Not our graduation, but Prof. Sig Gissler recommends this short AP story about Pulitzer Prize-winner David McCollough’s commencement address at Boston College:
“Please, please do what you can to cure the verbal virus that seems increasingly rampant among your generation.”He said he’s particularly troubled by the “relentless, wearisome use of words” such as like, awesome and actually.”
Photo on right: Wednesday, May 21, 12:10 pm - J-schoolers at the main university ceremony, complete with Reuters-branded beach ball. PHOTO: Craig Hettich. See a year’s worth of Student Affairs photos.
The following awards were presented on May 20 and the winners were acknowledged again at the main graduation ceremony on May 21. Here’s an explanation of how the awards are selected.
PULITZER TRAVELING FELLOWSHIPS & EIBEL AWARD for the top six students in the Class of 2008 (another slideshow below):
PULITZER FELLOWSHIP WINNERS:
Eliza Browning - class valedictorian
Lam Thuy Vo
Robert Jacob Corey-Boulet
Ailsa Wei-tan Chang
Molly Anne Birnbaum
David Marcus Eibel Memorial Scholarship: Srividya Rao
The M.A. Program Prize:
Arthur Harris Award for Best M.A. Thesis: Dorian Sanae Merina
runner-up: Don James Duncan
runner-up: Jacques Solomon Menasche
Award & Winner(s):
Baker Award for Bronx Beat: Katherine Santiago & Stephen Beardsley
Baker Award for CNS: Srividya Rao
Baker Award for Magazine Workshops: Alexa Taylor Schirtzinger
Balakian Award for writing about literature: Adam Weinstein
Blood Award for reporting: Carolina Joan Astigarraga
Brown Award for history of journalism: Rachel Clare Rosenthal
runner-up: Robert Jacob Corey-Boulet
runner-up: Daniel Luzer
Criticism Prize: Ronni J. Reich
Documentary Workshop Award: Aleksandra Halina Michalska
Editing Award: Thomas Arthur McCarthy
Greer Award for financial writing: Richard John McRoskey
Hechinger Education Journalism Award : Elizabeth Cristina Berry
Hechinger Education Journalism: Sarah N. Lynch
Horgan Science 1st prize: Daye Kim
Horgan Science 2st prize: Euna Lhee
Horgan Science 3rd prize: Erin M. Carlyle
Horgan Science 3rd prize: Olga Marie Pierce
Joan Konner Award for Best Broadcast Student: Megan Courtney Chuchmach
Louis Winnick Prize for RWI Writing: Anup Kaphle & Sarah Lynch
Lynton Fellowship in Book Writing: Garin K. Hovannisian
Lynton Fellowship in Book Writing: Jennifer Miller
Mencher Award for superior reporting: Stokely Baksh & Renee Feltz
Lars Erik Nelson Award for national affairs: Ailsa Chang
Lars Erik Nelson Award for national affairs: Eliza Cooke Browning
New Media Workshop Award: Lisa M. Biagiotti
New Media Workshop Award: Anup Kaphle
Nightly News Workshop Award: Eliza Cooke Browning & Megan Chuchmach
Radio Workshop Award: Margaret Julia Messick & Ailsa Chang
Robert Harron Award (”nice guy/nice gal” prize): Alexander James Sundby
Sackett Award for Law Class: Adam Edmund Hirsch
Sander Award for social justice reporting: Alexandra Louise Haugen Horowitz
Taylor Award for best international student: Anup Kaphle
TV Magazine Workshop Award: Sharona Sarah Coutts
Weschler for international reporting: Nadja Drost
Weschler for local reporting: Casey O’Connor Lyons
Weschler for national reporting: Renee Kathrine Feltz & Stokely Baksh NOTE: Part-time students Sumi Aggarwal and Margaret Ballantyne, who are graduating this year, won awards last year.
The winners of the two awards presented by the students:
SPJ Teacher of the Year: Bruce Porter
SPJ Student of the Year: Lam Thuy Vo
List of Students Graduating with Honors
Margaret “Coco” Ballantyne
Elizabeth Berry
Molly Birnbaum
Eliza Browning
Erin Carlyle
Ailsa Chang
Megan Chuchmach
Robert Corey-Boulet
Sharona Coutts
Lawrence Delevingne
Michael Gadd
Garin Hovannisian
Jessica Leber
Thomas McCarthy
Margaret Messick
Jennifer Miller
Neilesh Munshi
Alexis Nunes
Nicholas Phillips
Benjamin Protess
Srividya Rao
Linzi Sheldon
Gregory Simmons
Susan Sipprelle
Lam Vo
More photos of our top six students. PHOTOS: Rebecca Castillo
TRANSCRIPT Commencement 2008
Remarks by Dean Nicholas Lemann
Columbia Graduate School of Journalism
There are two things everybody knows about what they teach in journalism school. One is the five W’s—who, what, where, when, why—that every story must address, and the other is that if a dog bites a man, that’s not news, but if a man bites a dog, that is news. What we teach at Columbia Journalism School sometimes gets a little more complicated than that, but, nonetheless, the old bromides have a certain timeless appeal.
The graduation-speech version of the dog bites man story is telling students who are about to receive degrees that they represent the future. In deference to journalistic standards, I shouldn’t do it here. But I can’t help myself.
This is my fifth Commencement as dean. In that short time, the mood of our profession has changed profoundly. There are a number of reasons why, but the main one is the manifold effects of the Internet. The Internet has a nearly miraculous power to put the ability to publish, and to receive, journalism into the hands of untold millions of people all over the world. For more sophisticated practitioners like many of the people in this auditorium, it gives journalists a greater variety of means of conveying information than we have ever had before. But at the same time, the Internet has clearly eroded the economic basis of at least the corner of journalism into which this school has traditionally sent the plurality of its graduates, the American big-city daily newspaper.
When Columbia Journalism School opened in 1912, most American cities had several daily papers—certainly New York did—and there was no radio or television journalism. Through the twentieth century the newspapers died one by one, casualties of competition or suburbanization or the arrival of new-media competition, but the net result in most cities was a small number of papers that looked quite secure.
The big American newspaper of the late twentieth century was, it seems now, an odd institution, a kind of museum of all the historical phases of journalism, from partisanship (on the editorial page) to pure entertainment (in the comics and horoscopes) to serious political reporting. It was the most efficient way for people to get a big packet of information in one place. Even today’s graduates will remember the days when, if you wanted to find out who had won a ball game, or when a movie was playing, or by how much someone had won an election, you naturally picked up the newspaper. And, in the realm of business, if you were an auto dealer or a department store owner, or an individual engaged in small-scale commerce, the newspaper was the best means of getting people to buy what you were selling. Remember? And, because of the immense plant, equipment, paper, printing, and delivery costs that publishing a newspaper entailed, people who were already in the business were well protected from new competition.
Well, none of that is true any more. Most of the individual aspects of a traditional newspaper are available on the Internet, for free. Newspapers are still producing great quantities of original information, thanks to the hard work of people like you, but they no longer have local quasi-monopolies as sources of information. Their audiences are now primarily on the Internet—that wasn’t the case just a few years ago. And, even more recently, on the Web the lines between the various originating media have started seriously blurring. On the front pages of newspaper Web sites, you’re starting to find what we would recently have taught as television stories—video and audio presentations a few minutes long. Television sites publish what we teach as newspaper stories—stories made up only of printed words, without images. Magazine sites publish animated cartoons. And so on. The tectonic plates underlying our profession—those traditional categorical divisions by type of news, by news medium, by geography—are palpably, and rapidly, rearranging themselves.
Today, more of you have definite plans that entail paid employment in journalism than had such plans when I first stood at this podium five years ago. How can that be? Much of the credit is due to the great work our Career Services office does, but it’s also that employers want you because you’re energetic, because you have skills that people already in newsrooms don’t have, and perhaps also because you aren’t so wedded to doing things the way they’ve always been done in journalism.
You soon-to-be graduates are a diverse lot. You come from all over the world, work in every news medium, and cover the whole range of complicated subjects–but every one of you is a reporter: You know how to gather information, primarily through in-person interviewing, and to present it accurately, fairly, and engagingly. I would urge you, however, not to take it for granted that the best way to present information is an 800-word, all-text, pyramid-style news story—a method of presentation that grew up in the nineteenth century and dominated our profession for most of the twentieth, but may not in the twenty-first. And, as you’re well advised to be creative about how to present each individual story, the news organizations you work for are going to have to be similarly creative about figuring out, in the aggregate, what package of material they are presenting. It is going to have to be something unobtainable elsewhere—a rich mix of information about a community or a subject that the news organization’s Web site puts together more powerfully and efficiently than anybody else. It is not going to look just like the package of material that populates a newspaper now.
Inventing this is your task. You can’t avoid it—the old way doesn’t work any more—but it’s a far more creative, challenging assignment than what was handed to my generation when we went to journalism. Our job was to improve on the old model. Your job is to create a new model. You shouldn’t be daunted by this: newspapers in particular, and news in general, have been changing in non-incremental ways for three centuries. Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette and Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World (the profits from which endowed this school) had almost nothing in common except that they were printed on cheap paper and distributed in cities, and neither had much in common with a big-city newspaper today. On your watch, newspapers will be primarily digital, but the primary task for you is not to switch delivery media, it’s to invent a new social compact with a community around the gathering and presentation of information.
I suppose that qualifies as a man bites dog story—but it’s still contained within a dog bites man story, which is that you are leaders who hold the future of journalism in your hands. Sorry, it’s unavoidable. Have fun with it.
- - -
And here are the remarks Dean Lemann made when he introduced the Journalism students at the main university commencement in front of all the other schools, recipients of honorary degrees, etc - the tradition is to have some fun with this introduction (over the top is the norm from the various deans):
Mr. President, surely you must wish sometimes that everybody believed in free speech as completely as you do.
Well, sir, there is an easy way to achieve that happy state of affairs: Just make sure that the entire public discourse is based on the rock-solid reporting produced by the magnificently well-trained, hard-working, brilliant company of women and men I have the honor to present to you today.
Candidates of the Faculty of Journalism.
They are global. They are Webby. They are intellectually confident. Most, or possibly all, of the world’s problems would disappear overnight if only people would give full attention to their hard-earned facts and well-reasoned interpretations.
And they have completed the nearly insuperable requirements for the degrees of Master of Science, Master of Arts, and Doctor of Philosophy.
I humbly beg you, sir, to grant them this degree along with the rights and privileges thereto attached.
o o o o o
TRANSCRIPT
Remarks by Yian Huang, J2008 Class President
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Dean Lemann, distinguished faculty, treasured guests, … and FELLOW GRADUATES OF THE CLASS OF 2008.
Graduates … Graduates … What an exciting world we are being launched into! There are so many great subjects for us to cover: Painful ones, joyful ones. There are disasters, human stories, war, peace and … perhaps even a scandal or two waiting to be discovered.
We are now a part of the best profession in the world—the one that gives us an excuse to ask people to let us into their lives and their homes; to tell us their intimate stories. And if we ask with “Joyful Entitlement,” as Professor Gissler taught us, people say yes.
We are the next generation of leaders of journalists. Right now, we look at journalists who inspire us, and we think we are merely students, or interns. But you know what, they all look at us, and they expect us to lead.
We have been so honored to have spent the last year at Columbia—the best journalism school in the world. We have reported on the diversity of New York City, a place that many say is the center of the universe.
Ok, that’s the fun bit. Now we’re going to discuss the serious part, which is about WORKING TOGETHER.
Our profession gives us a real opportunity—and thus an obligation—to change the world, by deciding what’s news, as Herbert Gans wrote.
So what do we want to change? What are our big dreams? What if we were the heads of the NY Times or CNN, or what if we had a couple of Pulitzers under our belt? What would we use our voice to say then? Look around this room. Look at the person in the seat next to you, the one in front of you blocking your view. In 20, 30 years, we as a class, we’ll have those things. What then? And then the obvious question is, why wait till then? Use our voices now. Yes, we might have to cover community board meetings starting out, but never lose sight of why we got into this in the first place.
For me, as a conflict photographer I’ve found that documenting—and almost glorifying—violence with my photos might not lead to peace, as I wish it might. News is not just about the conventional “If it bleeds, it leads.” We should strive to uncover the greater complexity of the stories we cover and challenge the established view.
So here’s the “nut” of this speech: To accomplish anything great, we need to harvest the power of the group. As individuals, we can only do so much.
So, stick together. Being unstoppable in the face of the adversities we are certain to face is so much easier with the help of our friends. We are our own best resources:
— We have:… the largest ever PhD graduating class of 6 students, who are our resources in macro trends in media.
— We have Knight Bagehot fellows who have enriched our conversations with their experience, and showed us that learning never stops.
— We have M.A. students who have given up established careers to study with us and cover Arts, Business, Politics.
— And we have the diverse and international M.S. class, who are already trailblazing new ways of telling stories.
Find a collaborator from this group. We can’t do everything ourselves. It’s more effective to work together than be the jack-of-all-trades one-man/woman-mobile-journalist/video/photographer/blogger that the industry seems to want.
Look at how the class came together when Ahmadinejad spoke on this stage last September. We got 30 reporters together to create a blog. We had print pieces, we had video, we had audio slideshows. We killed this story. And we got 165,000 visits in 48 hours.
Look at what we’ve survived together this year: the freezing basement and the horrible experience of the toilets there. We survived not having coffee for an unconscionable amount of time. And don’t get us started on the mythical Argentinean glass that’s being flown in from Paris by way of China. Last I heard, the cafe will be ready in Aug. but that’s what they told us last spring too.
PARENTS IN THE AUDIENCE, so sorry to tell you, that while it is true that this has been a tough year for us, WE ARE NOT DETERRED from this profession. Not in the slightest.
As president of the class, I have the privilege of speaking on behalf of all the students. Dean Lemann, a heartfelt Thank You to you, your faculty and staff, for all your time and teachings that you have imparted to us so very generously. May we be as generous to those coming after us.
Ms. Gross, thank you for coming. It’s a wonderful privilege for us. Since 1973, All You Did Was Ask Questions, if I may paraphrase the title of your book. We would like to ask: If you had only one person left to interview and only one question, who would it be and what would you ask?
A special shout out to adviser Rebecca Castillo and the SPJ Board, the tireless students who labored on behalf of all of us to make it a great experience for one and all. Please stand up and be recognized. Thank you.
Last, and certainly not least, we should all acknowledge our parents. I’m going to ask everyone to stand up, turn around, and show them our appreciation.
When you leave today, find something nice to say to your own parents;
(for me): Dad, for pushing me to do my best always;
and Mum, for teaching me the true meaning of love;
I am only here today because of both of you, so thank you.
Message from LynNell Hancock, Interim Dean of Academic Affairs
Dear Students and Colleagues:
I am pleased to announce three major additions to our new media
efforts at the Journalism School.
The first is the appointment of one our most popular adjuncts, Duy
Linh Tu, to the full-time faculty. Duy (pronounced “Do” - see bio
below) joins us as new media coordinator and an assistant professor of
professional practice. As you know, he has been teaching here for
several years in the new media classrooms. He will intensify his
efforts to “webbify” our fall classes, and to integrate new and
compelling ideas in multimedia storytelling throughout the curriculum
in the years to come. Duy will continue to work with Dean Sree
Sreenivasan, who, as you know, has increased administrative
responsibilities at the school.
In addition, we have created two new post-graduate New Media
Fellowships starting this year. These July-June fellowships will
employ two students who will work closely with the technology staff to
help students and professors alike navigate the world of new media
journalism.
Our inaugural fellows are Kenan Davis and Dave Mayers (see bios
below). Part-teaching assistants, part-technologists, this year’s
fellows are both smart journalists with terrific reporting, writing,
editing and production skills. They will report to Duy.
Please join me in congratulating them. Kenan and Dave officially begin
their duties on July 1, but I am sure you will have other
opportunities to greet them before then.
The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences has just announced the Webby award winners for this year.
The 2008 Webby Award for the best student site was awarded to Defining Middle Ground: The Next Generation of Muslim New Yorkers - http://definingmiddleground.com/
It is the 2007 Master’s Project site of Tara Kyle, Bilal Qureshi and Ahmed Shihab-Eldin.
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).
Attn: M.S. Students
From: Dean Huff
Re: Year-end Awards
April 22, 2008
Each year on Journalism Day the school confers awards on several top-performing students. Each prize winner will receive a certificate and some will receive additional cash prizes (this depends on how the awards were originally set up). Below you will find the descriptions of this year’s awards.
These awards are open to any M.S. students graduating in this cycle (May 2008, Feb. 2008 and Oct. 2007). M.A. students are eligible for a separate category, for outstanding thesis, and will receive information from Dean Cornog.
There are two broad categories of awards: those for which students can submit entries that are judged by faculty juries; and those decided by the professors teaching the course for which they are awarded - no submissions are accepted for these.
Please note: There are two awards run and judged by alumni - the Sander and Blood awards, which have already accepted submissions.
Another prize, the Harron Award, is decided by a faculty committee from nominations provided by the J-school community - see separate announcement). All M.S., M.A., Knight Bagehot, and Ph.D. students are eligible.
For juried awards, you may submit applications for no more than two categories (the Blood, Hechinger and Sander awards are not part of the limit), and each application can contain only one story, or segment of a Master’s Project no longer than 3,500 words (or 10-12 minutes of video or audio; for new media projects, submit specific URLs in addition to an overall URL, and printouts of the relevant pages).
The decisions of the faculty judges are final, and their deliberations are confidential.
If you are submitting an application for one of the juried awards, you must submit clean, hard copy (or broadcast materials, if applicable, WITH SCRIPTS, or for new media projects, submit specific URLs in addition to an overall URL, and printouts of the relevant pages) to the boxes in 2M07A (in the Career Services area)between Thursday, April 24, at 10 a.m. and Monday, May 5 at 10 a.m. If you are coming after business hours, please drop off the entries through the slot of the gray box outside of the DOS offices(Huff/Sreenivasan) PLEASE SUBMIT THREE COPIES OF EACH ITEM. (more…)
Attn: Students, Faculty and Staff
From: Harron Award Faculty jury
The Faculty is currently accepting nominations for the ROBERT HARRON AWARD.
The ROBERT HARRON AWARD is presented each year to the student (M.S. [FT or PT]; M.A.; Knight Bagehot; Ph.D.) who has demonstrated excellence in writing and reporting as well as exemplary kindness and courtesy to fellow students. It is popularly known as the “nice guy/gal” award.
The award was established in memory of Robert Harron, a former sportswriter and long-time assistant to the presidents of this university, through gifts from his many friends.
While all members of the School (faculty - full-time and adjucts, staff and students) may submit nominations, only students in the Class of 2008 (part-time and full-time, M.S., M.A., Knight Bagehot, Ph.D.) are eligible for the prize, which will be announced with other awards on Journalism Day (this is a separate prize from SPJ’s “Student of the year” and the other awards determined by the Faculty). (more…)
The Fred M. Hechinger Education Journalism Award will be given to the student who produces the most outstanding journalistic work on the subject of education.
This award was established by the Hechinger Institute on Media Education at Teachers College, in honor of the New York Times’ education editor, Fred Hechinger.
Stories are accepted in television, new media, radio and print. There is no length restriction. Judges will be looking for insight and excellence in reporting and writing. (more…)
[Most of the information below is for M.S. students only. M.A. students are eligible for a separate award, the Arthur Harris Prize for best Master’s Thesis.]
We received the following question from a student:
Today in RW1 we had a guest speaker whose bio mentioned that she received the “Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship, won for graduating first in her class…”
Since we don’t receive grades, I’m wondering how this designation of “first in class” is decided.
The Journalism School has a Pass-Fail system of formal grading. It aims at encouraging students to perform as well as they can, without competing with classmates. In most courses (some electives excepted), students receive written evaluations of their work from the instructors. Copies of these evaluations are kept in the DOS Office.
In RWI, written evaluations are issued at midterm and at the end of the semester. These preliminary evaluations indicate students’ early progress and, if necessary, serve as a warning if any students are in danger of failing. Students who are not doing passing work are placed on probation. If a student’s work is passing at midterm but deteriorates after the midterm evaluation, the instructor will give written notice of possible failure and inform the faculty.
RWI is the most important fall course. The decision to pass or fail a student in that course is determined solely by the instructor(s.) No grades of incomplete are allowed in RWI. Other required courses-such as Journalism, the Law and Society-are important, too. Inattention can result in failure. Students also should note that the “Skills” mini-courses are meant to be taken very seriously. The faculty reserves the right to dismiss a student who fails the same course twice or two courses, regardless of the credit points of the courses.
Deadlines for the Master’s Project drafts are strictly enforced. The Faculty retains the right to fail or place on probation a student who fails to meet deadlines for the Master’s Project.
No student is permitted to graduate while still on probation.
At graduation, the honors list is announced, recognizing approximately 15 percent of the students for superior performance in multiple courses; the faculty determines the honors list by comparing and discussing each student’s complete record. The faculty also awards more than a dozen special prizes at graduation, including five Pulitzer Traveling Fellowships for overall performance during the academic year. These decisions are based in part on an informal system of grading, which permits each instructor to designate one or two students as having completed a course “with honors.” Students are informed of the honors designation.
That designation, in the individual classes, is “honors in class,” and you will see it - if you get it - in the written evaluations you receive. If you receive two or more “honors in class” in our six-credit courses (RW1, Master’s Project, seminar, workshop) AND one or more in three-credit elective, you are likely to “graduate with honors.”
Except for a few prizes for which students can submit stories to be judged, the rest of the prizes are decided by faculty, without input from the students.
We hold briefing sessions close to Graduation to explain the procedures.
Part-time students are eligible for the awards and are tracked during their entire academic career here (though the prizes are typically given out the year they graduate).
Please direct all questions to Deans Sreenivasan and Huff.
Three of the five 2008 Foreign Press Association Scholarship Fund awards have gone to students from The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
The Class of 1989 is pleased to announce the Leslie Rachel Sander Social Justice Award, in memory of our classmate who died on her 22nd birthday in June 1989, after a courageous battle with cancer.
We offer a $750 prize to a student at the school whose work carries on the journalism for social justice to which Leslie aspired. The winner will be chosen by some of her former classmates and announced on Journalism Day. All members of the class of 2008 are invited to submit one entry each.
Choice of Subject…
…is yours. Reporting including but not limited to economics, environment, education, health care, housing, politics and transportation may be appropriate. Entries could be a hard-hitting expose or a descriptive feature, an essay or a work of straight reporting. Topics may be local, national or international.
In 2006 the award went to a piece about domestic violence among immigrant Arab women. Past winners have included a story about teenage female criminals falling through the cracks of a criminal justice system designed for an overwhelmingly male population (1997); “One Strike, You’re Out,” a story about a federal immigration law, applied retroactively, that requires the deportation of immigrants who have been
convicted of a felony (1998); our first broadcast winner, “TB: The City’s Silent Killer” (1995); and “Childhood Interrupted,” about children who come to the United States seeking asylum and end up in INS detention (2002).
We leave it to you to define social justice. To Leslie it meant a commitment “to personally make a positive difference in the world around her,” as her father wrote in her obituary. Leslie was special: caring, and compassionate, a good listener and a sharp, critical thinker. The choices she made in her short life–teaching at a multiracial school in Botswana; studying journalism–reflected her ideals.
Entry Requirements
Print pieces should not exceed 3,000 words. Broadcast scripts should be no longer than 10 pages; finished tapes should be no longer than 10 minutes.
Judges, who are members of the class of 1989, will consider choice of subject, originality, reportorial skill and style.
Reporting need not be complete, although it must be more than just computer searches. A work in progress, such as an investigative piece, an unfinished photo essay or a rough edit of a documentary may be submitted if it is far enough along to be judged on its merits. In that case, we hope the award will give a student the finances and encouragement to complete the work so that it may be published or aired.
Submission Process
If you do not follow these instructions your entry may be disqualified.
Submissions must be e-mailed as Word attachments to karyncolombo@yahoo.com by noon Friday, April 4, 2008. Please also include a copy of the entry as text within the e-mail in case there are any problems opening the attachment.
For New Media submissions, please e-mail the URL to karyncolombo@yahoo.com by noon Friday, April 4, 2008.
Entries, which will be judged anonymously, may be sent any time until the deadline; late submissions will not be accepted.
Audio and videotapes must be postmarked by Friday, April 4, and mailed to:
Karyn Colombo
News Desk
The Palm Beach Post
2751 S. Dixie Highway
West Palm Beach, Fla. 33405-1233
Please note that e-mailed transcripts of the tape also must be received by the noon deadline or the tape will not be considered.
Questions? Please contact Karyn Colombo at karyncolombo@yahoo.com or at (561) 659-9880.
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
The Richard J. Blood Award For Excellence in Reporting
DEADLINE: Noon, Monday, March 31
Seeking an unpublished investigative, hard-news or news feature story of publishable quality.
Please, no profiles.
Submit one article of no more than 1,500 words. Please double-space entries, and note the word count alongside the headline.
A winning entry will overflow with voices, specifics and solid attribution. Less is more: Leave in only the details that move the story forward. Make your copy lean, your prose sing and soar.
Particular attention will be given to rigorously reported stories that have the potential to improve social conditions – stories that alert the community to a danger, explain human behavior, entertain, inform and educate.
You are strongly encouraged to review the article with your instructor, incorporate any reporting/editing suggestions and rewrite it before submission.
The award is $700
Please submit SIX COPIES of your article to Claudia Castillo, Student Services Coordinator, Room 2m07A, by Noon, March 31.
Please note that the competition is for unpublished work, but that articles that have run on the ColumbiaJournalist.org ARE eligible.
We will announce the winner on Journalism Day
*This award is administered by the Class of 1995 Blood Award committee: Stephanie Argy, Raney Aronson, Ellen Butler Bikales, Maria Sanminiatelli and Erin Texeira
The faculty invites students to nominate names for two graduation-related speakers. The final decision is made by the faculty, but they would like to see your suggestions.
THE COLUMBIA JOURNALISM AWARD is the school’s highest honor and is a “lifetime achievement” prize. This person is, in effect, your main graduation speaker (and will be addressing you in front of your parents and guests). Recent winners: Jim Amoss, David Halberstam, Seymour Hersh, Paul Steiger, Joseph Lelyveld, Pete Hammill, Carl Rowan, Joan Didion, Walter Cronkite, Ben Bradlee (see full list on awards wall outside glass door in front of Deans Suite on seventh floor).
THE PRINGLE LECTURE is typically given by a journalist covering national affairs. The lecture is given at one of the smaller graduation-related ceremonies and is ONLY to students and faculty, with no guests. Recent lecturers: Farnaz Fassihi, Michael Kinsley, Molly Ivins, Mary McGrory, Jay Harris, Tom Bettag, Cokie Roberts, Dana Priest . A Washington connection is preferable, but not necessary (eg, Jay Harris, Farnaz Fassihi).
FORM: To give your suggestions, fill in the 30-second form here (all fields are optional):
DEADLINE: Sunday, Feb. 24, 2008 - 10 p.m.
Please remember: This is NOT a vote. The faculty just wants to get a sense of what names are proposed.
FROM: The New York Coalition for Professional Women in Arts and Media
Call for entries for the 2008 Collaboration Award
The New York Coalition of Professional Women in the Arts & Media (NYCWAM) will present the second biennial Collaboration Award recognizing Women Working with Women.
The $1000 award aims to encourage professional women in the arts and media to work collaboratively with other women on the creation of new works. Eligible teams are those who have completed a work, are readying a new work, or are continuing a work in progress.
Applicants may suggest any form of creative collaboration. Submissions will be judged on the basis of artistic excellence and clarity of the proposal, with special attention given to those proposals involving more than one discipline and which reflect the goals of the Coalition: to advance women and women’s issues. The team that has been selected, plus two runners up, will be invited to present a portion of their work at an awards ceremony in New York in October 2008. Women outside of New York may send a designee to present their project. NYCWAM does not pay for travel expenses.
Teams of two or more women working together on a creative project may apply for a Collaboration Award. Applicants must be members in good standing of an organization with full membership in NYCWAM. Those organizations are: Actors’ Equity Association, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, Dramatists Guild, League of Professional Theatre Women, New York Women in Film & Television, Screen Actors Guild, Society of Stage Directors & Choreographers, and Writers Guild of America, East.
Funding for the 2008 Collaboration Award has been provided by playwright, Elsa Rael, and by Back Stage editor, Sherry Eaker. The first Collaboration Award was presented in 2006 to playwright Jennifer Maisel and director Wendy McClellan for their play BIRDS.
Applications may be downloaded from the NYCWAM website: www.nycwam.org
or by mail by sending a stamped, self-addressed envelope to:
The New York Coalition of Professional Women in the Arts & Media
P.O. Box 2537
Times Square Station
New York, NY 10108
Completed Applications must be postmarked by May 1, 2008.
For further information after reviewing guidelines and application contact:
Deborah Savadge
Phone: 212-592-4511 or 212-595-2582
E-Mail: Collaboration@NYCWAM.org
2007 Graduation Awards
The following awards were presented on May 15 and the winners will be acknowledged again on May 16.
PULITZER TRAVELING FELLOWSHIPS & EIBEL for the top six students in the Class of 2007:
PULITZER FELLOWSHIP: Vidya Ram (designated as the top student in the class)
PULITZER FELLOWSHIP: Daniel Louis Charnas
PULITZER FELLOWSHIP: Susan Donaldson James
PULITZER FELLOWSHIP: Dorian Sanae Merina
PULITZER FELLOWSHIP: Emily Elizabeth Voigt
David Marcus Eibel Memoria Scholarship: Karen Christie Nicholson
AWARDS & WINNER
Literary Criticism Award: Megan Maria Garber
Richard Blood Scholarship Award: Lisa Marie Desai & Andrea De Marco
Leslie Rachel Sander Social Justice Award: Lily Roxanna Jamali, Mary Catherine Brouder & Kate Elizabeth McCarthy
James A. Wechsler Memorial Awards
International: Clinton Martin Hendler
National: Daniel Weiss
Local: Betty Yu
Richard T. Baker Bronx Beat Award: Charis Hagyard Anderson
Richard T. Baker Magazine Award: Ayub Nuri
Richard T. Baker Columbia News Service Award: Christopher Jude Twarowski
Nona Balakian Award in Literary Criticism: Rafael Enrique Valero
Photojournalism Award: Amanda Katharine Rivkin
Philip Greer Business Writing Award: Jason Anthony Del Rey
Robert Harron Award (nice guy/nice gal prize): David Lee Ressel
Fred M. Hechinger Education Journalism Award: Angela Renee Hokanson & Justin David Nobel
Horgan Prizes for Excellence in Science Writing:
Emily Elizabeth Voigt
Margaret Ballantyne
Domenico Montanaro
Ann Marie Venesky
Horgan Prize for Excellence in Science Writing: Lora Kristina Wallace
Lars Erik Nelson for national reporting: Christine Cecile Brouwer
Christopher Light Editing Prize: Annie Correal
Lynton Fellowship in Book Writing: Lauren Marie McSherry & Daniel Louis Charnas
Melvin Mencher Reporting Award: Sarah Selene Brown
New Media Workshop Award: Ahmed Rakan Shihab-Eldin & Paul Saksith Suwan
Nightly News Workshop Award: Mary Catherine Brouder
Nightly News Workshop Award: Nicholas Emmanuel Meidanis
Radio Workshop Award: Jennifer Carissa Collins
Television News Magazine Award: Kate Elizabeth McCarthy
Sackett Graduate Award: Daniel Louis Charnas
Henry N. Taylor Award for international students: Archie Bland & Lorenzo Morales
Louis Winnick Prize for RWI: Gregory Steven Beyer
Sevellon Brown Award: Julia Charlotte Mead
Documentary Television Workshop Award: Smriti Aggarwal & Shahar Smooha
Master of Arts Award for Best Thesis: Julia Charlotte Mead
MA Thesis Finalists: Thomas Scott Dodd & Justine Juliet Sharrock
STUDENTS GRADUATING WITH HONORS
(see explanation of how these are determined)
Andres Amerikaner
Archie Bland
Dorian Emily Block
Christine Cecile Brouwer
Daniel Louis Charnas
Jennifer Carissa Collins
Coleman MacDonalson Cowan
Jason Anthony Del Rey
Brett Taylor Elliott
Paige Ferrari
Anne Gehris
Jessica Joy Heasley
Susan Donaldson James
Laura Shannon Legere
Aimee Anne Levitt
Kevin Joseph Livelli
Aili Mary McConnon
Dorian Sanae Merina
Karen Christie Nicholson
Vidya Ram
Courtney Christine Reimer
Beth Anne Rotatori
Ahmed Rakan Shihab-Eldin
Samuel Irving Stein
Emily Elizabeth Voigt
Robert Thomas Wagner
Daniel Weiss
Joshua Marc Yaffa
Congratulations to all our graduates!
Below: One of the photos by Amanda Rivkin (it’s of a woman having her eyebrows threaded), winner of the 2007 Photojournalism Award:
See 2008 Graduation Awards.
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.
Pulitzer Board Widens Range of Online Journalism in Entries
New York, Nov. 27, 2006 – The Pulitzer Prize Board announced today that newspapers may now submit a full array of online material—such as databases, interactive graphics, and streaming video—in nearly all of its journalism categories.
The board also announced that a category called Local Reporting will replace Beat Reporting as one of the 14 prizes in journalism.
All changes will apply to work done in 2006 for prizes awarded in 2007. The Pulitzer Prizes each year are administered at Columbia University.
Last year, the board for the first time allowed some online content in all categories. However, with the exception of the Public Service category, the online work was limited to written stories or still images.
Now, an assortment of online elements will be permitted in all journalism categories except for the competition’s two photography categories, which will continue to restrict entries to still images. The Pulitzer categories range from investigative and international reporting to commentary, editorial writing, and cartooning.
“This board believes that its much fuller embrace of online journalism reflects the direction of newspapers in a rapidly changing media world,” said Sig Gissler, administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes.
In two categories, Breaking News Reporting and Breaking News Photography, the board will continue to allow an entry consisting entirely of material published on a newspaper’s Web site. In all other categories, an entry may contain online material, but it must also contain material published in the newspaper’s print edition.
Eligibility for entering the competition will continue to be restricted to newspapers published daily, Sunday, or at least once a week during the calendar year. “This keeps faith with the historic mandate of the Pulitzer Prizes,” Gissler said.
The definition of the new Local Reporting category states: “for a distinguished example of local reporting that illuminates significant issues or concerns.”
The purpose of the new category is to encourage and honor exemplary local journalism, marked by strong reporting across a spectrum of potential subjects. “The Pulitzer Prizes have long valued such reporting,” Gissler said, “but this makes our interest much more explicit.”
While the local category replaces the Beat Reporting category that was created in 1991, the work of beat reporters remains eligible for entry in a wide range of categories that include—depending on the specialty involved—national, investigative, and explanatory reporting, as well as the new local category.
With its new rules for online submissions, the Pulitzer Board will require each online element to be a single, discretely designated presentation, such as a database, blog, interactive graphic, slide show, or video presentation. Each designated element will count as one item in the total number of items, print or online, that are permitted in an entry.
“In effect, a newspaper must call out which online element it wants to be considered,” Gissler said. “If an element has multiple parts, such as a graphic with various entry points, the conceptual logic linking the parts must be clear.”
In any category, according to the rules, online material must be published on the newspaper’s Web site and, when submitted for competition, “must depict its original publication on the Web, not its subsequent update or alteration.”
The revised rules, entry forms, and guidelines on the submission of entries can be found on the Pulitzer Prize Web site (www.pulitzer.org). The deadline for entries is Feb. 1, 2007.
About Columbia University
Founded in 1754 as King’s College, Columbia University in the City of New York is the fifth oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and today is one of the world’s leading academic and research institutions. For more information about Columbia University, visit www.columbia.edu.
Feel free to circulate if you haven’t already. Last year, a j-school student applied for and received one of these grants. It helped her travel to Kenya and report her master’s project
(which I believe won an award as one of the best projects at the end of the year).
Hope all’s well,
Ken Kostel
Senior Science Writer
The Earth Institute at Columbia University
—–Original Message—–
From: Columbia U. School of Int’l & Public Affairs
Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2006 11:41 AM
Subject: Earth Institute Student Travel Grant Application
Dear Ken,
In response to requests to support student projects, a travel grant program was initiated last year by the Earth Institute. For the 2006-2007 Academic Year, funding has been allocated by the Earth Institute to support travel by students matriculated in Columbia University degree programs engaged in research projects dealing with issues of sustainable development and/or environmental protection. This travel is for projects directly related to degree studies at Columbia University.
The maximum travel grant award is $750 per person. Students awarded a grant must use this to cover the cost of their travel for research they are conducting to meet specific degree requirements. The travel grant program funds individuals rather than projects. In so doing, each member of a research team may apply individually for funding and there is no
limit on the number of people who may apply from any one project group. The final deadline for submitting an application is Friday, September 29, 2006.
Requirements:
In order to be considered for funding, students must follow the
application instructions, adhere to deadlines and be full time students
at Columbia University in good academic standing. Projects must be
related to sustainable development and environmental issues and must
have a faculty academic advisor who is an instructor of record for the
project. The project must be part of a course that awards academic
credit or is a degree requirement. For example, travel can be for
projects that are needed to complete studios, workshops, theses, senior
seminar projects, independent studies and other degree requirements.
Please find below an outline of application procedures and criterion
that will be reviewed when considering an application for a travel
award.
Application Instructions:
Students must complete the application form and submit a cover letter,
resume and project description. Only students who are in good academic
standing and have a faculty member willing to endorse their research and
application will be considered. Please note that applications will be
reviewed based upon the relationship of the travel to specific pedagogic
objectives of the research.
Please ensure you submit all forms together in a single envelope or
email. Hard copy applications should be submitted to the Office of
Education Programs located in room 1408 of the International Affairs
Building (420 West 118th Street, New York, NY 10027). Applications
submitted after the deadline will not be considered. Electronic
applications should be emailed to students@ei.columbia.edu
Submission Checklist:
1.Complete Application form
a.Review the travel information and country specific travel
warnings
b.Review the health and insurance information
2.Signature of Academic Advisor
3.Resume
4.Project Description
Pre-departure meetings:
Successful applicants will need to attend pre-departure meetings that
will be held by the Earth Institute to ensure that students are prepared
for their travel according to the University’s guidelines. Students must
ensure they have read the travel advisory and have followed the travel
instructions as stated in the award letter. Awardees will also be
required to ensure that they have ample health insurance and travel
insurance that covers MEDIVAC in the event that they need it.
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
- - -
“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.
2006 Graduation Awards The following awards were presented on May 16 and 17, 2006.
PULITZER TRAVELING FELLOWSHIPS & EIBEL for the top six students
Pulitzer: Eduardo Suñol (designated as the top student in the class)
Pulitzer: Mary-Rose P. Abraham
Pulitzer: Elsa Heidorn
Pulitzer: Rachel Evangeline Jones (Cultural)
Pulitzer: Peter Jerome Ritter
Eibel: Aparnaa Kay Seshadri
AWARDS & WINNERS Baker: Bronx Beat Jeremy Duffield Hartley
Baker: Bronx Beat Amy Elizabeth Schoenfeld
Baker: Magazine Susan Donaldson James
Baker: CNS Angela Marie Ashman
Balakian (Literature): Glenna Kate Gordon
Blood (J’95/reporting): Zaidee Rose Stavely
Photo: Julia Kumari Drapkin
Criticism: Asa John Hawk Fitch
Greer (Business): Moira Elizabeth Herbst
Harron (”nice guy/nice girl”): Rebecca Castillo
Horgan #1 (Science) Jeneen Interlandi
Horgan #2 (Science) Erin Kathleen Blakeley
Horgan #3 (Science) Diana Helen Howansky
Lars-Erik Nelson (Fall RW1): Peter Jerome Ritter
Light (Editing): Patricia Marie Murphy
Lynton Fellowship in Book Writing: Christina Lombardi
Lynton Fellowship in Book Writing: Alia Malek
Mencher (Reporting): Jeneen Interlandi
New Media: Khodayar Nader Akhavi & Erin Kathleen Blakeley
Documentary: Laura Victoria Carlson, Anjali Derryn Nayar and Sherpem Sherpa
Nightly: Scott David Willyerd & Max Joseph Dickstein
Radio: Elsa Heidorn
TV Magazine: Josh Fahey Mensch, Francesco Radicati & Karina Menezes Vieira
Sackett (Law): Leah Nelson & Rachel Laura Breitman
Sander (J’89/Social Justice): Alia Malek
Sevellon Brown (History of Journalism): Brandon Richard Gilladoga Keim
Taylor (International Student): Dan Fishel
Taylor (International Student): Mariana Martinez Estens
Wechsler: Intl. - Zaidee Rose Stavely
Wechsler: Local - Sara Elizabeth Stefanini
Wechsler: Local - Josh Fahey Mensch, Nneka Ijeoma Nwosu & Scott David Willyerd
Wechsler: National Danielle Esther Shapiro
Wechsler: National Alia Malek
Mid-Career: Mark John Prendergast
MA Thesis: Barbara Jo Kiviat
MA Thesis Finalist: Jennifer Anne Maloney
MA Thesis Finalist: Victoria Andrus Schlesinger
STUDENTS GRADUATING WITH HONORS
Mary-Rose P. Abraham
Khodayar Nader Akhavi
Andrea Ruth Appleton
David Arthur Bario
Erin Kathleen Blakeley
Stephanie Heather Cooperman
Brian Thomas Costa
Megan Alisa Feldman
Asa John Hawk Fitch
Elsa Heidorn
Moira Elizabeth Herbst
Jeneen Interlandi
Eric Matthew Jaffe
Rachel Evangeline Jones
Christopher Blaine Korman
Molly Kathryn Langmuir
Mariana Martínez Esténs
Josh Fahey Mensch
Samuel Russell Mickle III
Patricia Marie Murphy
Peter Jerome Ritter
Amy Elizabeth Schoenfeld
Aparnaa Kay Seshadri
Danielle Esther Shapiro
Eduardo Suñol
Patrick Franklin White
Victor S. Navasky will receive the George Polk Book Award for “A Matter of Opinion,” a unique memoir full of colorful personalities and big events published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Navasky, who became editor of the The Nation in 1978 and rose to become its publisher and editorial director in 1995, is now publisher emeritus. His work provides a historically significant view of the role that public discourse plays in sustaining the democratic process in an age of mass media and corporate dominance.
