People Column

By Trish Anderton

SCHOLARS

Laura Rena Murray, who won the 2011 Irene Corbally Kuhn Scholarship, has been named a Lambda Literary Fellow and was invited to join the 2015 class of the Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices. The retreat was led by leading LGBT authors/mentors. Laura is an investigative journalist who tackles public interest and accountability stories that highlight corruption, mismanagement and human rights violations across the world. She has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, Al Jazeera America, the San Francisco Chronicle, SF Weekly, 100Reporters and the Center for Public Integrity.

Two Scholars have emerged as stars of The Wall Street Journal’s coverage of China. LingLing Wei, who won the Reuters Scholarship in 2001, has been the Journal’s lead reporter on China’s decision to devalue its currency. And 2012 S&P Award winner Eva Dou is covering the technology sector, including the government’s recent move to embed cybersecurity police units at major Internet companies.

James Reddick, 2015 Irene Corbally Kuhn Scholarship winner, is now at reporter in Phnom Penh for the Khmer Times, an English-language daily started by OPC member James Brooke. As noted below, the paper is rolling out a nationwide distribution system this month. James has previously worked as a reporter in Beirut.

2014 Irene Corbelly Kuhn Scholarship winner Maddy Crowell has published a long story and photos on Slate.com. The piece, part of a weekly series co-produced with the website Roads and Kingdoms, delves into South India’s Auroville, the world’s largest spiritual utopia.

Emily Witt, the Flora Lewis Internship winner in 2009, has just written a new book entitled Future Sex, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. It’s described as a funny, fresh and moving antidote to conventional attitudes about sex and the single woman. Emily captures the experiences of going to bars alone, dating online, and hooking up with strangers.

2015 Jerry Flint Fellowship winner Tim Patterson has filed two stories from the AP bureau in Mexico City. His first piece is on the 90th anniversary of a cantina that some consider to be the home of mariachi music; the second is about the artisans who lovingly rehabilitate Mexico’s old Volkswagen Beetle taxis.

2015 Stan Swinton Fellowship awardee Miriam Berger has written a major AP story from Israel about a new law allowing the force-feeding of prisoners on hunger strike. The prisoner’s life must be in danger for the law to be invoked, and a judge must approve the feedings. The law has divided Israeli doctors, with some protesting that force-feeding is unethical while others argue that it’s their duty to keep a patient alive. Miriam has an OPC Foundation fellowship in the AP bureau in Jerusalem.

AWARDS

2013 Robert Spiers Benjamin Award winner Simon Romero is among five winners of the Maria Moors Cabot Prize, international journalism’s oldest award. Romero has reported for The New York Times since 1999, most recently as Brazil bureau chief. Columbia University, which sponsors the prize, praised Romero for “fairness and thoroughness in highly polarized situations.” The other winners include Mark Stevenson of the AP; Lucas Mendes of GloboNews, a 24-hour news channel; Raul Penaranda of Pagina Siete; and Ernesto Londono, also of The New York Times, who received a special citation.

New York Times reporter and OPC member C.J. Chivers, who won the 2014 Best Investigative Reporting Award for his remarkable story on U.S. troops’ exposure to chemical weapons in Iraq, is now a finalist for an Online News Association Award. The Secret Casualties of Iraq’s Abandoned Chemical Weapons is up for the Al Neuharth Innovation in Investigative Journalism Award. The Times’ ebola coverage, for which Adam Nossiter, Nori Onishi, Helene Cooper and Sheri Fink won the 2014 Hal Boyle Award, is also up for an Online News Association Award in the Explanatory Reporting category.

The American Society of Journalists and Authors has given its Conscience in Media Award to three American freelancers who names have become synonymous with the dangers of modern-day reporting: James Foley, Steven Sotloff, and Austin Tice. Foley and Sotloff were executed by the Islamic State in 2014, and Austin Tice was kidnapped in 2012 and is still missing. “These three men represent the highest values of journalism: courage, sacrifice and a firm commitment to the truth,” said ASJA President Randy Dotinga.“Their bravery and dedication is especially inspiring to us as fellow independent writers.” The Conscience in Media Award is given selectively and has been awarded only 11 times since 1975.

Austin Tice has also been honored with the National Press Club’s John Aubuchon Award for Press Freedom, along with the Washington Post’s Jason Rezaian and Radio Free Europe reporter Khadija Ismayilova. All three journalists have been detained for doing their jobs: Rezaian is currently imprisoned in Iran, while Ismayilova is jailed in Azerbaijan. “We are looking to put a spotlight on the great work being done by journalists in the face of adversity,” said National Press Club President John Hughes, “and to call attention to the cases of three journalists who are currently being wrongfully detained and who should be released immediately.”

UPDATES

ROCHESTER, NH: On August 19, the one year anniversary of freelance journalist James Foley’s death at the hands of ISIS, Foley’s parents announced their son would be remembered with a 5K run in his home town of Rochester. According to the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation website, the race “will commemorate Jim’s life and raise funds for American hostage advocacy, press freedom and educational opportunities for disadvantaged youth, which were passions for Jim.” The James Foley 5K can be run virtually or in person. More details are available at foleyfoundation5k.org. Foley’s legacy is being honored in other ways this fall, including a scholarship in his name at his alma mater, Marquette University; an Online News Association award; and a Middle East reporting fellowship sponsored by the GroundTruth Project.

BOSTON: The GroundTruth Project, founded and directed by OPC member Charles Sennott, has announced a $1 million initiative to bolster coverage of climate change around the world. According to GroundTruth, the initiative “will build a robust and diverse editorial team of reporting fellows and editors to lead a multimedia reporting project over the next three years that will track the impact of global warming.” Applications for up to five reporting fellowships are being accepted on the organization’s website.

NEW YORK: Board member Lara Setrakian has launched a new project on the California water crisis. “Water Deeply” pulls together reporting from veteran journalists and freelancers along with op-eds and daily news summaries. The site promises a more thorough and contextual look at the ongoing drought in the style of Setrakian’s other projects, “Syria Deeply” and “Ebola Deeply.” The new site is partnering with the Associated Press and McClatchy to reach a broad audience.

OPC Board of Governors member Rukmini Callimachi’s reporting on Islamic State’s horrific use of systematized rape has sent ripples across the news universe. Outlets ranging from Cosmopolitan to the Christian Science Monitor have picked up the story and credited Callimachi. She has also been interviewed by programs including PBS NewsHour and Public Radio International’s The Takeaway. Callimachi’s reporting in The New York Times detailed how Islamic State has created a system to kidnap Yazidi women and hold them in sexual slavery – and how the promise of rape has been used as an enticement to recruit young men into the ranks.

Retired OPC Executive Director Sonya Fry recently visited Ruth Gruber, the OPC’s oldest living member. Gruber turns 104 in September. In a long and storied career, she escorted Holocaust refugees to America, covered the Nuremberg trials, and spent more than 18 months traveling Alaska by plane, train, truck, paddle-wheel steamer, and dogsled to write a groundbreaking social and economic study. Gruber won the OPC’s Fay Gillis Award in 2009 – a special prize for women journalists that is given out on an ad hoc basis, only when there is an exceptional person to give it to. She keeps the award in a prominent place on her mantel.

Martin Smith, an OPC governor who ran for re-election, was not able to attend the Aug. 25 annual meeting to hear the results in person because he had his appendix removed that afternoon. In a note sent to the OPC following surgery, Martin said, “The surgeon thinks the infection likely came from my three weeks in Syria!!” Martin, a producer and correspondent at PBS Frontline, is recuperating at home. He was re-elected.

Former OPC Bulletin writer Susan Kille underwent lung transplant surgery in late August as she continues fighting a rare lung disease. Her husband Tom reports: “As they prepared to move her to the operating room someone asked if she was nervous, and she said no, she was excited!” Kille has been hitting all her postoperative milestones. Her family is grateful for the many supportive emails and Facebook posts from friends.

Long-time OPC member Sylvia (Sibby) Christensen reported that she broke her hip this summer and expected to return home in late August following surgery and a month-plus tour of the hospital/rehab world. That didn’t stop her from voting online in the OPC election on her iPod Touch hours before the deadline.

2009 Hal Boyle Award winner Farnaz Fassihi recently wrote about her experience of being attacked as a spy in the Iranian media. Fassihi is a senior correspondent on Iran and the Middle East for the Wall Street Journal. Conservative news organizations in Iran claim Fassihi acted as a go-between for the Obama administration and the opposition Green Movement in 2009. Fassihi writes in the Journal that it is heartbreaking to think that she might never be able to return to her homeland, but adds: “I take comfort in knowing that even my grandmother, who longs to see me one more time, has never asked me to stop doing what I do.” The Journal has condemned the accusations as “outlandish and irresponsible.”

KETCHUM, Id.: OPC member Sheri Fink appeared at the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference in Ketchum in July. The New York Times investigative reporter spoke about covering humanitarian disasters, and about Five Days at Memorial, her award-winning book on how the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina played at out one hospital – Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans.

PARIS: OPC member Christiane Amanpour has been named UNESCO’s Goodwill Ambassador for Freedom of Expression and Journalist Safety. The CNN Chief International Correspondent received the honor at a ceremony this spring. In her acceptance speech, Amanpour emphasized the role of journalists as “pillars of reform, freedom and democracy” whose task is to “strengthen civil society.”

PHNOM PENH: OPC member James Brooke reports that the Khmer Times, the newspaper he launched in 2014, is going nationwide this month. The paper is establishing news racks in all major Smart Mobile shops in the 25 provincial capitals in the Kingdom.

DECATUR, Ga.: OPC member Christopher Dickey was scheduled to give back-to-back talks at the Decatur Public Library Auditorium on Sept. 2 and 3. The first was on the last book by his father, poet James Dickey. The second was on his own new book, Our Man in Charleston: Britain’s Secret Agent in the Civil War South. The book tells the story of Robert Bunch, Britain’s consul in Charleston from 1853 to 1863, who played a key role in preventing his country from getting involved in the American Civil War. Dickey, who lives in Paris, is foreign editor for The Daily Beast.

MARSHALL ISLANDS: OPC member Coleen Jose has published a story in The Guardian with Kim Wall, also an OPC member, and Jan Hendrik Hinzel on a nuclear containment facility that threatens to spill tons of radioactive waste into the Pacific. The Runit Dome holds more than 111,000 cubic yards of debris from 12 years of nuclear tests. The concrete structure is already leaking, and scientists fear a catastrophic weather event could tear it open.

SACRAMENTO, Cal.: The McClatchy Company is denying rumors it plans to close its overseas bureaus. “We have not made any decision to close our foreign bureaus and are proud of the reporting our staff has provided to our readers over the years,” McClatchy President and CEO Pat Talamantes said in a statement sent to Politico. The newspaper chain currently has offices in Beijing, Berlin, Istanbul, Mexico City and Erbil, Iraq.

PEOPLE REMEMBERED

Longtime OPC member Arnold Crane died on November 2, 2014. Crane was a member of the White House Press Photographers Association whose work behind the lens took him around the world. He is perhaps best known for his portraits of great photographers, which were published in 1998 as On The Other Side of the Camera. “Over a period of more than four decades, Crane created a body of artistic work of immeasurable value and historic importance,” wrote the e-zine The Handmade Photograph, adding that he created “sensitive photographs that both revealed and revered his subjects.”

Foreign correspondent and investigative reporter Ray F. Herndon died on August 16 at the age of 77. Herndon covered the early days of the Vietnam War for United Press International. Peter Arnett of the Associated Press, who was also writing about the war at that time, recalled Herndon as a “fierce competitor in the daily grind of war coverage” and “fearless.” He later worked in Singapore and Paris before moving back to the U.S. and long stints with the Dallas Times Herald and the Los Angeles Times.

Former Washington Post diplomatic correspondent Don Oberdorfer died on July 23 in Washington. Oberdorfer joined the Post in 1968 and retired in 1993, covering stories including the Pentagon Papers, the Vietnam War, and the Cold War. His coverage of diplomacy took him to more than 50 countries. He wrote several well-received books, including Tet!: The Turning Point in the Vietnam War and The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History.