March 29, 2024

People Column

October 2015

By Trish Anderton

OPC SCHOLARS

2015 Emanuel R. Freedman scholarship winner Ben Taub has another piece in The New Yorker. “Whom Can You Trust on the Syr­ian Border” describes the difficulties of trying to decipher people’s affiliations and stay secure as a reporter on the Turkish border in 2013.

After an OPC Foundation fel­lowship with the Associated Press in Uganda, J.p. Lawrence, the 2015 H.L. Stevenson Fel­lowship winner, has begun his job as a breaking news re porter on the crime beat for the Albany Times Union in Al­bany, NY.

Beth Dickinson, who won the 2007 I.F. Stone Scholarship, has been awarded a grant of $6,000 from the International Women’s Media Foundation for an in-depth writing project that challenges traditional narratives on women’s rights in the Persian Gulf. Dickinson is a member of the global journalist cooperative Deca, and is based in the Arabian Peninsula. She also has a new Kin­dle Single out called “Godfathers and Thieves: How Syria’s Diaspora Crowd-Sourced a Revolution.”

2013 Nathan S. Bienstock Me­morial Scholarship winner Jacob Kushner has the cover story in the September/October edition of Mo­ment magazine. “Birthright Denied” is an in-depth look at the Dominican Republic’s campaign to strip citizen­ship from the children of Haitian im­migrants. The story was funded by Moment’s Daniel Pearl Investigative Journalism Initiative.

2015 Walter and Betsy Cronkite Scholar Ted Andersen has landed his first New York Times story with the Associated Press. He wrote about American companies fracking in Thailand.

Jenny Starrs, winner of the 2015 Nathan S. Bienstock Memorial Scholarship, completed her OPC Foundation fellowship with the GroundTruth Project – founded by OPC member Charles Sennott – in Washington, D.C. Her multimedia project shows how the U.S. lags behind much of the world in terms of women’s partici­pation in politics. Starrs starts soon as the overnight digital video editor for the Morning Mix at the Washing­ton Post, where she’ll provide both standalone videos and video content to embed in articles posted in the morning.

Tom Finn, winner of the H.L. Stevenson Award in 2013, is headed to Dohar as the Qatar correspondent for Reuters. Most recently a reporter for Middle East Eye, Finn will be writing about Qatar’s dominant gas sector, tracking its preparations for the 2022 World Cup and look­ing at Qatar’s stormy relations with its neighbors rooted in Doha’s alli­ance with the Muslim Brotherhood. Finn was an OPC Foundation fellow in the Reuters bureau in Cairo and previously worked with the Yemen Times.

Congratulations to Frederick Bernas, Walter and Betsy Cronkite Scholar in 2013, on being named an International Reporting Project fellow. He will join 10 other inter­national journalists for 11 days in October in Ecuador reporting on that country’s healthcare and development, specifically the discrepancies that persist between the quality of care and resources available at pub­lic and private facilities. A freelance journalist based in Buenos Aires, his work has been published by AP, the BBC, CNN, The New York Times, Reuters, The Guardian, VICE, Al Jazeera and others. Bernas had an OPC fellowship in the AP bureau in Buenos Aires.

 

AWARDS

OPC Second Vice President Abi­gail Pesta has won a Front Page Award in the Interview category from the Newswomen’s Club of New York for “Chelsea Manning: No More Secrets,” co-bylined with Sara Austin. The Marie Colvin Award for Foreign Correspondence went to 2009 Hal Boyle Award win­ner Farniz Fassihi of the Wall Street Journal.

OPC member Kathy Gannon of the Associated Press is slated to receive the Committee to Protect Journalists’ Burton Benjamin Me­morial Award for lifetime achieve­ment in November. Gannon was badly injured in a shooting while covering the 2014 presidential elec­tions in eastern Afghanistan; her reporting partner, AP photographer Anja Niedringhaus, was killed in the attack. “Gannon is widely known as one of the most thoughtful and dedicated journalists covering the region,” said CPJ board chair San­dra Mims Rowe, adding that Gan­non’s commitment to journalism “has transcended personal risk and tragedy.” In June, Gannon was hon­ored with the James Foley Medal For Courage in Journalism – a prize given by Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism to recognize “moral, ethical or physical courage in the pursuit of a story or series of stories.”

New York Times Paris bureau chief and OPC member Alissa J. Rubin has won the 2015 John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism. The prize, named af­ter longtime NBC News anchor John Chancellor, is pre­sented annually by the Columbia Uni­versity School of Journalism to honor a reporter for his or her cumulative accomplish­ments. “Both quietly courageous and fiercely intellectual, Rubin cov­ers conflict through human stories of the soldiers, victims and survi­vors of war,” wrote the school in a statement. “Her work is marked by a deep understanding of the Middle East and its people, from besieged Yazidis and female Iraqi insurgents, to Afghan women struggling to gain their rights.” Rubin, who won the 2009 Ed Cunningham award, is back reporting from the region after suf­fering serious injuries in a helicopter crash in Iraq last year.

OPC governor Martin Smith presented an Emmy to his wife, Marcela Gaviria, at the 36th An­nual News & Documentary Emmy Awards on Sept. 29. Gavira won for Outstanding Research on Frontline’s “Firestone and the Warlord,” about the relationship between the global tire giant and Liberia’s Charles Tay­lor. Not to be outdone, Smith took home two statuettes himself: one for Outstanding Coverage of a Current News Story – Long Form and the other for Best Documentary. Both awards were for his work as a pro­ducer of Frontline’s “United States of Secrets,” about mass surveillance in the post-9/11 era.

Simon Kilmurry, an OPC mem­ber, won two Emmys for his work as executive producer on two POV documentaries. “After Tiller” shared the Best Documentary award with “United States of Secrets.” It follows the lives of the only four doctors in America still providing late-term abortions. “When I Walk” tells the story of indepen­dent filmmaker Ja­son DaSilva and his battle with multiple sclerosis; it won the award for Outstand­ing Informational Programming – Long Form.

OPC members Sheri Fink and Adam Nossiter, along with fellow New York Times staffers Kevin Sack, Pam Belluck and Daniel Berehulak, were finalists in the Explanatory Re­porting category of this year’s On­line News Awards for their reporting on Ebola. The Times team won a Hal Boyle award` for its Ebola coverage earlier this year.

OPC member C.J. Chivers was a finalist for the ONA’s Al Neuharth Excellence in Investigative Journal­ism Award for his New York Times story, “The Secret Casualties of Iraq’s Abandoned Chemical Weap­ons.” Chivers won the OPC’s Best Investigative Reporting award with that story earlier this year.

UPDATES

NEW YORK: OPC member and former Bulletin correspondent Susan Kille went home from the hospital and happily consumed non-hospital food following her lung transplant surgery, but the road to recovery is bumpy. She thanks ev­eryone for their kind thoughts.

Four Corners Media, co-founded by OPC member Micah Garen, had a documentary air on Al-Jazeera English in early October. Off the Rails: A Journey Through Japan travels to big cities and rural backwaters by train, exploring what the country’s railways reveal about Ja­pan’s changing society.

Former McGraw Hill Executive Vice President Ted Smyth has been appointed vice chair and chief of staff at global PR behemoth Edel­man. PR Week reports that Smyth, an OPC member, will serve as senior strategist in the food and bev­erage and financial sectors, among other duties. Before his six years at McGraw Hill, Smyth worked at HJ Heinz.

New member Kaya Yurieff has joined the new digital team at Worth Magazine, where she’s conducting interviews, writing for the websites, editing and covering events. Worth is a financial and lifestyle magazine founded in 1992 and re-launched by Sandow in 2009.

OPC member Sally Jacobsen is a co-editor of the new interactive e-book version of the AP Stylebook. The Associated Press released the new edition in September with Ba­sic Books, which also publishes the print version of the vaunted style guide. While an interactive version was already available on the web and in apps, “Stylebook fans have asked for an e-book version for years,” the organization said in a press release. With more than 5,000 entries, this year’s edition is also the biggest ever.

BOSTON: The GroundTruth Project, launched in 2014 by OPC member Charles Sennott, has re­ceived $300,000 from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foun­dation. The grant will provide gen­eral operating support of $300,000 over two years for reporting proj­ects on “climate change, youth un­employment, global health and the legacy of the Arab Spring,” Sennott said in a press release. Meanwhile, Sennott’s previous project, Global­Post, is being acquired by public broadcaster WGBH. GlobalPost’s operations will merge with those of WGBH’s Public Radio Internation­al group, which produces the radio show “The World.” “This new chap­ter for GlobalPost is exciting and a very positive development for all in­volved,” said Sennott in a statement. “It demonstrates PRI and WGBH’s commitment to and investment in in­ternational news in a dramatic way.”

Atish Saha, winner of this year’s Madline Dane Ross award, is exhib­iting his photos of the Rana Plaza factory collapse at the EMW Gal­lery in Cambridge. The 2013 disas­ter in Dhaka, Bangladesh claimed more than 1,100 lives. Saha’s photos are being shown alongside Bryan MacCormack’s pictures of the per­ilous trek migrants make across the Sonoran Desert of Mexico and Arizona, in an effort to highlight the individual tragedies underlying large death tolls. Saha has returned to Bangladesh after months of travel in the U.S., and hopes to come back next year.

PROVO, Utah: John Hughes retired as a professor of international communications at Brigham Young University on Sept. 1. An OPC mem­ber, Hughes won the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting in 1967 and the OPC prize for best reporting from abroad in 1970 as a foreign cor­respondent for The Christian Science Monitor. He was a Nieman fellow at Harvard in 1962. Later, as editor of the Monitor for nine years, he served on the Pulitzer selection board, and as president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. His biography, Paper Boy to Pulitzer, was published by Nebbadoon Press in 2014.

WESTPORT, Conn.: OPC member Gordon Joseloff recently gave a speech about his journalism career to the Y’s Men of Westport Weston, a club for retirees. His talk was titled “Westport to Westport: A Journalism Journey,” because he got his start reporting for the local news­paper and is now, at 70, the editor and publisher of WestportNow.com. In between, he worked for United Press international and CBS News in New York, London, Moscow, To­kyo and other places. Joseloff has also served as a Westport selectman.

HOUSTON: A new campaign has been launched to raise aware­ness of the fate of journalist Austin Tice, who has been missing since August 2012. Tice disappeared while preparing to travel from Syr­ia to Lebanon. He is believed to be held somewhere in the region, and not by ISIS. His family and Report­ers Without Borders unveiled the #FreeAustinTice campaign in September. Supporters are encouraged to take a photo wearing a blindfold, to symbolize what the world would be like without journalists, and post it with the #FreeAustinTice hashtag. Partners in the effort include Gannett & USA TODAY, GlobalPost, Hearst Newspapers Group, National Press Club, Newseum, The New York Times, TalkRadioNews, The Atlan­tic Media Group, The GroundTruth Project, The Huffington Post, Mc­Clatchy Newspapers, and the Wash­ington Post.

SAN FRANCISCO: Vanity Fair editor and OPC member Graydon Carter interviewed famed photogra­pher Annie Leibovitz onstage at the magazine’s New Establishment Sum­mit in early October. The invitation-only event also featured Mark Zucker­berg, Elon Musk, Lena Dunham, and dozens of other speakers. It promised “inventive programming and inspir­ing conversations around the ideas and innovations shaping the future.” In addition, Carter keeps high-profile company in a recent Washington Post story compiling some of the many people who’ve been called losers by Donald Trump. “Losers: A List by Donald Trump” also includes Bill Maher, Seth Meyers, Salon.com and the Huffington Post.

OPC member Kristina Shevory landed a long piece in the Summer issue of The Believer, McSweeney’s literary magazine. “A Common Lan­guage” tells the story of a military and State Department vet who helps fellow veterans write their way through PTSD.

 

PEOPLE REMEMBERED

Longtime OPC member George Burns has died at age 86. Burns joined the OPC in 1965 and had just passed the 50-year mark as a member at the time of his death. He served as trea­surer for many years and did extensive research and writing on the OPC’s his­tory. Having helped lead the organiza­tion out of serious financial trouble in the mid-1990s, he is remembered by many as “the man who saved the OPC.” Born in Scranton, Penn., Burns began his career as a public informa­tion officer in the U.S. Air Force. After leaving the military, he ran the Pismo Beach Times in California and then tackled communications roles at PAN AM, TWA and Citibank. “He loved the travel and the people, but most of all he had fun,” states his obituary. “He was never too busy to help a friend, or tell a joke, host a dinner party, or meet up in a bar.” His wife, Barbara, who maintained her husband’s member­ship even while he was suffering with Alzheimer’s Disease, has been given an Honorary Membership to the OPC.

To read more about George Burns’s contribution to the OPC, in­cluding a 2013 article from William J. Holstein, go to our web page at www.opcofamerica.org/news/people-remembered-george-burns.