Conversation between Nicholas Kristof and Kaign Christy
Monday, September 21, 2009
Roone Arledge Auditorium– 8:00 pm, doors open at 7:30 pm
Fighting Modern-Day Slavery:
Two Activists Share Stories from the Trenches
In nearly every nation of the world women are enslaved within the multibillion-dollar sex trafficking industry. Thanks to writers and activists, their plight is being told and growing numbers are being set free. Come and hear a prize-winning journalist and attorney tell of their respective journeys into—and work within—the tumultuous world of front-line activism. Presentations by Nicholas Kristof and Kaign Christy, followed by a moderated discussion with J-school professor, Mirta Ojito, and audience Q&A.
Nicholas Kristof
The two-time Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for The New York Times has reported on six continents and traveled to over 140 countries. Mr. Kristof’s heart is revealed in his columns in which he often draws attention to health, poverty and gender issues in the developing world—including his prominent reporting of the Darfur genocide. He and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, have just released “Half the Sky: From Oppression to Opportunity for Women Worldwide,” a book that documents the bravery of women around the globe who have survived sexual exploitation.
Kaign Christy
The Director of Operations for Southeast Asia at International Justice Mission, Mr. Christy is an attorney with years of experience advocating on behalf of modern day slaves—in particular, women ensnared in the international sex-trafficking industry. While stationed in Cambodia, he helped local authorities to arrest over 100 traffickers and rescue nearly 300 of their victims—actions that won him the Commander Medal of Sahametrei—the highest award given by the Government of Cambodia to foreign nationals for service to the nation of Cambodia.
Mirta Ojito
Ms. Ojito, now assistant professor at the Journalism School, earned her reputation as a newspaper reporter, first at The Miami Herald & El Nuevo Herald, and later at The New York Times, where she covered immigration, among other beats, for the Metro Desk. She has received numerous awards, including the American Society of Newspaper Editor’s award for best foreign reporting in 1999, and a shared Pulitzer in 2001 for a series about race in America. Her first book, Finding Mañana: A Memoir of a Cuban Exodus, was released in 2005.
We’re experimenting with Twitcam.com, which makes live webcasting pretty simple. Here’s video of some of the opening day remarks by Soledad O’Brien of CNN (Twitcam provided 30+ minutes of live video that were webcast instantly, then archived and online within three minutes).
The original tweet: @sreenet: http://twitcam.com/o6g - CNN’s Soledad O’Brien talks to Columbia J-school on opening day #columbiaj
[NOTE: For those of you who Twitter, the hashtag for J-school events is #columbiaj (if you have no idea what the previous sentence means, you will have plenty of opportunities to learn during your time here).]
Columbia University Association of Black Journalists present:
REPORTING IN AFRICA: An Open and Frank
Discussion about Reporting from the Continent
Tuesday, March 31st @ 5pm in the Stabile Student Center
Panelists:
Frankie Edozien: Director, NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute’s Ghana ‘Reporting Africa’ program, co-founder, African Magazine, 2008 Kaiser Foundation Fellow, former reporter, New York Post.
Allan Dodds Frank: President, Overseas Press Club of America, contributor, the Daily Beast, former investigative and legal correspondent, Bloomberg Television, former Business Investigative Correspondent, CNN’s “Moneyline with Lou Dobbs”, former Business Investigative Correspondent, ABC News, former Senior Editor, Forbes, Columbia J-school Grad.
Milton Allimadi: Founder, publisher and Editor-In-Chief, The Black Star News, former stringer, The New York Times and The City Sun, author, The Hearts of Darkness, Columbia J-school Grad, ’92.
Arlene Getz: Senior Editor, Newsweek Worldwide Special Editions, former Deputy Editor & Foreign Editor, Newsweek.com, former foreign correspondent, Gemini News Service, St. Petersburg Times, the Sydney Morning Herald of Australia, first vice-president, Overseas Press Club.
Howard French: professor, Columbia University, freelance reporter, the Washington Post, former Metropolitan reporter, the New York Times, former bureau chief; Central America and the Caribbean, West Africa, Japan, the Koreas and China for the New York Times, former columnist, the International Herald Tribune, author, A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa.
Q & A with panelists to follow. This is the only event
of this kind this year…don’t miss out!
Reporting News: Covering Gay and Lesbian Issues in Community-based News.
Monday, March 30th
1:00 - 2:30 p.m.
Room 607B
Prof. Joe Cutbirth, who founded the Texas NLGJA chapter in 1992 and represented Texas at the organizational meeting of the NLGJA board of directors at the first national convention, will lead a seminar style discussion about how a group like NLGJA separates journalism from political activism, and some of the unexpected challenges new journalists often face covering lesbian-gay issues when they get outside the 5 large media markets and into more localized community-based coverage.
The discussion is open to all students, especially those interested in cultural affairs, human rights reporting, politics or anyone who expects to take a job in a smaller market, where these issues often present greater challenges to reporters and editors.
BOOK TALK: Prof. HELEN BENEDICT discusses her new nonfiction book, THE LONELY
SOLDIER: THE PRIVATE WAR OF WOMEN SERVING IN IRAQ. Benedict’s play based on the book, THE LONELY SOLDIER MONOLOGUES, is being performed in New York City at The Theater for the New City from March 5-22, and at La MaMa on March 17.
Ticket
information: http://lonelysoldierplay.com/ and book information: http://www.helenbenedict.com
Praise for the book: “The Lonely Solider is an important book, a crucial accounting of the shameful war on women who gave their bodies, lives and souls for their country.” –Eve Ensler, playwright, performer, activist and author of The Vagina Monologues
The Alliance Program, the Middle East Institute and
the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life present:
“Democratization in the Arab World”
Seminar with Jean Leca (Sciences Po)
Moderated by Peter Awn (Director, Middle East Institute)
Thursday, March 26th, 12:30pm-2:00pm
Room 1118, IAB
Light lunch will be served.
Democratization in the Arab World: In this seminar, Jean Leca will analyze current global political dynamics in reference to his landmark 1994 article in which he first outlined the concepts and hypotheses of uncertainty, vulnerability, and legitimacy. Leca will use case studies of democracy and democratic processes in the Algerian context to make a more specific argument. A professor Emeritus of Political Science at Sciences Po, Paris, Jean Leca is a renowned specialist of political philosophy and political sociology, with specific interest in the Arab world and the Mediterranean. Jean Leca is the former President of the International Political Science Association (1991-1994) and of the French Political Science Association (1990-1991 and 1998-2005). He has consulted widely regarding Arab foreign relations and was a member of the Joint Committee on the Near and Middle East. Jean Leca has held various visiting professor positions in the US, including Stanford, Princeton, Dartmouth, and University of Wisconsin, Madison.
The Alliance Program is a joint venture between Columbia University and three French partner institutions, the Ecole Polytechnique, Sciences Po, and the Universite Paris I Pantheon Sorbonne. For further information, please visit: www.columbia.edu/cu/alliance.
Peabody Award winning journalist Krista Tippett is the host of the nationally syndicated “Speaking of Faith” program of “religion, meaning, ethics, and ideas”. A leading voice in talk radio, Ms. Tippett has interviewed luminaries such as Thich Nhat Hanh, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Prof. Karen Armstrong, Gov. Mario Cuomo, theologian Martin Marty, and writer Annie Lamott. Ms Tippett’s most recent venture, “Repossessing Virtue is part of [an] ongoing series exploring the moral, spiritual, and practical aspects of the economic downturn”
Alex De Waal, General Barry McCaffrey & Thomas Ricks
Does military intervention work? What is the role of non-military and multi-national groups in regime change and peace-keeping efforts? Three distinguished participants discuss their perspectives on peace keeping and regime change. Featuring Alex de Waal, program director of the Social Science Research Council, General Barry McCaffrey, four-star general of the United States Army (retired). and Thomas Ricks, The Washington Post’s Special Military Correspondent. Thomas Weiss, Presidential Professor of Political Science at The Graduate Center will moderate.
BIO: Jeffrey D. Sachs is the Director of The Earth Institute, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University. He is also Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. From 2002 to 2006, he was Director of the UN Millennium Project and Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the Millennium Development Goals, the internationally agreed goals to reduce extreme poverty, disease, and hunger by the year 2015. Sachs is also President and Co-Founder of Millennium Promise Alliance, a nonprofit organization aimed at ending extreme global poverty
He is widely considered to be the leading international economic advisor of his generation. For more than 20 years Professor Sachs has been in the forefront of the challenges of economic development, poverty alleviation, and enlightened globalization, promoting policies to help all parts of the world to benefit from expanding economic opportunities and wellbeing. He is also one of the leading voices for combining economic development with environmental sustainability, and as Director of the Earth Institute leads large-scale efforts to promote the mitigation of human-induced climate change. In 2004 and 2005 he was named among the 100 most influential leaders in the world by Time Magazine, and was awarded the Padma Bhushan, a high civilian honor bestowed by the Indian Government, in 2007. Sachs lectures constantlyaround the world and was the 2007 BBC Reith Lecturer. He is the First holder of the Royal Professor Ungku Aziz Chair in Poverty Studies, at the Centre for Poverty and Development Studies, University of Malaya.
He is also author of hundreds of scholarly articles and many books, including the New York Times bestsellers Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet (Penguin 2008) and The End of Poverty (Penguin, 2005).
The Delacorte Lectures examine various aspects of magazine journalism, presented in the spring semester each week by a leader in the field of magazine publishing. All lectures begin at 7:30 p.m. in the school’s Lecture Hall. Attendance is required of students in the magazine concentration. The lectures are open to the public. This schedule is subject to change.
Listen to the Delacorte Lectures in the Event Archive.
Spring 2009 Delacorte Lectures
Jan 29 - David Andelman, editor, World Policy Journal
Feb 5 - Mort Rosenblum, Dispatches,
Feb 12 - Tina Brown, editor, The Daily Beast
Feb 19 - Joanna Coles, editor-in-chief, Marie Claire
Feb 26 - Ruth Reichl, editor-in-chief, Gourmet
Mar 5 - J.C. Suares, art director
Mar 12 - Daniel Peres, editor-in-chief Details
Mar 19 - Spring Break, no lecture
Mar 26 - Stephen Murphy, president & CEO, Rodale Press
Apr 2 - Steve Adler, editor-in-chief, BusinessWeek
Apr 9 - Passover, no lecture
Apr 16 - Kate White, editor-in-chief, Cosmopolitan
Author and Professor Emeritus of French and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, MaryseCondé will be joined by Elizabeth Nunez in an exploration of the role of biography in her work. Condé’s most recent book, Victoire, les saveursmotsis the biography of her mother and grandmother. Her writings include Heremakhonon;I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salemand Segu. Elizabeth Nunez, Ph.D. is Provost and Senior Vice President at Medgar Evers College and a CUNY Distinguished Professor of English. Dr. Nunez is the award-winning author of six novels: Prospero’s Daughter; Grace; Discretion; Bruised Hibiscus; Beyond the Limbo Silence; and When Rocks Dance. Dr. Nunez co-edited the anthology Stories from Blue Latitudes: Caribbean Women Writers at Home and Abroad and her seventh novel, Anna In-Between, will be published in 2009.
January 28th, Wednesday, 7:00pm
Martin E. SegalTheatre
TheGraduate Center, CUNY
365Fifth Ave (btwn 34th&35th)
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
No registration. Please arrive early for a seat. 212-817-2005
SPRING SEMESTER KICKOFF DAY
An annual day of academic, career and writing/reporting tips and advice, before the semester formally begins. Brought to you by Student Affairs, Academic Affairs and Career Services
Mandatory for full-time MS and MA students; all other students, faculty, staff are encouraged to attend.
Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2009
10-10:30 am: Breakfast served - coffee, tea, muffin and bagel baskets
DISCUSSION: Career Planning Strategies Dean Sotomayor & the Career Services Team
- how to make best use of the Spring semester for job hunting and job planning
11:15-11:45: DISCUSSION: Surviving & Thriving in the Spring Semester Deans Huff & Sreenivasan
- how to excel in the Spring, academically and otherwise
- preparing for graduation (never too early!)
- explanation of year-end prizes
[be sure to read Spring survival tips from alumni] (more…)
[REMINDER: These and other events are listed on the J-school Google Calendar:
http://snurl.com/columbiajschool and see our all-class lecture schedule:
http://snurl.com/columbialectures ]
Dear M.S. & M.A. Students:
We are offering two special workshops on doing long-form, narrative projects
that are ideal for anyone doing Master’s Projects or Master’s Theses (in any
medium). We STRONGLY RECOMMEND these for all our students.
These will be taught by Prof. Paula Span, who specializes in teaching this
particular art form [ http://www.jrn.columbia.edu/faculty/span.asp ].
Student feedback from last year’s session: “Professor Span’s workshop last
night was excellent. She’s a great lecturer, laid out a number of clear,
helpful ideas for organizing research and then weaving it into a long-form
piece, and also gave great advice while responding to student questions.”
There are two sets of workshops, each with two identical sessions, so you can
get to one or the other of each workshop. She is offering duplicate sessions so
that each can be smaller than the typical all-class sessions.
Reporting Your Long-form Project
* Wed, Oct. 1, 7-9 pm (identical to Oct 3 session)
room 607B
* Fri, Oct. 3 7-9 pm (identical to Oct 1 session)
World Room
* Thurs, Dec. 4, 7-9 pm (identical to the Dec. 10 session)
World Room
* Wed, Dec. 10, 7-9 pm (identical to the Dec. 4 session)
World Room
We will create the signup sheet for the December sessions in November.
If you sign up for these sessions, please be sure to read the two Washington
Post articles that are available here: http://drop.io/span_article
She will be dissecting them in the workshop and explaining how they were put
together. You must read them before the session.
PLEASE NOTE: Dean Lemann will be teaching his two one-hour lectures, “How to
Think About Your Master’s Project” as follows:
PART 1: Tuesday, Nov 18th, 7:30-8:30 pm
PART 2: Tuesday, Dec. 9, 7-8 pm
Dean Lemann’s sessions are mandatory for all full-time M.S. students. Everyone
else is welcome to attend.
Wanted to alert you to two parallel events that you might like to consider attending on Monday.
The first is a special J-school panel aimed at the full-time MS class about connecting the Wall Street crisis with the everyday residents in NYC. We have a terrific set of speakers. See details below. All of you are welcome to attend.
The second is an event that’s part of One Web Day and takes place downtown at Washington Square Park by NYU (you can attend, or volunteer to help out). Details below. Because the other event runs exactly at the same time, we are not advertising this to the full-time MS students. (more…)
Wednesday night event at Columbia Journalism School - free and open to the public. NO RSVP required.
Columbia Journalism School and Columbia Law School’s Center for Law and Politics present
A Conversation with Jim Sciutto, the London-based senior foreign correspondent of ABC News and author of “Against Us: The New Face of America’s Enemies in the Muslim World”
Prof. Nathaniel Persily of the Law School will introduce Sciutto and moderate the Q&A.
Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2009
7-9 pm
Columbia Journalism School - Lecture Hall
116th St & Broadway (#1 train to 116th St)
No RSVP required. This is an open, public event - no charge.
Please join us for what promises to be a fascinating conversation about America and the world, on the eve of the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
Here’s what Booklist had to say about Sciutto’s book: “Although he paints a sobering picture, Sciutto offers hope for Americans seeking amicable relationships with Muslims …. Much-needed light on dark geopolitical realities.”
And Anthony Shadid, Washington Post’s award-winning Middle East correspondent: “For far too long, U.S. policymakers have relied on a faulty, dangerous premise: We only have to convince the rest of the world of our righteousness to dispel the growing, anti-American tide that has swept across the Arab and Muslim worlds since 2001. In his insightful, captivating and informative book, Jim Sciutto, a veteran reporter in the Middle East, shows how misguided that notion is. To much of the rest of the world, particularly the Middle East, American foreign policy appears singularly imperial. In fact, in less than a decade, two distinct versions of reality have emerged — one there, one here — and in the way America is perceived, they rarely intersect. We can’t wish away what has happened to our image. We have to understand the phenomenon. We have to recognize it. And Sciutto’s book is essential reading in doing so.”
MEI: “The Role of the Media in the Israeli-Palestinian
Conflict: A conversation with Danny Rubinstein” Date: September 9, 2008 from 12:00 pm to 2:00 pm EDT Location: International Affairs Building, Room 1501 Contact: For further information regarding this event, please contact Megan Hazle at mh2694@columbia.edu.
SIPA, The Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, the Middle East Institute at Columbia and Americans for Peace Now present a conversation with Danny Rubinstein, Israel’s longest serving West Bank correspondent. Ori Nir, spokesperson for Americans for Peace Now will moderate.
Danny Rubinstein, Israel’s longest serving West Bank correspondent, recently retired from Ha’aretz Daily after a long career as a senior commentator on Palestinian affairs. He is now a columnist for Yedioth Ahronoth’s economic supplement, Kalkalist. Having covered the West Bank and Gaza since they fell under Israeli occupation in 1967, Rubinstein is one of the most trusted and respected experts worldwide on Israeli-Palestinian relations. He is the author of several books, among them People of Nowhere: The Palestinian Vision of Home, and The Mystery of Arafat, a biography of the Palestinian leader. Rubinstein, a native of Jerusalem, teaches at Hebrew University and at Ben Gurion University in the Negev.
Prof. Sig Gissler, who teaches in the new media program and is administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, gave his annual “Covering Your Beat” lecture to the full-time M.S. students. Here is the PowerPoint presentation he used this year (if the version below doesn’t work, try this link).
Len Downie, the executive editor of The Washington Post, was the opening day speaker at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism on Monday, August 11, 2008. His talk, and the Q&A that followed, dealt extensively with current trends in journalism, his experience at the Post and accountability journalism. He sprinkled his discussion with examples from Post stories and colleagues. What follows is an annotated version of the unedited notes from which Downie spoke. It will give you a sense of the conversation and allow you to read some of the stories he cited.
Len Downie, executive editor, The Washington Post Opening Day Speaker Columbia Graduate School of Journalism Monday, August 11, 2008
Why are you here? What do you want to do in journalism?
News media undergoing seismic changes:
Audience shifts from print newspapers and television to Internet
Classified advertising (jobs, cars, houses) from print to Web
Print advertising revenue decline accelerated by economic slowdown
Television news audience shift from broadcast to cable networks
Impact:
Newspaper profits shrinking, even losses ($30-40 million a year at Newark Star-Ledger, several million last quarter at Washington Post)
Chains, heavily in debt, selling some papers (Tribune sold Newsday, McCatchey sold Phi Inquirer and Minn. Star-Tribune) and may break up
Some major metro dailies may fold
A few smaller papers are moving onto Internet only one or more days a week or completely
Newspaper newsroom staffs are shrinking rapidly – between 25 and 50 % so far
Television network and station newsrooms also shrinking
On Friday, Aug. 1, 2008, Bill Grueskin, the Columbia Journalism School’s new Dean of Academic Affairs, was interviewed as part of the school’s webcast program. Grueskin, who was, most recently, deputy managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, spoke for an hour with Sree Sreenivasan, the school’s Dean of Student Affairs, about a wide range of topics.
Among them: the role of the WSJ in American journalism; the major changes at the paper since the arrival of Robert Thomson and Rupert Murdoch (including the recent editing layoffs); advice for young journalists; the future of newspapers; how technology has changed the business; how non-techies can learn how to work in the new world; the role of editing in journalism; his career (which included a stint on a paper on a Native American reservation); and more (he also answered questions received via e-mail and chatroom).
You can listen to the hour-long conversation here or via the player below:
These are also available as downloadable MP3 files for your personal collection. If you want to subscribe to these as podcasts on iTunes, go to “Advanced” within iTunes, then select “Subscribe to podcast” and type in http://www.blogtalkradio.com/columbiajournalism/feed and hit OK.
Questions, comments to sree@sree.net
- press release - June 2008 -
COLUMBIA’S GRADUATE SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM NAMES BILL GRUESKIN OF THE WALL STREET JOURNAL AS NEW ACADEMIC DEAN
New York, NY (June 4, 2008) — Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism announced that Bill Grueskin, the Deputy Managing Editor for News at The Wall Street Journal, will assume the position of Dean of Academic Affairs beginning on September 2, 2008. Mr. Grueskin will also have the academic title of Professor of Professional Practice. (more…)
We are going to be doing more webcasts in the weeks ahead. Coming soon: Sheila Coronel, who heads our investigative journalism program; Betsy West, who teaches in the broadcast program; Joe Cutbirth, who teaches reporting and writing (and is a PhD candidate himself); Larry Fried, dean of technology and his tech team; LynNell Hancock, who teaches education reporting (and is finishing up her term as interim academic dean); and Bill Grueskin, our new academic dean.
Meanwhile, our next session is later today: MEET THE J-SCHOOL: Judith Matloff, adjunct professor, author and war correspondent. Her new book, “Home Girl: Building a Dream House on a Lawless Block,” is about her setting up a new life in Harlem.
TODAY, Monday, June 23, 3-4 p.m. NY time
See local time in your city here: http://snurl.com/2nese
You can send your questions in advance: dos[at]jrn.columbia.edu (subject=webcast) and you can also ask questions via the live chatroom there (another chance to meet some of your new classmates, too).
Judith Matloff has been teaching reporting and writing; covering conflicts and other courses at the J-School for several years. Her latest book: “Home Girl: Building a Dream House on a Lawless Block.” She worked as a staff foreign correspondent for 20 years, specializing in areas of turmoil. She covered a total 62 countries, heading the Africa and Moscow bureaus of The Christian Science Monitor. Previously, Matloff spent a decade at Reuters in various positions in Europe and Africa. She has reported on major world matters including apartheid’s demise, genocide, EU expansion and OPEC.
These are also available as downloadable MP3 files for your personal
collection. If you want to subscribe to these as podcasts on iTunes,
go to “Advanced” within iTunes, then select “Subscribe to podcast” and
type in http://www.blogtalkradio.com/columbiajournalism/feed and hit OK.
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.
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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.
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
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.
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.”
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/
Prof. David Hajdu [DavidHajdu.com], who teaches arts journalism at the school and is a prolific author, was a guest at Google HQ, for one of their Google Talks events. You can watch the 48-minute video below or at this link.
You can also listen to a web radio interview we did with Prof. Hajdu on April 23, 2008 below or at this link.
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.
All are invited for this; mandatory for full-time M.S. students. No RSVP required. Chip is a fabulous teacher and I guarantee you will learn a lot from him (students raved about his appearance two years ago).
SPRING SEMESTER PREP DAY
Wednesday, Jan. 23, 2008
An annual day of academic, career and writing tips and advice, before the
semester formally begins. Brought to you by Student Affairs and Career Services
With special guest teacher, Chip Scanlan, J’74, one of America’s best-known
writing coaches and author of Poynter.org’s “Chip on Your Shoulder” column - http://www.poynter.org/shoulder (bio below)
Mandatory for all full-time M.S. students; all other students, faculty,
adjuncts and staff are invited.
8:30-9:15: Coffee, tea, breakfast served.
9:15-10: “Surviving & Thriving in the Spring Semester”
- how to excel in the Spring, academically and otherwise
- preparing for graduation (never to early!)
Deans Sreenivasan and Huff
10:00-10:45: “Career Planning Strategies”
- how to make best use of the Spring for job hunting and job planning
Dean Sotomayor and Career Services Team
10:45-11:00: Break (light snacks served)
WORKSHOPS WITH CHIP SCANLAN, J’74 (Poynter Institute faculty member and one of
America’s best-known writing coaches)
11:00-1:00 pm: “Thinking About Stories”
Reporters and editors pay a lot of attention to reporting and writing. But
thinking is the under-appreciated part of being a journalist. This hands-on
session presents practical and quick techniques to strengthen the connections
between creative work, critical thinking and courage that produce the finest
journalism.
1:00-2:15 pm:
STUDENTS - Lunch on your own
FACULTY - Lunch meeting with Chip Scanlan (faculty, RSVP to
StudentAffairsRSVP@gmail.com)
2:15-4:15: “Making Things Happen: A Journalist’s Guide to Getting Things Done”
Are you a procrastinator? Have unfulfilled dreams? This session will show you
how just five simple steps can nip the “I’ll do it tomorrow” mindset, help you
successfully plan and execute any goal from cleaning your room to making your
Master’s Project/Thesis a wild success.
4:15-6 pm: “Chip and Salsa”
Informal reception, featuring Columbia Catering’s famous “South of the Border”
menu - a chance to meet Chip and hang out with your classmates before classes
begin.
ABOUT CHIP SCANLAN
Chip produces “Chip on Your Shoulder,” a writing advice column for Poynter
Online. He spent two decades as an award-winning reporter and feature writer
Providence Journal, St. Petersburg Times, Knight Ridder Washington Bureau).
He is the author of “Reporting and Writing: Basics for the 21st Century”
(Oxford University Press). Co-editor, “America’s Best Newspaper Writing”
(Bedford/St. Martin’s) Edited “Best Newspaper Writing” 1994-2000. Recent
publications include: The New York Times, National Public Radio.
Chip’s teaching specialties are in reporting, interviewing, coaching skills,
productivity, nonfiction narrative, personal essays and deadline storytelling.
With his wife, Katharine Fair, he wrote “The Holly Wreath Man”, a serial
newspaper novel syndicated in 60 newspapers and in 2005 was published in
hardcover. In 2006, the couple produced another Christmas serial, “Mystery @
Elf Camp.”
They have three daughters and live in St. Petersburg Beach, Florida.
Occasionally, Chip gets the remote.
[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; or after the event, too. You can see the master list of all the “Notes From” items here.]
Below, notes from a talk by Hassan Fattah of The New York Times. Many thanks to the volunteer notes-taker Mohammad Al-Kassim. Feel free to post a comment below (free, one-timeregistration required).
NOTES FROM… A Talk by Hassan Fattah of The New York Times
Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2007
Lecture Hall, Columbia Journalism School
By Mohammad Al-Kassim, J2008
Hassan Fattah, Columbia University J-School Class of 2000, and New York Times Middle East Correspondant based in Dubai, spoke to J-School students at the Lecture Hall on Tuesday morning. A former Baghdad correspondent, he now covers the entire region except for Iraq, Israel and Palestine. (more…)
[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; or after the event, too. You can see the master list of all the “Notes From” items here.]
Below, notes from a talk by Brian Ross of ABC News. Many thanks to the volunteer notes-takers. Feel free to post a comment below (free, one-timeregistration required).
NOTES FROM… A Talk by Brian Ross, ABC News Chief Investigative Correspondent
Wednesday, Aug. 15, 2007
Lecture Hall, Columbia Journalism School (more…)
Hassan M. Fattah, NYT Middle East correspondent based in Dubai, talks to Columbia J-school Students. He graduated from the school in May 2000. This is just one minute from a 45-minute talk he gave on Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2007. In the background, you see two of the things that he says are critical for all foreign correspondents to have at all times: a pencil (not a pen, a pencil) and a Nokia phone (in other countries, you can always find someone nearby who has a Nokia charger). Hassan’s bio is below.
Publish your comments below.
ABOUT HASSAN FATTAH
Hassan M. Fattah is the Middle East Correspondent for the New York Times,
based in Dubai. He is responsible for covering the entire region outside
Iraq and Israel/Palestine.
In 2003, he co-founded Iraq Today, an English-language weekly newspaper
written and edited by Iraqis, turning the venture into an internationally
recognized publication before its closure a year later due to security
concerns. In 2004, Mr. Fattah helped found Aswat Al Iraq, Iraq.s first
independent, non-governmental news exchange, funded by the United Nations
and focused on developing a new generation of Iraqi journalists.
He has served as a correspondent for Time, and at various times has been a
regular contributor to the Economist, Prospect Magazine and the New
Republic, among other international publications.
Born in Beirut Lebanon to Iraqi parents, Mr. Fattah was raised between
Lebanon, Jordan and the U.S. He holds a B.S. in Engineering from the
University of California at Berkeley and a Masters in Science from the
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
With special guest teacher, Chip Scanlan, J’74, one of America’s best-known
