad”.

Courtney Kealy, J’97, is the Baghdad correspondent for Fox News shown in this segment, “International Man of Misery”:

Tuesday was quite a day for student and alumni achievement.

• I walked in to the office and Dean Klatell told me that students in the Stabile Investigative Journalism program had a major expose about the former Pataki administration in Albany. The story, “Plans, but little else; Questions arise over $1.8M spent on the Pataki-era Museum of Women, which is still unbuilt,” was first published on Sunday, April 29, in the Albany Times Union and continued to be featured on the website. ELLEN GABLER, IRENE JAY LIU and C. ONUR ANT, who are part of a team of students working closely with TU investigations editor and adjunct professor ROBERT PORT, received a joint byline and this credit line: “Ellen Gabler, Irene Jay Liu and C. Onur Ant are students at the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism, which is part of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in Manhattan. They prepared this story under the supervision of Times Union Senior Editor Bob Port, who can be reached at 454-5064 or by e-mail at bport@timesunion.com.” Full story here.
• An hour later, student CHRISTIE NICHOLSON came to tell me that her team (ANNE MACHALINSKI and AILI McCONNON) Master’s Project had won TWO 2007 Webby Awards (”Oscars of the Internet”) in the student category for their new media Master’s Project, ScienceandSex.com. They won the judge’s award for the student category and the People’s Voice Award. See listing here. It’s quite an achievement, since only three student projects from around the world were even selected as finalists. The students will receive their awards at a gala June 5th ceremony, along with fellow winners David Bowie, the founder of YouTube, et al. The ceremony is famous for its five-word acceptance speeches. When Al Gore won a couple of years ago, his five words: “Please don’t recount this vote.”
• Later in the day, the finalists for the Livingston Awards for Young Journalists were announced. They recognize outstanding achievement by journalists under the age of 35 in the previous year. This year’s finalists include the following:
  * GREG GILDERMAN, who will be graduating in two weeks - for his Master’s Project-turned Philadelphia magazine cover story.
  * CLAIRE HOFFMAN, J2004, of The Los Angeles Times (see story).
  * JOSHUA BOAK, J2005, of the Toledo Blade.
  * ANDREA ELLIOTT, J’99, of The New York Times (who won a Pulitzer Prize two weeks ago, one of four alumni to win a Pulitzer this year).
  * LYDIA POLGREEN, J2000, of The New York Times.
  See full list of finalists here.
  * Kara Spak, J’98, of Paddock Publications/Daily Herald
• Before I went to bed, I checked out the winners of the National Magazine Awards and found at least one prominent alum winner (there might be others, but the awards are mostly for the magazines themselves, rather than individual journalists).
  The reporting award winner was C.J. CHIVERS, J’95, for his story in Esquire (June 2006) about the 2004 terrorist attack on a school in Beslan, Russia. Accepting the award, Esquire editor David Granger calls it the “greatest example of reporting I’ve ever read.” Read his story here and see awards press release here. Chivers is a foreign correspondent for The New York Times and has a major story in the paper today from Afghanistan (see index of his stories here).

Of course, not all our days are like this. But throughout the year

UPDATE: This posting has generated some reminders from proud professors about the following items:

• Two Sundays ago, the cover story of the City section of The New York Times was “Monks Who Play Punk” by John Mitchell. He’s graduating in a couple of weeks and it’s his Master’s Projects.
• The current issue of Harper’s features a major story by Victoria Schlesigner, MS 2005 and MA 2006. It’s called “The Continuation of Poverty: Rebranding of Foreign Aid” (she got a photo credit as well.
• Neil Katz J2005, a Frontline World Fellow and freelance journalist, just published an online report on the deep cultural preference for sons over daughters in India.
• Tom Rinaldi, J’93, a reporter for ESPN, won an Emmy Monday night for outstanding long feature (scroll down).

Below are two essays written just before Graduation 2006. The Class of 2006 SPJ fundraised to give a $500 cash award at the end of year to two students who demonstrated their personal growth during the year. To be eligible, students had to: 1) be a paid SPJ student member; 2) submit an essay 300-500 words answering the question: “If I could tell myself in August what I know now, it would be….” All entries were judged by a panel of alumni organized by the alumni office during the first week of May. The awards were announced and given during Journalism Day. The winners were Elisabeth (Lisa) K. McDivitt and

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“If I could tell myself in August what I know now, it would be….”
By Elisabeth (Lisa) K. McDivitt, MS 2006

If I could tell myself in August what I know now, it would be nothing. I would meet myself on the steps next to the statue of Thomas Jefferson, and my August-self would be looking at the school, feeling small and unsure. I would have an urge to say something at first: “Don’t worry, you’ll pass!” But then, just as I would be about to tell myself the outcome, I would back away and let my August-self, filled with anxiety and irrationality, proceed up the steps with the entire discovery still ahead of me. Because if I said anything to me then about what I know now, I would be taking it all away.

I would be taking away the moments where, after all of my senses had been deadened, I got to surge to life again.

I could tell myself that RWI would remind me of my 10th grade AP biology midterm, when I didn’t know any of the answers (not even the extra credit question asking for lyrics to a Jimi Hendrix song), and I would feel simultaneously unlearned and uncool. But that would deprive me of the surprise when, as second semester was starting, I had that sensation where you’ve been standing in a doorway, pressing your elbows against the sides, only to walk out of it and have your arms float up on their own. I wouldn’t want to ruin the fun of learning to love to write again.

I would want to tell my August-self to pay more attention to the city, to look up every once in a while. But that would take away the moment when I actually did look up, and I finally saw the way the tops of the buildings make avenues in the sky.

Or, I could prepare myself for the time in November when I was coming home from Brooklyn on the F train, glaring at the map of New York, while the florescent lights reflected off the plastic and glared right back at me. I was filled with anger at this city that I couldn’t call home, with its cut-up land, its bridges and subways. I didn’t belong to any of it.

But that would spoil the day, months later, when I would be in that same cramped seat on the F train, headed off to dinner with friends. My elbow would knock the book of the woman sitting next to me, and I would apologize. She would look up and smile this warm, forgiving smile, and I would smile back, because we were neighbors. New York neighbors. And I suddenly realized I was home.

So, as I would be walking down the steps of the journalism building, passing my August-self heading up them, I would not say a word. I couldn’t ruin the surprise that, even though I thought I was too old for it, I was about to grow up.

o o o o o

“If I could tell myself in August what I know now, it would be…”
By Carolyn Slutsky, MS 2006

Dear Carolyn,

Relax. Take a deep breath.

Now get on the subway and hit the streets. See the old lady sitting in the park? She’s nice, and she’ll be happy to talk to you about the oil spill in her neighborhood. That guy behind the counter in the pharmacy? That police officer? Friendly, open people. Don’t be afraid to introduce yourself, to ask them questions. When you’re pacing the narrow hallway of your apartment, cringing about confronting the lying principal, just pick up the phone and make the call. Don’t be intimidated: once you introduce yourself, 90 percent of people will just start talking, leaving you time to collect your thoughts and think of follow-up questions. If you’re talking to an old person, or a PR flack, or anyone with a little time on their hands, they’ll be more than happy to talk to you (and talk, and talk…).

You know more than you think you know. Remember all the books you’ve read, all the late-night conversations you’ve had, the times when you’ve navigated foreign countries in which you didn’t speak the language. Surely you can get a reluctant doctor to speak to you about his patients, or a Latina administrative assistant to tell you why she gave $50 from her meager paycheck to a political candidate.

Go with what you have. When a meeting falls through, when a source fails to call you back, don’t panic: Everything will be ok. You’ll reschedule, you’ll find a back-up source, you’ll be industrious and spin the article another way. Despite the fact that you may be freezing on a bridge straddling the border of Brooklyn and Queens, or sneaking around a library interviewing Muslim women in hushed voices, when the deadline approaches, you will have a story. It may not be the story you set out to get, but that’s fine. That’s journalism.

When you have a choice (and sometimes you won’t), write stories that enflame you, that make you feel enraged or enlightened. If people around you are interviewing corrupt politicians or investigating undocumented workers for an immigration story and all you want to write about is pierogis in a Polish restaurant in Greenpoint, go for it – your story will end up in the New York Times, and your cheeks will blaze with pride.

Most of all, enjoy this year. It will fly by, and you will make friends and have experiences like no others you have ever had before.

Wear comfortable shoes.

And take it easy; but take it.

-30-

After the success of the “Surviving the Spring Semester” tips, The Daily Plan-it is asking recent alumni and graduating students to share tips about surviving and thriving in the Fall semester. Responses (some of them contradicting each other, some of them repetitive) will be added here throughout the semester, lightly edited for clarity and style (the newest ones on top).

Please send your suggestions (for either semester) to ss221@columbia.edu. Contributors include: Regina Woods, Joe Orso, Andrea Lee, Jason Anthony, Kimberly Atkins, Ron Brownlow, Rebekah Gordon, Laura Johnston, Jacob Goldstein, Ramin Ganeshram, Anna Bengel, Shira Schoenberg, Badru Mulumba, (your name here)

1. chosen my elective based on the professor, not the subject.
2. taken time to enjoy the city rather than obssesively fret over RW1 due to an obsessive professor. Do your best but don’t let someone else’s obsession permeate to you.
3. taken an internship. Yes, even in the Fall semester (no matter how busy you get with school, internships in New York are the best way to improve your resume and get a job).
4. taken a deep breath. What seemed stressful then, I realize now was just part of the normal J-school process.
5. drank less coffee (especially the jet-fuel type served downstairs).
6. gone to Career Services earlier. It’s not as scary as it sounds - and you’re going to have to get a job sometime!
7. realized that switching into the part-time program for the spring semester isn’t that hard after all. If you’re serious about freelancing or spending lots of time at a spring internship, it can be a good way to go.
8. sought resume feedback from people outside of the Career Services office. Take every opportunity to have someone currently in the industry look over your resume and clips.
9. built a better list of story ideas for my RWI beat in August. Scrambling to find a good housing story idea on a Tuesday in October — with a Thursday morning deadline — was not fun.
10. taken new media classes. Online skills are so important and you should take advantage of being in a school environment to learn as much as you can. It will pay off after you graduate.
11. taken more advantage of opportunities to re-write articles.
12. tried to freelance some of my articles and possibly radio pieces.
13. explored New York City more because it is a lie that you have more time in the spring semester.
14. …known that feeling overwhelmed isn’t a catastrophe. Instead, it was the first step toward finding my own priorities. On the other hand, I’m glad I told some of my profs that I was feeling overwhelmed. They helped me to remember why I sought out the M.A. program in the first place and led me to some great insights into whatwas important to me. In the end, it was all good for me: the workload, the brain strain, the stumbling, and the getting back up again.
15. …gone to more Happy Hours.
16. …spent more time on my Master’s Project so I could have taken more of a winter break.
17. …gotten to know my classmates better.
18. …attended more of the optional lectures.
19. …stayed in better touch with non-journalist friends.
20. …took the narrative writing elective (so that I could experiment with those awesome narrative techniques in my Spring classes and in the Master’s Projects).
21. …taken more skills courses. I only took one, and now I wish I had also taken the others in photography, radio, etc. just to have that broad base of skills under my belt that would make me much more marketable to employers.
22. …reached out and established a relationship with at least one of my professors — this will really help you down the road, whether it’s just to talk you through the stress come second semester or to point you to some good job prospects (on their own terms of
    course).
23. …hadn’t approached profs just looking for job tips. You *will* connect with at least one professor, and just having that solid, genuine, outside-of-just-class-time friendship will be enough.
24. …tried and made my stories do double time by exploring the logical ripples from one drop in the pond. For example: If you have an education story about arranged marriages, see if you can also get a business story about matchmakers, a lifestyle story on new types of dating, and a religion story on converts to faiths that promote marriage arrangements.
25. …realized that every student is supremely talented. I wish I’d shaken off my
    undergraduate, must-get-honors, competitive mentality and just enjoyed — and learned — from all my classmates. Also, I shouldn’t have let my classmates’ designer jeans and giant
    Fendi bags intimidate me.
26. …applied for internships.
27. …prepared a stack of resumes and clips before class started, which would have made applying for internships less of a burden.
28. …chosen professors more carefully. Track down outgoing students — you should be able to find some by looking up their published work online — and grill them about which professors to seek out and which to avoid. If you can make it to campus, read the course reviews on file
    at the J-School library. [DAILY PLAN-IT NOTE: This last sentence is no longer relevant. Starting with the Spring 2005 courses, all course evaluations are now online for incoming students anywhere in the world.]

29. …made a list of the names, numbers and e-mails of managing editors at
    amNew York, Metro, City Limits and the weekly newspapers that covered my beat and pitched my RWI stories to them on a regular basis.
30. …. read Bob Baker’s Newsthinking. It is especially important to read if you do not have a journalism background.
31. …had a copy of the Upanishads to read to put life into perspective for those times when I
    left the J-school feeling overwhelmed. The big questions posed in the Upanishads could have diminished the significance of the little episodes of worthlessness I felt after some of my edited stories came back bleeding.
32. …applied for internships.
33. …pitched more freelance work.
34. …participated in some sort of activity wholly unrelated to school.
35. …gone to more Happy Hours.
36. …explored NYC (apart from my beat).
37. …read more Master’s Projects in the library.
38. …started exploring my Master’s Project during the summer (at least have a general topic you’re passionate about and that you’d like to learn more about before the first day of school).
39. …been more prepared for failure on all fronts (don’t stress
    when your stories suck - you’re there to learn not win a Pulitzer).
40. …bought a bike. (This is vital. You will cover six times the area on your beat, and actually enjoy it. Biking New York lets you see the 90% of the city that isn’t convenient to a subway line, and all of my great RW1 stories came from out-of-the-way places. Then enjoy the Palisades across the GW bridge or take off your journalist cap and ride with us at Critical Mass last Friday of the month, Union Square, 7 pm.
41. …picked an RWI beat neighborhood more off the beaten path (I picked
    Harlem, which is always inundated with J-Schoolers. I wish I’d picked
    a nabe in Queens or the Bronx).
42. …spent less time beating myself up because I wasn’t getting many
    clips, and more time enjoying the experience.

GOLDSMITH INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING PRIZE

Finalists named: J2005 grad Joshua Boak is part of the investigative
team at The Toledo Blade investigating a huge rare coin scandal in Ohio.
Details here:
http://www.thephoenix.com/MediaLog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=ddeb74b7-1bb4-49db-89b8-92b590ef0227.

Thanks to Prof. Julie Triedman for the alert.

ASIA PACIFIC AFFAIRS COUNCIL
WEATHERHEAD EAST ASIAN INSTITUTE

Cordially invite you to network with industry professionals at the
Media Career Event

Panelists:
Fred Katayama, J’83, Award winning CNN correspondent –
Currently anchor at Reuters Television

Susan Berfield
Associate Editor, Businessweek

Oisika Chakrabarti
Officer, U.N. Department of Public Information

Paul Cohen
Vice President, Corporate
Ketchum Public Relations, NYC

Alejandro Reyes
Former Asiaweek journalist –
Currently freelance writer and consultant

Questions: Contact Amy Ahn at - asa6@columbia.edu

JUST SHOW UP!

Co-sponsored by the International Media & Communications Concentration

NOTES FROM…SPJ Evening with Reginald Chua
Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2005
By Megan Chan
E-mail: mhc2111@columbia.edu

An Evening with Reginald Chua J’88,
Society of Professional Journalists, Columbia University Chapter
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Room 607a
October 4, 2005, 5-6:30 p.m.

Background: Editor, Asian WSJ, formerly worked at Reuters, Manila correspondent for WSJ, opened WSJ bureau in Hanoi, Vietnam, Singapore native; Columbia J-school, J’88. See full bio below.

Chua thought that journalists don’t understand their business very well; we should be experts on the media and not just the topics we cover.

Foreign correspondents, if they really want to cover how the world has changed for Asians, should look at how the economy has gone from rice paddy fields to the Internet in just one generation.

Keep in mind for the next day’s coverage: “Don’t assume that nobody has read your story because the Internet moves so quickly.”

On charging for access: “Free news is insane. When news is your product, why put it up there for free.”

AWSJ is moving to a tabloid format and will better integrate the print and online content.

Recommendations for getting a job: have a five-year plan, plan ahead for the next one or two jobs, have at least 2/3 layers of knowledge: local, topical and publication, three or four solid clips.

In terms of surviving J-School: make mistakes, take chances and write stories outside of
your comfort zone.

CHUA BIO:

About Mr. Chua:

Reginald Chua is the editor of The Asian Wall Street Journal,
responsible for the paper’s news operations. He became editor in
August 1997, just as the Asian financial crisis was sweeping the
region, and steered the paper’s award-winning coverage of that
upheaval and its aftermath. The following years have been no less
tumultuous, with the Asian Journal covering such key stories as the
growth of China’s economic and political might, the rising threat of
terrorism in South and Southeast Asia, and the impact of SARS.
During his tenure as editor, staff at the paper have won a Pulitzer
Prize, an Overseas Press Club of America award, and numerous honors
from the Society of Publishers in Asia, including the award for
excellence in English-language newspapers four times. Reg joined
the Asian Journal in 1993, serving first as its Manila
correspondent before moving to Vietnam to open the paper’s Hanoi
bureau in October 1995.

He moved to Hong Kong in early 1997 as Deputy Managing Editor.
Prior to joining the Asian Journal, he worked in Singapore for the
Reuters news agency and the then-Singapore Broadcasting Corp. (now
Television Corp. of Singapore); he was also the Manila
correspondent for The Straits Times newspaper. A native of
Singapore, Reg served in the Singapore Armed Forces and worked
briefly as a computer programmer. He holds a master’s degree in
journalism from Columbia University and received a bachelor’s
degree in mathematics from the University of Chicago. He graduated
from high school in the Philippines and is married with two
children. Founded in 1976, the Hong Kong-based Asian Wall Street
Journal is an 80,000-circulation daily printed in 9 cities around
the region: Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur,
Seoul, Taipei,Manila and Jakarta. The Asian Journal has a news
staff of more than 60 journalists in 15 cities around Asia.

NOTES FROM… SPJ Evening with Christopher Allbritton
Monday, Sept. 26, 2005

By Audrey Dutton
E-mail: ard2113@columbia.edu

An Evening with Christopher Allbritton
Society of Professional Journalists, Columbia University Chapter

Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Room 607a
September 26, 2005, 5-6:30 p.m.

Christopher Allbritton, who writes for TIME, described his
experience covering Iraq and his “circuitous” career path, in a
chat session with j-school students on Monday evening.

Allbritton (J’97) began his career reporting on technology for the
AP and New York Daily News. Then in 2002, he anticipated a war in
Iraq and traveled to Iraqi Kurdistan. He reported and wrote during
his two-month stay, but none of his stories sold when he returned
to the United States because he “didn’t do the legwork” beforehand
to secure relationships with editors. A year later, he returned to
Iraq, after raising $11,000 in donations through his blog. By his
third trip to Iraq in 2004, he was working for TIME as a Middle
East correspondent.

Reporting in Iraq leads to “compassion fatigue,” Allbritton said. He
called Iraq the “single most dangerous place to be for a
journalist,” and said one major pitfall of the reporting is finding
reliable sources, with “everyone lying to you on a continual basis.”
Another frustration he cited is his limited ability to write stories
with creative approaches, saying that CNN and New York Times “lead
the agenda” for coverage.

Allbritton touched on embedding with the military; working with
Iraqi translators and stringers; the need for women reporters in
Iraq; and his concern that Kurds are “constantly under-covered” in
the press.

Allbritton’s blog on the Middle East and war reporting is at
http://www.back-to-iraq.com