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.