People Column

By Trish Anderton

OPC SCHOLARS

2014 H.L. Stephenson Fellowship winner Caelainn Hogan had a story in the New Yorker in December about why a move away from using Arabic script on Nigerian currency has proven controversial. As an OPC fellow, Hogan was based in Lagos, Nigeria with the Associated Press. She went on to do a global health fellowship with the GroundTruth Project, founded by OPC member Charles Sennott. Hogan is currently freelancing with a focus on migration, rights and religion.

Fatima Bhojani, OPC Foundation’s 2015 Theo Wilson winner, recently got a cover story in Newsweek Middle East. “Cry, For My Son, For His Freedom” tells the story of a Pakistani immigrant to the U.S. whose son was sentenced to 30 years in prison after being drawn into a terrorism plot by an FBI informant. Bhojani received a masters degree at Columbia University’s Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism in 2015 and is now writing about national security, criminal justice and foreign policy.

AWARDS

Former OPC President Richard B. Stolley was inducted into the New York Journalism Hall of Fame before a sold-out crowd at Sardi’s in November. The Hall is maintained by The Deadline Club, which is the New York City chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. Stolley was honored for his six decades at Time, Inc., where he served as the company’s editorial director and was the founding editor of People.

OPC member David Hume Kennerly has been honored with the Lucie Award for Achievement in Photojournalism. Kennerly “is considered a master storyteller by his colleagues,” the Lucie Foundation wrote, “and has been shooting on the front lines of history for decades.” The awards, established in 2003, recognize “the greatest achievements in photography.” Kennerly has photographed more than 50 major magazine covers over the course of his career. Hired as a contributing editor by Politico in 2015, he is now producing photo essays about the 2016 presidential election.

Associated Press Mexico City bureau chief Katherine Corcoran has won an Alicia Patterson Foundation fellowship. Corcoran, who was named the Josephine Patterson Albright fellow, will examine press freedom in Mexico. The awards “provide support for journalists engaged in rigorous, probing, spirited, independent and skeptical work that will benefit the public.” Corcoran has been with the AP since 2008. She has also worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Denver Post and the San Francisco Chronicle.

Josh Fine and David Scott, who won the 2014 David A. Andelman and Pamela Title Award for their HBO Real Sports feature on labor abuses in the run-up to the 2022 World Cup, have nabbed an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for the same story. The judges said the “extensive investigation into Qatar’s plan to achieve international recognition through sport exposed the price it has exacted in fair play, human rights, and even human lives.” Three-time OPC Award-winner Scott Pelley was also awarded a duPont for his 60 Minutes investigation into 2013 sarin gas attacks that killed 1500 people in Damascus, Syria. Multiple OPC Award-winner David Fanning of PBS’ Frontline took home multiple duPont-Columbia Awards – one for Ebola coverage and another for a documentary about transgender children.

UPDATES

NEW YORK: OPC member Anupreeta Das is joining a new financial enterprise team headed by David Enrich at The Wall Street Journal. Das has recently been covering Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway for the Journal. She’ll continue in that role, while also covering Wall Street and the presidential race. Das previously wrote about technology, media and the telecommunications industry for Reuters.

Former OPC Governor Howard Chua-Eoan has been given editorial authority over the front-of-the-book news sections at Bloomberg Businessweek, where he is deputy managing editor. Chua-Eoan is a former news director at Time magazine and author of several books; he has served as Press Freedom chair at the OPC.

OPC Governor Lara Setrakian has launched her latest immersive news project. Arctic Deeply covers the impact of climate change on the polar ice caps, and how the changing polar environment affects the rest of the world. It is produced in partnership with Canada’s Centre for International Governance. Setrakian founded the media startup News Deeply in 2012 to provide sustained, in-depth reporting on critical issues. The company’s other topical deep-dives include Syria Deeply and Water Deeply.

The New York Times will still have a print edition in 10 years – but it may not be like today’s paper, says CEO Mark Thompson. “I think the print product will evolve,” Thompson told OPC member and Harvard Business Review editor-in-chief Adi Ignatius. He said the paper is focusing on “what’s the right way of thinking about your print platform in a smartphone world.” Thompson also said he feels the Times is “successfully monetizing our audiences for news better than any other newspaper-based company in the world,” adding that “I’m not saying our model’s right for everyone, but for us we think it’s the right model.” Ignatius interviewed Thompson as part of Business Insider’s IGNITION 2015 conference.

Jim Rutenberg, chief political correspondent for The New York Times Magazine, will be the newspaper’s next media columnist – taking over a post that has stood empty since the death of industry icon David Carr nearly a year ago. Rutenberg started his Times career as a media reporter in 2000. “Jim brings to the job a passion for the story, a track record in covering the industry and the experienced eye of an astute observer,” wrote executive editor and OPC member Dean Baquet, along with business editor Dean Murphy, in a memo to NYT staffers.

The New Republic is up for sale again, as Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes appears to have given up his effort to transform the magazine into a digital powerhouse. “I underestimated the difficulty of transitioning an old and traditional institution into a digital media company in today’s quickly evolving climate,” Hughes wrote to employees; he went on to promise that “our staff will remain in place and fully supported over the coming weeks.” Hughes’ tenure has been bumpy, including the resignation of most of the magazine’s writers and editors in 2014 in protest over a planned reorganization.

Al Jazeera America will close its doors at the end of April, a move CEO Al Anstey says was “driven by the fact that our business model is simply not sustainable in light of the economic challenges in the U.S. media marketplace.” Meanwhile, AJAM’s global parent company will expand its digital operations in the U.S. OPC Governor and former AJAM employee Azmat Khan writes that the effort was doomed to failure because “Rather than dedicating the brunt of its resources to figuring out a new model in journalism’s changing landscape, it sunk most of its money, reputation, and staff into an old one.” You can read more of her analysis on page 3. An anonymous AJAM staffer told the Huffington Post that the company “can unilaterally decide what to offer” hundreds of non-unionized employees, but will have to negotiate termination with some 50 union members.

The U.S. must be careful to avoid the appearance of picking sides in the Sunni-Shiite divide, OPC past President David A. Andelman writes in USA Today. While significant segments of popular Arab and Iranian opinion have long seen America as tied to the Sunnis, he explains, “the efforts to bring Iran to an agreement on a nuclear weapons moratorium and to the fight against the Islamic State terrorist group have shifted perceptions.” In order to bring together a coalition against ISIS, Andelman warns, America must safeguard its image as “a neutral force of moderation.”

Harper’s Magazine has issued the first retraction in its 165-year history. In December the magazine announced that “at least 5,647 of the 7,902 words” in its 1998 story “Prophets and Losses” were based on fabrications. The story about telephone psychics was authored by Stephen Glass, who was fired by The New Republic that same year when it emerged that many of his stories had been invented. “Prophets and Losses” came under suspicion at the time but Harper’s was unable to confirm its truth or falsity; “We can’t retract the story without being able to confirm that it was false,” Harper’s president and publisher – and OPC member – John R. MacArthur told The New York Times in 1998. Glass recently sent the magazine a letter admitting that the story was fictional, perhaps as part of his ongoing effort to get a California law license.

CHICAGO: 2015 OPC President’s Award recipient David Rohde features prominently in Episode 4 of the hit podcast Serial. The show is exploring the case of Bowe Bergdahl, a U.S. soldier who deserted his post in Afghanistan and was captured and held for five years, and who now faces court-martial. Host Sarah Koenig interviews Rohde about his captivity in 2008 and 2009 in the hands of the Haqqani network, a group aligned with the Taliban – and the same group that held Bergdahl. Rohde escaped just ten days before Bergdahl’s capture; he says he worried that his escape might have caused the Haqqani to treat Bergdahl more harshly.

LOS ANGELES: Don Bartletti, part of the Los Angeles Times team that won last year’s Robert Spiers Benjamin Award, has retired after accepting a buyout. Voice of San Diego published a lengthy interview with the Pulitzer-prize winning photojournalist in late December. Barletti told the website that “as a journalist, I’m not namby-pamby. I’m not in the middle. I’m not afraid to show the harshest of both sides – because my job as a photojournalist is to give YOU a choice.” He also said the OPC award is the one he cherishes the most.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.: The terror attacks in Paris were the world’s biggest trending news event on Google in 2015, according to Google Trends. The attacks prompted nearly 900 million searches. Other stories that made the list include the migrant crisis in Europe (23 million), the Nepal earthquake (85 million), and Greece’s economic woes (35 million). Google Trends attempts to capture “spiking, trending searches,” not overall search volume over the course of the year, OPC Associate Board Member – and Google global head of media outreach – Daniel Sieberg explained in an appearance on CBS News in December.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia: Young Saudi women are increasingly testing the boundaries of their country’s strict social codes, writes OPC Governor Deborah Amos in a recent story for NPR. They call the phenomenon “pushing normal,” and it could involve anything from mingling in a mixed-gender crowd at an art show to riding a bicycle by oneself – very early in the morning, and disguised as a boy. Amos, NPR correspondent, recently covered historic local elections in Saudi Arabia which saw women vote and be elected to office for the first time.

PEOPLE REMEMBERED

Renowned cinematographer and documentarian Haskell Wexler died on Dec. 27 at age 93. Haskell won multiple awards for his work on such influential films as “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf?” and “In the Heat of the Night.” As a documentarian, he exposed the torture of political prisoners in Brazil, interviewed American veterans of the My Lai massacre, and in 1974 traveled throughout Vietnam filming ordinary citizens talking about the impact of the war. “An amazing life has ended,” his son Jeff wrote, “but his lifelong commitment to fight the good fight, for peace, for all humanity, will carry on.”