Alumni Association
Columbia University
Graduate School of
Journalism
2950 Broadway, MC 3820
New York, NY 10027
NON-PROFIT
U.S. POSTAGE
PAID
Alumni
SUMMIT, NJ 07901
PERMIT 18
Columbia Journalism
Reunions Draw
Almost 400
4 Continents Represented
At Alumni Weekend
Alumni Weekend 2008 drew nearly 400
graduates of the J-School to three days of
workshops, panels, awards ceremonies and
social gatherings. Grads came from England,
Thailand, Mexico and South Africa, among
other places.
At the April 4 Alumni Luncheon, the Dean’s
Citation was presented to Howard Brown
(’48), president of United Communications
Corp. Prof. Judith Crist (’45), completing her
50th year of teaching at the school, received the
Founder’s Award, and Phil Hardberger (’60),
the mayor of San Antonio, was awarded the
Dean’s Medal for Public Service. David Denby
(’66), film critic and staff writer at The New
Yorker, delivered the keynote address.
In addition, more than 40 authors’ works
were presented at the Alumni Book Fair.
Following are reports of some of the
reunion classes:
Summer 2008
Journal
from China about children searching for
parents and about an idyllic mountain resort
town where hundreds of residents, tourists
and guests of a huge wedding banquet were
all buried.
Shai Oster (’96) was part of a Wall Street
Journal team covering the earthquake. From
Beijing, he wrote about the government’s
attempts to tamp down growing anger of
parents who lost children in collapsed schools
and about plans to enact tougher building
codes.
Covering the cyclone in Myanmar
(formerly Burma) was another matter. The
military government there was refusing to allow
into the country, not only foreign aid workers,
but reporters as well.
Thus, Magnier filed Burma cyclone
stories from Beijing with help from L.A. Times
staffers in Washington, the United Nations,
Beijing, and an anonymous reporter in Yangon,
Myanmar.
From Thailand, Richard Ehrlich (’78),
who had been denied a Burma visa, was able
to write about the cyclone’s aftermath for
the Washington Times and BBC radio from
Bangkok, which was a gathering place for
international aid teams.
And in Singapore, Jerry Norton (’74)
helped with the cyclone coverage for Reuters.
Even J-School students from the class of
’08 got a piece of the cyclone story in New
York. Karen Zraick, Divya Gupta and Lam
Thuy Vo made videos about Burmese protesters
and Burmese monks who raised more than $2
million to aid monasteries in stricken areas.
Alums Cover China, Burma Disasters
By Ed Silberfarb (’52)
When Mark Magnier (’84), Beijing
bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, got the
word May 12, he raced to the airport, talked
his way onto a full plane and, after landing,
drove all night to a school where 900 students
were buried. He made his deadline and began
20-hour workdays covering the magnitude 7.9
earthquake that killed almost 70,000 people in
China’s worst natural disaster in 30 years.
He was one of several J-School alumni
working that story as well as the May 2 cyclone
in Myanmar where tens of thousands died. That
government’s official estimate was 22,000 dead,
but the real number is believed to be at least
four times that figure.
Ching-Ching Ni (’94), also with the Los
Angeles Times, filed heart-wrenching stories
Class of ’48
At our mature age it is not always easy
to travel distances, however tempting the
destination. Apart from ailments there are
commitments of all kinds. Nevertheless, seven
stalwarts of the class of 1948 made it for our
60th anniversary at the Alumni Weekend
2008.
They were Howard J. Brown, Ed Gold,
Barbara Blakemore, Eugene Miller, Grace
Bassett and Willard Hertz from various
parts of the country, and I (Ursula A. Barnett
Gross) from London, England.
Although not everyone was able to
attend sessions on campus, all managed to
make their way to our class dinner at an Italian
restaurant near Times Square. Some wives
came too, so we were a respectable number of
celebrants at what was perhaps the highlight
Continued on Page 2
INSIDE
3
Mark Magnier, right, with grieving parents in China
Shaken to His Foundations:
My Most Memorable Assignment
4
Book Shelf
5
In Memoriam
8
Class Notes
Photo: Barbara Davidson/Los Angeles Times
By Mark Magnier (’84)
Scale of China’s disaster makes an imprint on a reporter
BEICHUAN, CHINA — Images run
through my mind when I’m brave enough to
let them in like the click-click of an old slide
projector. The body of the security guard five
days after the quake, his keys still on his belt,
his uniform and badge struggling to lend some
dignity to his bloated corpse. The body of the
student, a boy slightly older than my son, his
sneakers battered, his shirttail out.
Like most people, I move through life
clinging to a few assumptions that give me a
modest sense of control. That the floor and
walls around me will hold. That my loved
ones will die of old age. That my life has
meaning.
Many of these comforts were blown apart
over the last two weeks of covering the Sichuan
earthquake, a staggering natural disaster that
left more than 67,000 people dead. How do
you absorb the random nature of death on
such a scale, so many thousands of children
buried alive in schools meant to nurture their
Continued on Page 2
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Alumni Journal  www.journalism.columbia.edu
1 Alumni Weekend: Parties, Panels, Workshops, Awards, Book Signings
Continued From Page 1
of the weekend. The sumptuous lunch on
Saturday at the Low Library Rotunda came
a close second, especially as one of our class,
Howard J. Brown, was presented with the
Dean’s Citation for his achievements in his
career. Howard was variously employed, since
J-School at Columbia University, as a stringer
abroad, in several advertising, circulation and
promotion capacities in Cleveland, as assistant
to Ralph Ingersoll, legendary publisher of
the Middletown (N.Y.) Times Herald-Record
and former manager of Time-Life, until an
opportunity arose to acquire the Kenosha
News at the age of 38. Today Harold is
president of the Kenosha News and United
Communications Corporation. He is involved
in many charities, “relishing the role of ‘town
beggar’,” as he put it.
We are proud of Howard’s as we are
of the achievements of many of our former
classmates, which emerged in our discussions
and in their replies to the Alumni Weekend
2008 Questionnaire.
For the rest of the weekend we attended
some of the courses and workshops offered.
I am sure I speak for many in expressing my
enjoyment of Professor Sreenath Sreenivasan’s
sessions when he spoke about making sense
of the new technologies and engaged us in
discussions.
On behalf of my class I would like to
thank the organizers of the weekend for
having provided so perfect an occasion for us
to reunite. If some of the class of 1948 remain
hail and hearty, who knows, J-School may have
to extend the alumni Weekend to 65th or even
70th anniversaries!
— Ursula A. Barnett Gross
Class of ’53
Eight members of the Class of ‘53, plus six
spouses and a significant other, celebrated their
55th-year reunion during Alumni Reunion
Weekend in April by exchanging fond memories
of their J-School days and reporting on what
they’ve been up to ever since. It was a group with
impressive accomplishments in newspapers,
television, public service, advertising, public
relations and photography.
The alums were Martin Berck, Barry
Biederman, Fred Caplan, Myron Kandel,
Barbara Klirsfeld Ruzinsky, Leonard Sloane,
Mal Schechter and Richard Starkey. Thelma
and Mike Kandel hosted the gang at their
apartment on Riverside Drive. Barbara came
the farthest, from her home in Albuquerque,
N.M., while Marty and Lenore Berck were just
back from their winter home in San Miguel de
Allende, Mexico.
Dick Starkey regaled his former classmates
with tales of writing speeches for New York
Governor Mario Cuomo, among other
achievements, including a stint as sports editor
of The International Herald-Tribune in Paris,
where he met his wife Elizabeth, and his work
as a TV documentary producer.
Barry Biederman told of his adventures as
Ford Foundation fellow in England and India
and then in the jungles of Madison Avenue,
including starting his own highly-successful
ad agency. Len Sloane recounted his work as a
reporter for The Wall Street Journal, followed
by 33 years as a financial reporter for The New
York Times, during which he also did a daily
radio spot on personal finance and authored
three books.
Fred Caplan learned the public information
game in the Army and then did some trade
association work berfore spending more than
a quarter-century at IBM in various editing,
press relations and community affairs activities.
Barbara Ruzinsky moved from Women’s Wear
Daily to become a trade magazine editor, the
head of her own editing and writing consulting
firm and then to a photographer whose works
sell in galleries and on the Web.
Mal Schechter recalled developing
expertise on aging, which involved editing
and publishing several newsletters on the
subject, plus two books. He helped found the
first academic department of geriatrics, at Mt.
Sinai Hospital in New York, where he became
an assistant professor of geriatrics. He also filed
a ground-breaking Freedom of Information suit
that unblocked secret Medicare data.
Marty Berck told of working for the AP
in Cleveland and then a “decade of pleasure
and pain” in the last great days of the New York
Herald Tribune, followed by CBS, NBC and
finally Newsday, where he served as editorial
writer, UN correspondent and foreign editor.
Mike Kandel was the financial editor
of three newspapers — the Washington Star,
the Herald Tribune and the New York Post —
and then helped start CNN, where he spent
25 years as financial editor and economic
commentator before retiring three years ago
on his 75th birthday.
The otherwise-festive evening included a
silent prayer for a mortally-ill classmate, Selwyn
Feinstein, who had hoped to be present, but
who died a few days later.
— Myron Kandel
Class of 1958
A major highlight of the 50th reunion was
the Saturday night dinner after the three-day
weekend events had been completed.
The dinner brought together 23 classmates,
many who hadn’t seen or spoken to one another
in the intervening 50 years. The attendance was
considered a good showing since it represented
nearly 50 percent of the remaining living 28
classmates who did not attend.
The consensus among classmates was that
today’s journalism is substantially different from
the journalism they practiced in graduating in
1958. They were nearly unanimous in their
discomfort with current economic trends that
are adversely affecting many publications and
producing mergers, layoffs and firings, not to
mention the impact of new technologies that
are changing the reading habits of the American
public.
In attendance at the cocktail hour
preceding the dinner was Dean Nicholas
Lemann. Other guests at the dinner included
Prof. James Boylan, who taught the class of ’58.
It was one of his first classes in his journalism
teaching career. Also attending were Bridie
Pulliam Cooke and Helen S. Rattray, both of
whom had been secretaries during the year we
attended the J-School.
Alumni JOURNAL, Summer 2008
Columbia University Journalism Alumni Association
2950 Broadway, New York, New York 10027 (212)854-3864
alumni@jrn.columbia.edu
JOURNAL STAFF
Mark Perlgut (’65), Editor
Pete Johnston (’50), Editor Emeritus
Edward Silberfarb (’52), Editor Emeritus
Judith Aita (’79) Editor, Listings
Max Nichols (’57)
Jan Paschal (’91)
the journal is published by the alumni association of
the columbia university graduate school of journalism as a service to its members
and as part of its general support of the school. All submissions become
the property of Columbia University.
2
Also at the dinner were Jennifer Hoyt, a
current J-school student, who is the great-niece
of the late Evelyn Pastore, a member of the
J-58 class, and Irena Choi Stern (’01), who is
director of alumni relations at the J-School.
To honor the 17 classmates who are no
longer with us, their names were read before
the dinner. Also mentioned during the dinner
were the current status, health and activities of
the 28 non-attendees.
One of the major accomplishments at
the reunion was the J-58-sponsored seminar
on the impact and future of the alternative
media. This seminar was the last session on
Saturday afternoon, the third day of the reunion
weekend.
Special thanks go to Tony Pell, a member
of the class who single-handedly developed
the seminar and was able to attract such
distinguished panelists as Prof. Victor Navasky,
of the J-school; Jan F. Constantine, general
counsel to the Authors Guild; and Bruce
Brugmann, a member of the ’58 class who is
the president and publisher of the weekly San
Francisco Bay Guardian, a respected alternative
publication.
Missing from the reunion because of a
last-minute contretemps was Stuart Loory, a
class member who is a professor of Journalism
at the University of Missouri, at Columbia. He
was to have been the dinner’s MC.
— Marc Raizman
Class of 1993
It was the Saturday of reunion weekend
and about a dozen of us had gathered for a
cocktail party at Jim Simon’s fabulous Park
Avenue apartment. It was a long way from our
student days — in time and atmosphere.
We talked about each other, the school,
the profs and deans and about most of our
classmates. “Whatever happened to...?” “Where
is...?” is what kept coming up.
We all vowed that the 20th reunion,
in April 2013, would have a much bigger
turnout. Among the suggestions, each of us
who attended this year would ensure that we’d
sign up two new folks for that reunion. Also
proposed: a couch plan — offering places for
out-of-towners to crash that weekend. Also,
some sort of group childcare/entertainment
so all the parents can get away. Mark your
calendars, folks!
Another plan, for the five years in between:
Whenever out-of-towners come to NYC, we’d
try to do informal get-togethers so we can catch
up with more folks.
We continue to have a relatively active
Facebook group with photos, updates and
more: http://www.facebook.com/group.
php?gid=4079127294.
We are also collecting updates via our
class mailing list: j93@lists.jrn.columbia.edu
or ss221@columbia.edu
— Sree Sreenivasan
Class of 2003
The Class of ’03 — an unwitting target of
the public debate surrounding the University’s
decision to reassess its J-school curriculum
— not only found jobs after graduation, but
attended alumni weekend en force.
Prof. Sig Gissler’s class met at Havana
Central (formally known as the West End),
for a quick gathering before joining other
classmates at 420 Bar and Lounge on the Upper
West Side.
More than 50 classmates attended the
class social, but Joel Gershon and Gretchen
Wilson win points for farthest distance traveled
— Thailand and South Africa, respectively.
Jamie Francisco, Joel Rubin and Simone
Shah represented the West Coast, while Eric
Gershon, Cynthia Needham and Margot
Sanger-Katz came from New England.
Lizzie O’Leary, who left the campaign trail
long enough to attend the class social, was
joined by other broadcast journalists, Heather
Hegedus, Aaron Chimbel and Jay Shaylor.
Mike Steel and Mark Paustenbach, former
D.C. roommates who left journalism soon
after graduation, joined the festivities. Chris
Maag, representing Ohio, and Kat Jackson
also made the trip.
The New York crew included: Catherine
Cantieri; Ashley Chapman; Barney Gimbel;
Jeff Grossman, J.D.; Kristen Lee; Sara
Leitch, who now attends medical school at
Columbia; Ben Monnie, and Jake and Laura
(Longhine) Mooney.
The party moved to nearby Yogi’s, where
the night ended with some foot-stomping
country music.
For those of you who could not make
it this year, we look forward to seeing you in
2013!
— Danielle Belopotosky
China’s Devastation
Stuns Reporter
Continued From Page 1
energetic bodies and soaring spirits?
Friends sometimes question the sanity of
being a journalist, and particularly a foreign
correspondent. When everyone else is running
away from danger, reporters head toward it.
Shortly after the magnitude 7.9 earthquake
hit May 12, this was the drill: racing to the
airport, somehow managing to get a seat on a
full plane, landing in Chongqing and driving
all night to reach a school where 900 students
were buried, all in time for deadline.
This quickly morphed into a blur of
19- to 21-hour days filled with blank stares,
terrifying aftershocks and displaced people
driven temporarily mad by despair.
In the rush, you didn’t have a whole lot of
time to think very deeply about what you were
seeing. There was too much to do, too many
editor demands, too many logistics problems.
Somewhere on the flight down from Beijing
to Chongqing, between the in-flight service
and touchdown, the psychological flak jacket
went on.
Around day three or four, though, you
started thinking about the intrusion you
represented as a foreigner asking deeply
personal questions about love and loss of those
coping with undreamed-of suffering.
On the road to Hanwang, a middle-aged
man paced back and forth atop a mound of
rubble watching a machine slowly tear away
giant chunks of concrete from the pile. The
object of everyone’s attention and anguish
was his wife of 24 years, buried in the remains
of the house they’d built together. Hoping
against hope that she was still alive, he’d been
waiting three days by this time, some spent
digging with his own hands.
He wore a straw hat against the strong
Sichuan sun and would now and again retreat
under a tree, where relatives would comfort
him, before climbing back atop the mound
to look for a sign of her. All around lay bits
of their ruined life, shards of their furniture,
dented aluminum pans, the tattered Chinese
New Year banner on the doorpost.
Finally her lifeless body was uncovered. It
was not where the family expected to find her.
I realized with horror that I probably had been
among the rescue workers and reporters who
had inadvertently stood on her remains.
Yet throughout the excruciating wait,
Tan Keren, 50, and his close relatives shared
their memories of a woman who had been
the bedrock of the family, hoping perhaps to
bring her alive in spirit if not in person. Her
quiet confidence. How she rarely spoke, but
when she did it was with wisdom and eminent
good judgment. The quiet pride she’d taken
in raising their only son, now in law school,
who still welcomed her advice even though
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Alumni Journal  www.journalism.columbia.edu
Continued on Next Page
MY MOST MEMORABLE ASSIGNMENT
A Tenderfoot New York Reporter in Texas
By Laurence I. Barrett (’57)
The owner of Franklin’s better motel
(shower and radio in every cabin, but no
phone) was glad to see me. Business was slow,
except in hunting season, so an attractive
weekly rate — about $50, I vaguely recall —
was available. And I could use the phone in
his office up to 8 p.m. if I paid cash for each
call. By contrast, Sheriff Howard Stegall
viewed this young reporter from New York as
a troublesome alien.
Mama Stegall hadn’t raised no damn fool.
Franklin was a speck on the map south of Waco,
north of Houston, and by my calculation a
million miles from any venue I had experienced.
In fact, I had never been south of Richmond
before. So the “alien” aspect of Stegall’s
perception was dead on.
Our first conversation, over breakfast in
the town’s best (that is, only) café, confirmed
Ching-Ching Ni, (’94), second from left, talking to survivors at Longmenzhen, Sichuan, in a bulldozer that was used to clear the rubble, which was all that was left of the
mountain town. The picture was taken by a passerby with Ni’s camera.
Continued From Page 2
she hadn’t gotten very far in school.
This was the pattern, almost without
exception. Not only were victims who’d lost
everything willing to talk, they even at times
sought me out. With everything broken
around them and so many of their friends and
neighbors overwhelmed by problems of their
own, many seemed to hunger for someone
who would listen to their story and validate
what they had been through.
The enormity of this disaster was
particularly evident in Beichuan, which was
cut off for several days by landslides and
washed out roads.
After hiking, hitching motorcycle rides
and working our way past boulders, aid
trucks and fleeing people, we reached a spot
where the view suddenly opened on the most
pronounced devastation I’ve seen in my life.
The analogy of an enraged child smashing a
model city with jack boots is apt but pales
against the reality.
To descend into that idyllic valley was to
witness an act of violence by an angry god. The
15-story buildings at angles that mock human
engineering. The buried streets and addresses
meant to define our identity, our spot on the
orderly grid, a sense that we matter.
And then this thought: How quickly and
furiously we humans would race to rebuild
this, mostly because people need homes but
also to push back the darkness and the chaos
that we find so utterly threatening.
The quake had left Beichuan a ghost
town without residents, laughter, government
officials or shopkeepers. Only a few rescue
workers and the occasional sound of an
unanswered cellphone from deep beneath
the rubble. On one street, the partially
wrecked Natural Famous Scissors beauty
parlor still sported glitzy posters and special
shampoos. On another, undergarments from
the Charisma Bra boutique were strewn across
the white tile floor.
Nearby, the little details of the inner
worlds of bedrooms were laid bare: pink
bedspread and matching shams, wedding
photos clinging to shattered walls, glass
tchotchkes toppled near bedside tables, a
school poster of vegetables in a child’s room.
At the Royal JIS Paris Clothing store, a
looter tried on a white shirt, its 80%-polyester20%-cotton tag still affixed, before heading off
with two shopping bags of booty. Farther
down the alley, several bodies lay on the
ground, some covered haphazardly with
yellow silk curtains from a nearby shop.
Corpses are not part of our closeted
world, and certainly not several at once.
Most of those I’d seen before becoming a
reporter were treated with powder and rouge,
dressed in their finest, displayed as much to
provide “closure” to survivors as to respect the
memories of the deceased.
Looking at this unvarnished business,
you can’t help wondering what these people
must have felt at the end, their worries and
passions. The woman with the beautiful long
black hair, now by the fifth day starting to fall
out. How she combed it, admiring herself in
the mirror, careful to choose the flowered dress
she wore on the last day of her life hoping a
husband or lover might notice. An elderly
person unidentifiable beneath a blood-soaked
mattress who had hobbled as far as the front
door before falling head first, blocking the
stairs, cane jammed against the wall.
Most victims appeared to have died
quickly, but I’m haunted by the body of one
large man. By the looks of it, he had lived long
enough for some good Samaritans to place
him on a bed frame and fashion makeshift
stretcher handles before abandoning him
to save their own skin. Nearby, a store
mannequin, split in half, mocked human grief
with its painted smile.
Heading out of Beichuan on the steep
incline up to the road, a resident back for
one last look gave a wave at the wreckage.
“Goodbye, my lovely hometown,” he said.
“My house is gone, the relatives have fled, I’ll
probably never see you again.”
A few days later, after 11 days of raw
emotion and destruction, I too headed out,
returning to Beijing to reconnect with my
family.
I vow to treasure life and those I love
more fully and to appreciate the vulnerability
of life. But I’m also aware that my record on
Stegall’s notion about “troublesome.” I wanted
to talk about Henry M. Marshall’s violent
death. Specifically, why had it been ruled a
suicide rather than a homicide? Five shots to the
abdomen fired from a .22 caliber bolt-action rifle
sounded, um, difficult to self-administer.
Stegall implied puzzlement as to why The
New York Herald Tribune would send a man
to inquire about an old incident, a closed case,
about which no one much cared. Immediately
after poor old Henry’s body had turned up,
back in June 1961, the Texas papers had paid
only routine attention. But Stegall — along
with any non-fool around Franklin — was
well aware that the intervening 11 months had
produced a huge reason to have another look.
During that period Billie Sol Estes had
come to personify scandal. An enterprising
rogue and a generous donor to Lyndon Johnson’s
faction of the Democratic Party in Texas, Estes
had contrived diverse scams to exploit programs
involving crop allotments, commodity storage
and loans to farmers. Marshall had been an
Agriculture Department local agent helping to
administer those very programs.
Estes bilked the government, as well as
private lenders who invested in his operations,
of many millions. As his schemes began to
unravel, it became clear that some mid-level
officials at Agriculture headquarters back in
Washington had been complicit or at least
blind to the abuse.
Two veteran Washington-based reporters,
my colleague Earl Mazo and Jack Steele of ScrippsHoward, led the coverage. Each produced several
enterprise stories, inducing other publications to
follow. John Denson, the Herald Tribune editor
brought in by John Hay Whitney to revive
the paper’s fortunes, loved the saga. (He also
disliked the Kennedy administration, taking any
opportunity to assail it.)
But scandals have their own rhythm. In
the spring of 1962, the Estes yarn was in a
lull. The perpetrator has been arrested, but
the trial was a long way off. Senator John
McClellan’s Permanent Subcommittee on
Investigations intended to hold hearings, but
not yet. The administration, having fired four
bureaucrats and begun the prosecution of
Estes, now claimed credit for having cleaned
up the mess.
Then someone remembered Henry
Marshall’s unusual demise. The big-picture
coverage up that point has focused on Estes
himself, his links to many politicians, the
nature of the fraud. The late Henry Marshall
had been barely a footnote. Could there be a
connection? Could the suicide finding have
been a cover-up?
Send someone down there, Denson
decreed. Working for a cash-strapped
newspaper has one advantage for a youngster:
the very lean staff allows newcomers a crack at
prime assignments sooner than at prosperous
outfits. I had already benefitted from this fact.
In 1962, at age 26, I ran our three-person City
Hall unit. No one more suitable being available,
I was dispatched to Franklin.
My first couple of days there yielded
nothing. Folks were friendly enough except for
Stegall’s senior deputy, known as Sonny. One
living an ideal life is spotty, with reality more
often one of unkept promises, incomplete
checklists, important things left unsaid.
In the weeks and months ahead, more
of the click-click of the slides will likely sink
in. For now, I’m sleeping a lot, occasionally
having dreams filled with corpses and the
anxiety of not being able to get my story
finished on time.
Copyright 2008, Los Angeles Times.
Reprinted with permission.
glimpse of my face got him talking about New
York being overrun by Jews. These east Texas
lawmen had excellent powers of perception; my
Irish surname hadn’t fooled Sonny.
While most people I encountered were
willing to chat, they were either unwilling to
talk or altogether unavailable. Lee Farmer, the
justice of the peace whose duties included that
of coroner, was said to be visiting relatives in
Oklahoma. Or was it Arkansas? No one was
sure. Mrs. Marshall, I learned, had strongly
objected to Farmer’s suicide ruling, but she
wasn’t willing even to chat. My luck changed
when I located Marshall’s brother-in-law, a
deliveryman for a soft-drink distributer. He
had much to say, and he put me in touch with
a few other sources.
I still had no firm, detailed information
about Marshall’s possible involvement with the
Estes investigation. But New York was eager for
a story. So I wrote about 1,000 words about
what had not happened. There had been no
investigation of the death worthy of the term:
no autopsy, no forensic evidence gathered, no
sworn statements at the inquest, no suicide
note, no known motive for suicide. Oh, and
the “coroner” had no medical training. Given
the practical difficulties of shooting oneself five
times with a bolt-action rifle, the implication
was clear: Marshall had been a murder victim.
My editor, Denson, gave the story good
play, on the front page. So did our syndicate
clients, including a few large Texas papers.
Within 48 hours, the motel was doing huntingseason business. Instead of shooters seeking
deer, the new occupants were reporters looking
for follow-up stories. Even the Chicago Tribune
sent a correspondent. Room rates went up.
At least partly because of the publicity, a
grand jury was convened. The Texas Rangers
entered the investigation. Marshall’s body
was exhumed. All this generated still more
coverage. Though the grand jury initially
deadlocked on the question of changing the
official cause of death, it was now generally
understood that Marshall had been murdered.
Back in Washington, our paper’s handling of
the saga — on top of other critical coverage
of the administration — caused the Kennedy
White House to lose its cool. With a flourish,
it cancelled its daily purchase of 22 copies.
Denson put that on the front page as well.
Decades later, reading Richard Kluger’s history
The Paper, I learned that Jock Whitney, the
publisher, sent Denson a memo congratulating
him on the entire episode.
I traveled in Texas another couple of
weeks, from Pecos to Austin, looking into
other angles of the story. Denson printed
just about anything I filed, but there were no
breakthroughs. Yet I knew that my bosses were
quite pleased. As the weather warmed, I was
authorized to put a new summer-weight suit
on my expense account — an unusual boon,
given the paper’s pinch-penny habits.
It would be satisfying to say that the
perpetrator of and motive for Marshall’s
slaying were firmly established. That was not
to be, though the authorities soon changed
the official cause of death to murder. The Texas
Rangers carried the case as an open homicide
for decades. Sensational conspiracy theories
surfaced from time to time, partly promoted
by Estes himself after he served his second
prison term. But by then nearly everyone else
involved was dead.
Denson would soon be forced out of the
editorship because his mercurial leadership did
not solve the paper’s worsening problems. But
he stayed long enough to promote me to the
Washington bureau. For that, and for sending
me to Texas on what I count as the most
memorable assignment in a 40-year print career,
I remember him with great fondness.
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Alumni Journal  www.journalism.columbia.edu
3 BOOK SHELF
1946
Doloris Coulter Cogan has written “We
Fought the Navy and Won: Guam’s Quest for
Democracy” (University of Hawaii Press), a
carefully documented recollection of Guam’s
struggle to liberate itself from the absolutist
rule of the U.S. Navy. Cogan concentrates
on 1945-50 when, fresh out of J-School, she
joined the newly formed Institute of Ethnic
Affairs in Washington. Working as a writer/
editor on the monthly Guam Echo under the
leadership of the Institute’s director, John
Collier, Cogan witnessed and recorded the
battle fought between Collier and Navy
Secretary James V. Forrestal as the people
of Guam petitioned the U.S. Congress for
civilian government under a constitution.
1975
Steve Greenhouse, a reporter for The New
York Times, has taken a new look at the life
of American workers in his book, “The Big
Squeeze: Tough Times for the American
Worker” (Knopf ). Greenhouse chronicles
how the nation’s 140 million workers —
white-collar and blue-collar, middle-class
and low-wage — have been affected by such
powerful forces as globalization, immigration
and downsizing.
1976 Bob Drogin was awarded the Overseas Press
Club of America’s Cornelius Ryan award for
his book, “Curveball: Spies, Lies, and the Con
Man Who Caused a War” (Random House,
2007), about Rafid Ahmed Alwan, the Iraqi
citizen who defected in 1999, claiming that
1957
Madeleine M. Kunin has written “Pearls, he had worked as a chemical engineer at a
Politics and Power: How Women Can plant that manufactured mobile biological
Win and Lead” (Chelsea Green Press), an weapon laboratories as part of an Iraqi
inspirational guide for women in politics, weapons of mass destruction program. The
told by some 100 women and by Kunin, award is given to the best non-fiction book
who served as Governor of Vermont, Deputy about international affairs.
Secretary of Education, and U.S. Ambassador
Robert Engelman has written “More:
to Switzerland.
Population, Nature, and What Women Want”
(Island Press, May 2008), which leads readers
1958
Lansing Lamont’s book, “You Must on a journey from humanity’s first steps to the
Remember This: A Reporter’s Odyssey from 21st century to explore whether women want
Camelot to Glasnost,” was released in June by more children or more for their children and
Beaufort Books. Lamont spent his childhood how their childbearing intentions have fared
hearing stories from the front lines of the in a male-dominated world. The answers he
business world from his grandfather and his finds not only surprise but offer new hope
adult life reporting on the business of the for real and lasting global sustainability.
nation at Time Magazine. Forty years after Engelman is the vice president for programs
John F. Kennedy’s casket was borne aloft at the Worldwatch Institute.
before the world’s dignitaries in a Washington
cathedral and riots and pillaging rocked the Beth Nissen is writing “On Edge: A History
Capital in the wake of Martin Luther King of the Knife” (Scribners/Simon and Schuster),
Jr.’s assassination, Lamont recounts the events a history of bladed implements, from the
earliest stone hand axes to the latest gamma
defining the “greatest generation.”
ray knives.
1962
Patrick Buchanan’s latest book is “Churchill, 1977 Hitler, and the Unneccessary War: How Fergus Bordewich’s newest book is
Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the “Washington: The Making of the American
World” (Crown, May 2008). Buchanan makes Capital” (Amistad). In “Washington,”
the case that, if not for the blunders of British Bordewich turns his eye to the backroom
statesmen — Winston Churchill first among deal-making and shifting alliances among
them — the horrors of two world wars and the Founding Fathers and, in doing so, pulls
the Holocaust might have been avoided, the back the curtain on the lives of slaves who
British Empire might never have collapsed actually built the city. This eye-opening book
into ruins, half a century of Communist is surprising and exciting and illuminates
tyranny might never have happened, and a story of unexpected triumph over a
Europe’s central role in world affairs might multitude of political and financial obstacles,
have been sustained for many generations. including fraudulent real estate speculation,
The author of nine other books, Buchanan is overextended financiers, and management
a syndicated columnist and a senior political more apt for a “banana republic” than an
emerging world power.
analyst for MSNBC.
Judy Polumbaum’s latest book is “China
1966
Asha Sharma has written about Samuel Ink: The Changing Face of Chinese
Evans Stokes, Jr., the son of a prominent Journalism” (Rowan & Littlefield), which
Philadelphia family who arrived in India as explores individual and societal changes in
a Quaker missionary in 1904 to work in a contemporary China through the compelling
home for lepers and eventually became a personal accounts of young Chinese journalists.
leader in Gandhi’s independence movement Polumbaum is professor of journalism and
in the 1920s. In “An American in Gandhi’s mass communication at The University of
India: The Biography of Satyanand Stokes” Iowa. With Gao Yuan, she co-wrote the
(Indiana University Press), Sharma recounts books “Born Red: A Chronicle of the Cultural
how Stokes soon became disillusioned with Revolution” (Stanford University Press) and
the foreign missionary community and “Lure the Tiger out of the Mountains: The
began a new spiritual quest, adopting Indian 36 Stratagems of Ancient China” (Simon &
dress, forgoing the privileges of a Westerner Schuster).
in colonial India, and founding a mendicant
religious brotherhood. He was the only 1981
American jailed by the British during India’s John Capouya has written about professional
wrestler George Wagner in “Gorgeous
struggle for independence.
George: The Outrageous Bad-Boy Wrestler
Who Created American Pop Culture”
1973
Shuja Nawaz has written “Crossed Swords: (HarperEntertainment, September 2008).
Pakistan, its Army, and the Wars Within” Wagner, A.K.A. Gorgeous George, captured
(Oxford University Press), a multi-layered, the attention of an entire nation and forever
and historical analysis of the nature and role changed professional wrestling with his
of the Pakistan army in the country’s policy flamboyant bad-boy antics, platinum blond
as well as its turbulent relationship with the hair, and an outrageous flair for fashion.
United States.
4
Capouya is a professor of journalism and
writing at the University of Tampa. He was
formerly an editor at Newsweek, The New York
Times, SmartMoney and New York Newsday.
1982
Joel Dubin’s “The Little Black Book of
Computer Security” (29th Street Press) is in
its second edition, updated with 60 additional
pages for a total of over 200, with three new
chapters on IT security regulations, security
awareness training and Web security.
1983
Tony Horwitz’s new book, “A Voyage Long
and Strange: Rediscovering the New World”
(Henry Holt & Co.), starts with the Viking
discovery of North America, dispels a number
of myths about Columbus and then traces
the various Spanish and French explorations
of America before turning to the English
settlements at Jamestown and Plymouth.
Horwitz is the best-selling author of “Blue
Latitudes,” “Confederates in the Attic,”
and “Baghdad Without a Map.” He is also
a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has
worked for The Wall Street Journal and The
New Yorker.
1985
Julia Flynn Siler’s “The House of Mondavi”
(Gotham) was short-listed for a James Beard
Foundation Award for excellence in books on
wine and spirits. A New York Times bestseller,
“The House of Mondavi” came out in
paperback May 1. Julia is going on a seven-city
tour for the paperback, including Los Angeles,
Dallas, Atlanta, New York, Washington, and
Portland, Ore.
Alex Storozynski has sold his book, “The
Peasant Prince Kosciuszko: Life, Liberty and
the Pursuit of Tolerance,” to St. Martin’s Press/
Thomas Dunne Books. It is a biography of the
Polish revolutionary who defended America
in the Battle of Saratoga, had his plans to
fortify West Point stolen by infamous traitor
Benedict Arnold, offered Thomas Jefferson
$15,000 to free his slaves, and led an army
of scythe-wielding peasants, burghers and a
Jewish cavalry against Russian czarist rule.
1986
John Jeter, a former city editor, rewrite man,
copy editor and reporter for the Chicago SunTimes, St. Petersburg Times and San Antonio
Express-News and now co-owner of the awardwinning concert venue The Handlebar, has
sold his first novel. “The Plunder Room” will
be published in Winter 2009 by Thomas
Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s
Press. In “The Plunder Room,” wheelchairbound slacker Randol Duncan decides to
salvage his war-hero grandfather’s proud
Southern legacy before his family’s criminal
shenanigans explode — only to be sideswiped
by a lurid scandal.
1987
Charles Robbins has written “Paydirt,” a
high-end political thriller that he describes as
“a polished mix of art and commerce” and is
looking for a literary agent. He’s just begun
collaborating with a professional screenwriter
and producer on a screenplay adaptation of
the book. Robbins co-wrote a non-fiction
book with Senator Arlen Specter (R-Penn.),
published in 2000 by HarperCollins.
1990 Stuart Miller is the author of “The 100
Greatest Days in New York Sports.”
Sharon Seitz is the author of “Big Apple Safari
for Families: The Urban Park Rangers’ Guide
to Nature in New York City.” She also is a
science teacher at P.S. 230 in Brooklyn.
1991
Lise Funderburg has written “Pig Candy:
Taking My Father South, Taking My Father
Home — A Memoir” (Free Press), a poignant
and often comical story of a grown daughter
getting to know her dying father in his last
months. During a series of visits with her
father to the South he’d escaped as a young
black man, Funderburg, the mixed-race
author of the acclaimed “Black, White,
Other,” comes to understand his rich and
difficult background and the conflicting
choices he had to make throughout his life.
Adi Japhet-Fuchs has written “We Had a
Treasure: Moments of Israeli Life in the 1960s
and 1970s” (self-published) with photography
by Amit Gosher. Japhet Fuchs describes the 65
objects she has collected in her journey back to
the Israeli home of the 1960s and 1970s. The
book has been a best seller in Israel.
1993 In “Leisureville,” Andrew Blechman
chronicles the proliferation of age-segregated
retirement communities for people in their
50s and 60s. Blechman traces the history of
this phenomenon to the Arizona desert of the
1950s, as well as profiles the world’s largest
gated retirement community, in Florda, called
The Villages, which is nearly twice the size
of Manhattan and will have a population of
more than 110,000. Blechman has a laser eye
for the tragicomic absurdities of all the fun,
games, and wild sex in theme-park senior
villages where Oz-like control is exercised by
the developer and his minions.
1996 Michael Prince has co-authored “Stupid
Wars: A Citizen’s Guide to Botched Putsches,
Failed Coups, Inane Invasions, and Ridiculous
Revolutions” (HarperCollins) with Ed Strosser. The book is a take-no-prisoners edition of
history that isn’t going to let the winners (or
the losers) forget the mistakes of the past.
1998
Patrick J. McCloskey has written “The Street
Stops Here: A Year at a Catholic High School
in Harlem” (University of California Press),
which offers a deeply personal and compelling account of a Catholic high school in
central Harlem, where mostly disadvantaged,
and often non-Catholic, African American
males graduate on time and get into college.
The foreword is written by Prof. Samuel G.
Freedman.
1999 Christina Reed is the author of “Earth Science: Decade by Decade,” a look at the field
of Earth Science during the 20th century. She
is following this with her next book “Marine
Science: Decade by Decade.”
2000
Jen Lin-Liu has written “Serve the People: A
Stir-Fried Journey Through China” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), in which she chronicles
her experiences attending a vocational cooking school in Beijing’s back alleys, interning
in restaurants ranging from a humble noodle
stall to the swanky riverfront restaurant in
Shanghai, and opening a cooking school of
her own.
2002
Alexandra Shimo’s book “The Environment
Equation” was released in Canada and the
U.S. in May. Shimo is a associate editor for
Maclean’s, the largest current affairs magazine
in Canada. 2003
Abrahm Lustgarten authored the forthcoming
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Alumni Journal  www.journalism.columbia.edu
Continued on Next Page
IN MEMORIAM
1940
David D. Newsom, a career diplomat who
was a go-between in unsuccessful efforts to
keep the deposed shah of Iran from entering
the United States in 1979 and tried to win the
release of American diplomats held hostage in
Tehran, died March 30 in Charlottesville, Va.
He was 90. Newsom retired from the State
Department in 1981 and became director of
the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at
Georgetown University. In 1991, he became
the first to hold the Hugh S. and Winifred
B. Cumming memorial chair in international
affairs at the University of Virginia. After
J-School, Newsom worked as a reporter, saw
the world as a Pulitzer traveling scholar in
1940 and 1941 and served in the Navy in
Hawaii during World War II. He and his wife
published a small newspaper in California
before he entered the Foreign Service in
1947.
1946
J. William Maxwell, founding chair of
Cal State Fullerton’s Communications
Department, died April 24 at the age of
88. He had been suffering from Parkinson’s
disease. Maxwell joined Cal State in 1960
and served as department chair for 13 years.
He continued to teach until 1982, when he
was awarded emeritus status. Maxwell was
cited twice by the California Newspaper
Publishers Association for his contributions
to higher education in journalism. He earned
a doctorate in mass communications from
the University of Iowa. Maxwell also taught
journalism at the University of South Dakota,
UCLA, Michigan State and the University
of Iowa.
1951 William H. Giles, 80, died Jan. 29 at his
home in London, Ky. His career included
stints as a reporter and editor at The Wall
Street Journal, executive editor of the Detroit
News when it won the Pulitzer Prize for
BOOK SHELF
Continued From Page 4
book, “China’s Great Train: Beijing’s Drive
West and the Campaign to Remake Tibet,” a
project that was funded in part by a grant from
the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur
Foundation. He is a reporter at ProPublica, a
non-profit newsroom producing journalism
in the public interest. A former staff writer
and contributor for Fortune, Lustgarten has
written for Salon, Esquire, The Washington Post
and The New York Times.
2006
Laila Al-Arian has co-written “Collateral
Damage: America’s War on Iraqi Civilians”
with Chris Hedges (Nation Books, June
2008). Hedges and Al-Arian spent several
months interviewing Iraqi war veterans to
expose the patterns of the occupation and
how it affects Iraqi civilians. The testimonies
of those soldiers and Marines provide a
disturbing window into the indiscriminate
killing of unarmed and innocent Iraqis that is
carried out daily by the occupation forces.
2007
V.V. (Sugi) Ganeshananthan (M.A. ’07) had
her first novel, “Love Marriage,” published in
April by Random House. “Love Marriage” is
the story of a young Sri Lankan-American
woman who meets her dying uncle, a former
member of the militant Tamil Tigers. She
has questions that prompt her to trace the
intersection of love and war through their
shared family history. Ganeshananthan will
read in 10 American cities, Canada, and at
the Torino Book Festival in Italy.
public service in 1982, founding editor of
Dow Jones’ National Observer, editor of The
Singapore Monitor, and managing editor of
The Washington Times, where he worked from
1997 until he retired in 2002. He joined
the faculty of Louisiana State University
when he was 60 as “semi-retirement” work,
according to his son Joe, rising to head the
Manship School of Mass Commmunication.
In addition to his five years at LSU and
another five at Southern University, he also
taught journalism at Baylor and Michigan
State. The Pulitzer Prize in Detroit was
for a series about shipboard deaths in the
Navy — and the Navy’s cover-up of those
deaths — led to reforms in naval procedures.
One of his favorite stories was about getting
kicked out of Lyndon B. Johnson’s office
after he departed from the script of a scripted
interview, according to his son Joe. As editor
for 10 years of The National Observer, one of
the first attempts at a national newspaper,
Giles was the only editor who sent a reporter
to cover Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s farewell
speech to West Point cadets in May 1962.
Many other papers picked up the Observer’s
story, according to Joe Giles, who told The
Associated Press that he has MacArthur’s
handwritten thank-you note on his wall. Giles
is survived by his wife of 58 years, Gloria; sons
William, Michael, Richard, Paul, and Joe, and
five grandchildren.
Luther Porter Jackson of Hartsdale,
N.Y., died April 22 of complications from
Parkinson’s disease. He was 83. Jackson
served with the Marines in the Pacific during
World War II. After graduating from the
J-School, he worked for The Newark Evening
News from 1955 to 1958, then as a reporter
for The Washington Post until 1963. Jackson
spent a few years in public relations at IBM,
then studied at Rutgers under a Russell Sage
Fellowship before launching his teaching
career at Columbia in 1968 as the school’s
first African-American journalism professor.
Until his retirement in 1992, Jackson made
it his particular mission to prepare black
journalists to compete in what, at the time,
was a white-dominated media culture, his
son Luther said.
Paul McClung died Sept. 29. He was 83.
The award-winning writer retired from The
Lawton (Okla.) Constitution in 1987 after
serving as managing editor and executive
editor. He was best known to Constitution
readers for his “Old Dad” columns, decades
of stories still used as reference material by
writers researching southwest Oklahoma
and its people. McClung won four awards
from the Associated Press and twice won first
place in the Warren Shear competition for
investigative and enterprise reporting. He was
inducted into the Oklahoma Journalism Hall
of Fame in 1996. After retiring, McClung
taught at OU and worked as director of public
information at Cameron University. McClung
was also a cattleman who worked the family
ranch near Byers, Tex., for decades. 1953 Selwyn Feinstein, a former editor, reporter
and columnist for The Wall Street Journal,
died April 16 from pancreatic cancer. He was
76 years old. Feinstein began his journalism
career in 1955 as the night bureau manager for
the United Press in Pittsburgh. He later held
reporting and editing roles at Tide magazine
and Printer’s Ink before joining the Journal in
1962. He was a foreign correspondent based
in Hong Kong in the late 1960s, covering the
Vietnam War, and was also assistant foreign
editor and Page 1 columnist. He is survived
by his wife, Eve, and two sons, Jeffrey and
Robert (’82).
CLASSMATES REMEMBER:
Kate MacIntyre (‘74)
By Anne-Gerard Flynn (’74)
My J-School classmate, Kate MacIntyre
(’74) was all about the doing in life. She completed Tufts University in three years and then
got her first master’s by the time she was 21.
Kate was very much a woman of her
times in her pursuit of independence, knowledge and adventure. She earned all three in
life, although I don’t believe Kate — known to
her friends as “Katie” — found true happiness
until her marriage two years ago to longtime
friend and Tufts classmate Peter Macon, a
business consultant in the international toy
and textile industry.
Kate and I actually met as residents of
International House. We shared a year at Columbia when film editing under the late John
Patterson was still done by slicing together
pieces of celluloid on cumbersome reels, master’s theses were produced on typewriters and
cellphones were a distant invention.
Still, we got to discuss the hot issues of
the day in ethical terms with the late Fred
Friendly, former CBS News president and
news luminary.
Kate went on to hold a number of executive positions both on the East and West
Coast in theater development and in advertising. She also got a second master’s in public
administration from Golden Gate University
in San Francisco.
At the time of her death at age 55, Kate
was executive director of the Davidson (N.C.)
Business Association.
Although never a smoker, Kate was
diagnosed with lung cancer two months after
her marriage in 2005. She tackled her cancer
treatment at the University of North Carolina
1954
Yanna Kroyt Brandt died on June 6 when
her car went off the Saw Mill River Parkway
in Westchester County, N.Y., and struck a
tree, according to police. Brandt was 74.
Brandt was a producer and writer for the
1980s ABC program “FYI,” which starred
Hal Linden. She also wrote and directed for
CBS and PBS in a career that started in the
1950s and included several Emmys. She and
her husband, Nat Brandt, authored a book
“In the Shadow of the Civil War.”
1957
Barry H. Gottehrer, a journalist whose
award-winning newspaper series “City in
Crisis” helped elect John V. Lindsay mayor of
New York in 1965, died April 11. He was 73
and the cause was pancreatic cancer. A former
sportswriter and editor at Newsweek and other
magazines, Gottehrer was recruited by Dick
Schaap to lead a team of reporters at The New
York Herald Tribune in a far-reaching and
ultimately damning examination of an ailing
New York in the mid-1960s. They documented
a time of swelling budget deficits, rising
crime, deepening racial turmoil and growing
demands for decentralized government. The
series was later published as a book. Lindsay
hired Gottehrer, barely 30, as an assistant and
Gottehrer soon organized the Urban Action
Task Forces, neighborhood-based groups
created to anticipate local grievances and quell
unrest. Afterward, he joined Madison Square
Garden as a senior executive, then worked as a
government affairs tactician for the insurance
industry in Massachusetts. Later, he worked
as a consultant in Washington and North
Carolina.
at Chapel Hill with the determination of
an investigative reporter on the ultimate
quest for knowledge for herself and others.
She volunteered to be part of a clinical trial
for treating lung cancer in non-smokers at
UNC’s Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer
Center. She later gave public testimony on
her treatment that helped the center and
university be designated to receive millions
of dollars in state funds to accelerate research.
Kate said in her testimony that no one should
“give up on stage-four cancer patients.”
She worked to make people aware that by
some estimates one out of every five women
diagnosed with lung cancer is a non-smoker.
I saw Kate for the last time in early
September of 2007. I accompanied her
to a meeting of the Davidson Business
Association. She chaired that meeting and
answered questions with few present realizing
that mobility, articulation and double vision
were starting to become issues for her because
of the cancer. Like the reporter she was at
heart, it was important for her to the end to
be a conduit of reliable information.
Besides her husband and her beloved
Siberian cat, Pushkin, Kate is survived by
her parents, Dr. W. James MacIntyre and Pat
MacIntyre of Shaker Heights, Ohio, and her
brother, Stephen, of Lyndhurst, Ohio.
A celebration of Kate’s life was held at
St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Davidson on
Oct. 27, 2007.
Donations may be made to the Kate
MacIntyre Foundation, 915-18 Northeast
Drive, Davidson, N.C., 28036. The
foundation was established by Kate and her
husband to help fund research and other
programs at UNC’s Lineberger Center.
1964
Cary Stiff II, who was 71, died May 3 of
a pulmonary embolism in Petersburg, Va.,
where he lived. After Columbia, he worked
nine years at the Denver Post and then,
with his wife, Carol Wilcox Stiff, also a Post
reporter, started a weekly newspaper, the Clear
Creek Courant. They operated the Courant
for 26 years, first in Georgetown, Colo., and
then in Idaho Springs, Colo. Anyone who
has skiied in Colorado would have passed
by both towns off of Interstate 70 on the
way to the slopes. His paper was named
the best weekly in the state by the Colorado
Press Association and won 50 other awards
from the CPA for news coverage, editorials,
columns and general excellence. In 1997,
Stiff and Wilcox were given the Eugene Cervi
Memorial Award of the International Society
of Weekly Newspaper Editors. They sold the
paper in 1999. In addition to his wife, he is
survived by two daughters, Meg C. Spodick,
of Framingham, Mass., and Catherine
Andrzejewski, of Baldwinsville, N.Y.; a son,
Cary Stiff III, of Twin Falls, Idaho; eight
grandchildren; a brother, Dr. David P. Stiff
of Charlestown, R.I., and two sisters, Winona
C. Lincoln of Reed City, Mich., and Martha
C. Wallace of Madison, Wis.
We Thrive On
Your Submissions
What was the most memorable
assignment in your career? Send
us your recollections at:
cjsalumnijournal@yahoo.com
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Alumni Journal  www.journalism.columbia.edu
5 Class Notes
From Page 8
Sam Roe was on the Pulitzer Prize-winning
Chicago Tribune team that also recently
won a 2008 Casey Medal for Meritorious
Journalism for “Hidden Hazards,” a series on
the serious problems for children posed by
unsafe products and the inadequacies of the
Consumer Product Safety Commission.
1987
Kissette Bundy, a professor at the
Scripps Howard School of Journalism and
Communications at Hampton University
in Virginia, recently contributed articles to
“The Encyclopedia of American Journalism.” Bundy’s articles included “Women Journalists,
African American” and “Youth Television
News.”
1988 Rich Brown is in Tokyo working on a new
reality show for ABC called “I Survived
a Japanese Game Show,” debuting this
summer.
Alex Connock is chief executive of Ten Alps
Communications, the broadcasting venture
he co-founded with Bob Geldof, which
produces quality documentaries. One of the
country’s largest specialist publishers, with
740 titles each year, Ten Alps also produces
online videos and dedicated broadband
television services.
Robert Mak has been named communications
director and senior policy advisor to Seattle
Mayor Greg Nickels. Mak was host of “KING
5 News Up Front” and a news reporter at
Seattle’s NBC affiliate. He was recognized
three times with the national Walter Cronkite
Award for excellence in broadcast TV political
journalism. Mak also won 10 regional Emmy
awards for investigative reporting and news
programs.
Christopher D. Ringwald has been appointed
editor of The Evangelist, the weekly newspaper
of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany,
N.Y. Ringwald is the author of “A Day
Apart: How Jews, Christians, and Muslims
Find Faith, Freedom and Joy on the Sabbath”
and “The Soul of Recovery: Uncovering
the Spiritual Dimension in the Treatment
of Addictions.” A former Times Union staff
writer, he is a visiting scholar at the Sage
Colleges and journalism lecturer at the
University at Albany.
George Bundy Smith Jr. is the Chicago
bureau reporter for ESPN, doing TV stories
for “SportsCenter” and “Outside the Lines.”
Donn Walker is moving from media relations
for Saint Louis University to pursuing a
bachelor’s degree in nursing in St. Louis.
Walker has held senior media relations
positions with General Motors and The Walt
Disney Company.
1989 Debra Rosenberg is an assistant managing
editor of Newsweek. She oversees the magazine’s
coverage of health, medicine, education,
family, society and ideas stories. She also
recently wrote a profile of former Supreme
Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and a
cover story on gender identity, “Rethinking
Gender.” Previously, Rosenberg served as
deputy Washington bureau chief and national
correspondent.
1990 Jennifer Reidy is a palliative medicine
physician and medical director of Merrimack
Valley Hospice in Lawrence, Mass.
1991
Sheryl Huggins is the editor-in-chief of
6
NiaOnline.com, a Web site for AfricanAmerican women, and a vice president
for editorial operations in New York at
Nia Enterprises, a Chicago publishing and
marketing research company.
Andrea Kane has joined MedicalMommas.
com. She was the wellness correspondent for
travelgirl magazine. Prior to that, Kane was a
staff writer at WebMD (and its predecessor
Medcast) and was a writer and producer in
CNN’s medical unit.
Andrew Salomon is the news editor in New
York for Back Stage East, a trade newspaper
for actors.
1992
Steven Shultz, deputy director, public
and community relations, for San Diego
International Airport, introduced Web 2.0
technology to the workplace by launching the
airport authority’s “Goodwill Ambassablog”
an employee blog written for internal and
external audiences. Shultz blogged and
podcasted on his own for 10 years.
Heidi Durrow has won the writer Barbara
Kingsolver’s Bellwether Prize for Literature
of Social Change. She is the founder and
producer of the Mixed Roots Film & Literary
Festival in Los Angeles. Durrow, a Los
Angeles-based writer, podcaster and lawyer,
is African-American and Danish. A former
litigator at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, Durrow
has won several awards for her writing. She is
the co-host and co-producer of Mixed Chicks
Chat, the only live weekly show about being
racially and culturally mixed. Durrow’s novel,
“Light-skinned-ed Girl,” will be on shelves
in fall 2009.
1993 Heather Cabot, a mother of two-year-old
twins, is founder of the blog, “The Well
Mom.” The former “ABC World News
Now” and “World News This Morning”
anchor is also a Yahoo! Web Life editor and
a columnist for “The Huffington Post.” Her
husband is former “60 Minutes” producer
Neeraj Khemlani ‘93, now vice president of
programming and development with Yahoo!
Media Group.
Kourosh Karimkhany is vice president of
corporate development at CondeNet, the
online arm of Conde Nast Publication, where
he has overseen the integration of Wired.
com, Reddit.com and NutritionData.com.
Prior to that, he was General Manager of
Wired.com, the senior producer of Yahoo!
News and Weather, and product manager at
Yahoo! Games. He also has written extensively
about technology for Bloomberg News and
Reuters.
Paul Kuharsky is moving to ESPN.com to
cover the AFC South after 12 years covering
the Oilers/Titans and the NFL at The
Tennessean. He is based in Nashville.
Theta Pavis edits Palisade magazine, a glossy
lifestyle publication covering North Jersey,
which was awarded Best New Product, 2007,
by the New Jersey Press Association.
1994
Maria De La O was named editor in chief
of Jane and Jane, a lesbian lifestyle magazine.
Now in its third year of publication, Jane
and Jane will begin its national distribution
this September under the editorial direction
of De La O, who brings with her more than
15 years of experience as an editor and writer
for national publications. She has been both
a managing editor and an assignment editor
for Alternative Medicine and The Industry
Standard and has worked as the online news
editor of The New York Daily News. A longtime
member of the National Lesbian and Gay
Journalists Association, De La O also has been
an editor and writer for LGBT magazines
and newspapers that include 10 Percent, The
Advocate, Bay Area Reporter, San Francisco Bay
Times, and Curve.
Alex Fryer is the interim senior communications
and policy advisor for Seattle Mayor Greg
Nickels. He will be in charge of day-to-day
operations of the mayor’s communications
team. Fryer was a staff reporter for The
Seattle Times from 1997 to 2007, and served
as Washington correspondent, among other
assignments.
Solly Granatstein won a Peabody award
for the “60 Minutes” program “The Killings
in Haditha,” a thorough, open-minded
investigation of the worst single killing of
civilians by American troops since Vietnam.
Christiaan Hart Nibbrig is the co-publisher/
editor of the Lancaster (Pa.) Post, which
published its first edition on April 18. Hart
Nibbrig has experience at Time magazine as
an online news writer and at People magazine
as a business analyst. He is also the founding
editor and publisher of the Mendocino (Calif.)
Outlook, an issues and arts bi-weekly.
Hanson Hosein is working on a follow-up
documentary to “Independent America: The
Two-lane Search for Mom and Pop” which
chronicled a 13,000-mile journey across the
U.S. in which Hosein and his wife, Heather
Hughes, drove on no highways and only
shopped and stayed at independent businesses.
The new documentary is titled “Independent
America: Rising from the Ruins” and focuses
on the recovery of mom-and-pop stores in
post-Katrina New Orleans. Hosein runs
the new media program at the University of
Washington in Seattle.
Martha Irvine, a national writer at the
Associated Press, and her colleague Robert
Tanner received the 2008 Fred M. Hechinger
Grand Prize for Distinguished Education
Reporting from the Education Writers
Association for their series investigating
educators and sexual misconduct.
Ching-Ching Ni, Beijing correspondent
for the Los Angeles Times, has been named a
Nieman Fellow. Ni will study the intersection
of religion, politics and immigration, with a
focus on the changing spiritual landscape of
America. Laura van Straaten was promoted to general
manager and vice president for content at
TitanTV, an Internet syndication company.
In her new role, van Straaten, who currently
oversees development and production for all
original TitanTV video programming and
related Web user-experiences, will now have
the added responsibilities of strategic planning
for content and distribution partnerships,
corporate development, communications and
public relations.
Katherine Yung and colleagues at The Detroit
Free Press received an honorable mention in
the Loeb Award’s breaking news category for
“A New U.S. Auto Industry,” a special report
about a pivotal labor agreement reached in
the aftermath of the UAW’s strike against
General Motors.
1995 Dave Saldana has taken a new position
as deputy editorial director with Media
Matters for America, a Web-based liberal
media policy and watchdog group based
in Washington, D.C. He left Iowa State
University’s Greenlee School of Journalism
after completely revamping the broadcast
curriculum to more effectively simulate a
real-world newsroom experience. In his
new position, he will help oversee a team of
researchers who monitor, analyze and correct
conservative misinformation in U.S. news
media.
1996
Julia Kao was associate producer of the
documentary “Young and Restless in China”
that follows the lives of nine young people
over four years as they struggle to find their
way in a country changing faster than any in
history. Their stories of ambition, exuberance,
crime and corruption are interwoven with
moments of love, heartbreak and passion.
Graciela Mochkofsky will be a Nieman
Fellow at Harvard University for 2008-2009.
Her focus: the impact and potential of Internet
technology in Latin American media.
1997
Trevor Delaney has been appointed personal
finance editor at the Associated Press in
New York. Delaney is currently the editorial
director for personal finance at Black Enterprise
magazine.
Brigitte Sion received her Ph.D. in
Performance Studies from New York
University in May. Starting in September,
she will be assistant professor/faculty fellow
at NYU’s Program in Religious Studies and
Department of Journalism. She will teach a
graduate seminar on reporting religion, two
courses in religious studies, and advise M.A.
students who are working toward a new dual
degree in journalism and religious studies.
Daniel Terdiman, a reporter at CNET
News.com, is hitting the highway for the
third summer in a row. On this year’s trip,
he’ll weave through the South, stopping at
sites including the Johnson Space Center
in Houston and the Kennedy Space Center,
the National Corvette Museum, Graceland,
and a UPS global distribution center that’s a
veritable maze of conveyor belts.
1998
Alexandra Dell had an essay, “Deconstructing
Carmel,” in Newsweek. Dell is manager of
business affairs at GreeneStreet Films in New
York City.
Hien Thu Dao is the director of performance
measurement at the New York City
Department of Finance where she helps build
a performance management system that will
deliver better results to taxpayers.
Margarita Martinez will be an International
Nieman Fellow at Harvard University during
the 2008-2009 year. A freelance filmmaker,
Martinez plans to focus on film, Latin
American studies and Chinese philosophies.
She produced the 2005 documentary “La
Sierra” about Colombia’s civil war. Shai Oster has won the Asia Society’s Osborn
Elliott Award for Excellence in Journalism
on Asia. The prize was awarded for a series
of stories exposing environmental problems
associated with China’s Three Gorges Dam
project. The $10,000 cash prize was presented
to Oster at a luncheon in June at the Asia
Society in New York. Oster is a Beijing-based
correspondent for The Wall Street Journal,
covering energy and the environment.
Kristin Roberts is the White House and
campaign correspondent for Reuters in
Washington, D.C. Roberts was formerly
Reuters’ Pentagon correspondent.
Jennifer Anne Zweben is a senior news
producer in New York for “Access Hollywood,”
a syndicated television show.
Continued on Next Page
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Alumni Journal  www.journalism.columbia.edu
1999
James Grimaldi and Aruna Jain ‘02 were
on The Washington Post/ Washingtonpost.
com team that won a 2008 Casey Medal for
Meritorious Journalism in the Multimedia
category for “Fixing DC’s Schools,” a portrait
of a school system where good people and
teachers struggle, poor teachers persist,
children with marginal literacy are promoted
and buildings have been allowed to decay.
Cheryl F. McCants has been appointed
senior vice president of marketing and
communications for the National Urban
League. She will be responsible for
creating and implementing marketing,
communications and interactive strategy and
identity nationwide.
Violet Law is reporting from China for various
U.S. national print and radio outlets. She
speaks Mandarin and Cantonese. You can
e-mail her at VioletLaw@journalist.com.
2000
Parke Chapman is with the Marino
Organization in New York City, which
provides clients with expertise in media
relations, strategic counsel, community
affairs, government affairs, integrated
marketing, corporate communications, crisis
communications, message development,
media training and event management.
Mickey Ciokajlo has joined the Kalamazoo
Gazette where he is an editor on the metro
desk, overseeing local news coverage. He
was with the Chicago Tribune’s metro desk
for 7-1/2 years, covering the Cook County
government, courts and Chicago City Hall. Stephen Larkin founded the PR firm Larkin
in 2006 after three years as head PR person for
mega brokerage The Corcoran Group. Larkin
represents real estate brokers, developers,
architects and designers.
Rob Mank won a first-place award for radio
newscast at the National Headliners for a
broadcast he produced for CBS News Radio
the day after the Virginia Tech shooting last
year.
2001 Donna Ladd won a Public Service Award
in the National Association of Alternative
Newsweeklies competition for her series
on the Klan published in the Jackson Free
Press. She also won in the Feature Story
category (circulation under 55,000) for “We
Are Family: A Klan Child Fans a Different
Flame.”
Sheila Stainback was named one of the
tri-state area’s (New York, New Jersey and
Connecticut) “Black Broadcast Legends” by
McDonald’s franchises. Also included was
Rolonda Watts (’82).
Sambath Reach is the press officer for the
Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of
Cambodia, the court that has been established
to try former Khmer Rouge leaders. Reach
continues to teach second year students at the
Department of Media and Communication of
the Royal University of Phnom Penh.
2002
Tessa van Staden was appointed deputy
news editor at Primedia Broadcasting in Cape
Town, South Africa. She began her career in
radio journalism at SABC, before moving on
to one of the world’s biggest international
broadcasters The Voice of America, in South
Africa and Zimbabwe. Van Staden joined the
Primedia Broadcasting news team in 2006 as
news anchor for talk station 567 CapeTalk.
2003
Thomas James Acitelli is a senior editor
at The New York Observer, running the real
estate section.
Melissa Nann Burke has been named a finalist
in the Religion Newswriters Association
awards. The winners will be announced Sept.
20 in Washington.
Dianne Finch was awarded a John S. Knight
Fellowship at M.I.T. The fellowship is for selfmotivated journalists who hope to improve
their coverage of science, technology, medicine
or the environment. Finch is a health care and
science reporter at New Hampshire Public
Radio in Concord.
Jamie Francisco is living in San Francisco
following two years with the Chicago
Tribune, with the marketing department of
an environmental consulting firm, and still
writing and currently working on a collection
of short stories.
Joshua Kors won a 2008 Casey Medal for
Meritorious Journalism in the magazine
category for “How Specialist Town Lost His
Benefits,” about how some military doctors
deny long-term benefits to wounded Iraq
War veterans and their families by claiming
the soldiers had a pre-existing “personality
disorder.” He also won the National Headliner
Award for magazine coverage of a major
news event for “Thanks for Nothing,” which
appeared in The Nation.
Chris Maag continues to freelance for The
New York Times and Time magazine.
Itai Maytal will begin a one-year First
Amendment fellowship at The New York
Times in September after graduating from
the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.
He will assist the Times’ legal department in
defending libel actions; litigating access to
courts and freedom-of-information issues;
counseling its newspaper and Internet
clients on intellectual property matters and
agreements, and working with its journalists
on a variety of legal matters. Ben Shpigel covers the Mets baseball team
for The New York Times.
Joseph Van Harken has been working on
a new eight-part MTV documentary series
called “The Paper.” It premiered on April
14 on MTV. The show centers on an awardwinning high school newspaper,
Casey Woods was part of a team at The Miami
Herald that won an Overseas Press Club
Award, the Robert Spiers Benjamin Award,
for best reporting in any medium on Latin
America. The team won for coverage of the
Venezuelan referendum in December.
2004
Elaine Aradillas is a staff writer for People
magazine in Los Angeles.
Petra Bartosiewicz (M.A. ’06) reported “The
Prosecutor,” a radio documentary that aired
on “This American Life.” It is the story of how
office politics at the Justice Department helped
unravel the government’s first high-profile
terrorist case after 9/11. The piece is part of
a book she is writing on terrorism trials since
9/11 called “The Best Terrorists We Could
Find,” out in Spring 2009. Dan Berrett is the education reporter at the
Pocono Record in Pennsylvania. He covers
the four local K-12 public school districts,
private schools, pre-school programs, East
Stroudsburg University and Northampton
Community College.
Annalisa Burgos is senior real estate editor for
Scripps Networks in Knoxville, Tenn.
David Epstein received an award from the
Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Association
for “Following the Trail of Broken Hearts”
(Sports Illustrated, December 2007). HCM is
a genetic disease in which the muscle of the
heart thickens in the absence of an apparent
cause. It is the leading cause of sudden death
in children and young adults and accounts for
40 percent of all deaths on athletic playing
fields across the U.S.
Carla Zanoni wrote one of two articles that
won Manhattan’s West Side Spirit a 2007 New
York Press Association first place award for
best coverage of religion. She wrote about
how several religious organizations are using
their valuable real estate to keep congregations
alive. Zanoni, who left her position as features
editor at Manhattan Media in December, is
a freelance writer and works for Seedco, a
national non-profit based in New York City.
Elizabeth Holmes is a staff writer covering
politics for The Wall Street Journal in
Washington, D.C.
2007
Jacoba Charles is a reporter at the Point
Reyes Light in Marin County, Calif., covering
a variety of stories, including science and
natural resource articles.
James Klatell is the deputy managing editor
of politicker.com, a new network of local
political news sites headquartered in New
York City.
Alfred de Montesquiou has been appointed
chief North Africa correspondent for the
Associated Press. He was AP correspondent in
Cairo and Khartoum, Sudan. In his new role,
he will lead coverage in Algeria, Morocco and
Tunisia. He joined AP in 2004 at the Europe/
Africa regional editing desk in London and
was also posted as a correspondent in Haiti.
Gloria Rodriguez is a reporter/anchor for
KMIR6-TV in Palm Springs, Calif.
2005
Lisa Bramen is an associate editor at
Adirondack Life magazine in Jay, N.Y.
Adam Howard is the new assistant Web editor
at The Nation.
Laura McCandlish is a business reporter for
The Baltimore Sun and is also a teacher for the
paper’s high school journalism programs. Lani Perlman graduated from Fordham Law
School in May and joined the New York City
law firm of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan.
2006 Brian Costa is a sports copy editor at The
Miami Herald.
Ed Krayewski left NBC News to accept a staff
position at the Fox Business Network, where
he is a media producer.
Julia Marsh is editor-in-chief of Manhattan
Times, which won a New York Press Association
award for Coverage of Religion. The award
was given for a collection of three pieces the
paper has done since Julia has been editor, one
of which was written by Marsh herself.
Megan Feldman won the top feature writing
prize in the National Association of Alternative
Newsweeklies competition for her piece “El
Tren de la Muerte” for the Dallas Observer,
which followed the “death trains” from
Guatemala into Texas.
Antonio Neves has been nominated for two
National Association of Black Journalists
awards for shows he reported/produced
for BET News. Neves is nominated in the
categories of Television Specialty for a special
titled “Black & Green” on African Americans
and the environment and Television Sports
for a show titled “Surviving the Game,”
addressing the state of the black athlete.
Moises Velasquez-Manoff (M.A. ’06) wrote
an article for The New York Times Magazine
on scientists researching how worms, or
helminthes, may help the immune system
against a variety of diseases.
Patrick White has won the National Magazine
Awards Foundation (Canada) 2007 Best New
Magazine Writer Award for “Red Rush,” an
article about killer beetles for The Walrus
magazine. White is a reporter with The Globe
and Mail.
Ellen Gabler is one of two Journal Sentinel
investigative reporters assigned to the public
investigator team focusing on consumer
watchdog stories. She has written about
crushing waits at the county welfare office,
a podiatrist who repeatedly over-billed his
patients, and victims of fatal home fires who
don’t have working smoke detectors. An
Eau Claire native, Gabler worked previously
at The Stillwater (Minn.) Gazette and the
Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal.
Jack Gillum, a reporter at the Arizona Daily
Star, and two colleagues won an award from
the Society of American Business Editors and
Writers for breaking news for their coverage of
a mortgage lender’s collapse in Tucson.
David Gura was promoted to assistant editor
at “Talk of the Nation” in the Washington
office of NPR, where he’s worked since
graduating from the J-School.
Stephanie Merry has joined washingtonpost.
com, covering cultural events.
Amanda Rivkin is a freelance photojournalist
in Chicago. She recently covered the shootings
at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb
for Agence France Presse. Her images can be
viewed at www.amandarivkin.com.
Ernest Scheyder is a financial reporter for The
Associated Press in New York.
Sam Stein is a political reporter at “The
Huffington Post,” based in Washington. He
has worked for Newsweek, The New York Daily
News and the investigative journalism group
Center for Public Integrity.
Eric Umansky (M.A. ’07), senior writer at
ProPublica, a non-profit newsroom producing
journalism in the public interest, will become
the lead daily contributor to ProPublica’s
enhanced Web site. Umansky wrote Slate’s
“Today’s Papers” feature from 2001 until
2006. Earlier, Umansky was a senior associate
editor of Brill’s Content magazine, and the
editor of Motherjones.com.
2008
Laura Isensee is a general assignment reporter
at The Miami Herald.
Caroline Dworin’s article on the Putnam
Rolling Ladder Company appeared on the
front page of The New York Times city section
(6/28/08). She also was interviewed about it
on NY1 with Sam Roberts. The article was
originally written for Professor Evan Cornog
in the J-School M.A. program.
Sarah Lynch and Sushma Subramanian,
recipients of the Anne O’Hare McCormick
Memorial Fund scholarships, were honored
by the Newswomen’s Club of New York in
April with a reception hosted by Thomson
Reuters.
Adam Weinstein received a master’s in
international affairs from Florida State
University. He is a copy editor at The Wall
Street Journal.
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Alumni Journal  www.journalism.columbia.edu
7 1939
Grady Clay received a special $5,000 award
from The Urban Communication Foundation
at the Association for Education in Journalism
and Mass Communication meeting in
Chicago. Clay was the first urban affairs
editor of The Louisville Courier-Journal and
editor for 23 years of Landscape Architecture
magazine, past president of the American
Society of Planning Officials (now American
Planning Association) and jury chairman
for the Vietnam War Veterans Memorial in
Washington, D.C.
Edith Iglauer delivered the annual Lansdowne
Lecture at the March 27 meeting of the
Creative Non-Fiction faculty at the University
of Victoria (Canada).
1946
Eileen Martinson Lavine is associate editor
of Moment, a bi-monthly magazine of Jewish
politics, culture and religion published in
Washington, D.C.
1956
Eileen Grennan has an article in the May/
June issue of Columbia College Today
magazine. The article is about 1968 at the
J-School.
1960
Jerome Aumente was awarded the Society
of Professional Journalists 2008 Sigma
Delta Chi national award for excellence
in journalism research for “From Ink on
Paper to the Internet: Past Challenges and
Future Transformations for New Jersey’s
Newspapers.” Aumente is distinguished
professor emeritus and special counselor to
the dean in the School of Communication,
Information and Library Studies at Rutgers
University.
1964 Nick Scalera, president of Scalera Consulting
Services, will receive a 2008 Men of Valor
Award from Project Re-Direct, a Newarkbased non-profit social service agency that
works with vulnerable youth. Scalera was
recognized for his lifelong work with at-risk
children.
1966
David Andelman is the new editor of World
Policy Journal, the magazine of the World
Policy Institute. World Policy’s mission is to
develop and champion innovative policies
from international perspectives. Andelman’s
goal at the magazine and a new Web site is to
provide a forum for public debate on global
issues around the world. The magazine will
celebrate its 25th anniversary this fall.
1967 Tom Bettag’s latest project with Ted Koppel is
a four-part series titled “The People’s Republic
of Capitalism,” which will begin airing on the
Discovery Channel in early July.
Ed Omotoso is the publisher and editor-inchief of Esa-Oke Today, a quarterly general
interest community magazine which he
founded to serve his hometown in Nigeria
and its citizens throughout the worldwide
diaspora.
Allan Sloan of Fortune magazine won his
seventh Loeb Award for “Piece of Junk,” his
article about the subprime crisis.
1969
Lewis Fisher has been named by Victor
Central School District (N.Y.) as its Graduate
of Distinction for 2008. Fisher was with the
San Antonio Express-News in Texas until 1971
and left to establish the North San Antonio
8
Class Notes
Times. Fisher owns Maverick Publishing and
has written nine books about the history of
San Antonio.
Jim Hoagland, associate editor and chief
foreign correspondent for The Washington
Post, teamed up with other international
experts at the World Affairs Council’s annual
conference, “From London to Moscow: New
Faces, Old Alliances.” As conference chair,
Hoagland led discussions that examined
the foreign policy challenges we face in the
immediate future.
Roy Malone is editor of the St. Louis
Journalism Review, which has been published
continuously since 1970. He retired as a
reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and
also had been a reporter for the Associated
Press and KSDK Channel 5 in St. Louis.
1970
Frank Denton was named editor of The Florida
Times-Union (Jacksonville) by publisher James
Currow. Denton will remain vice president for
journalism for the paper’s parent company,
Morris Communications, the job he held
before becoming interim editor in January.
Denton has more than 44 years of newsroom
experience, including nearly 18 years as editor
of the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison and
10 years in various editing positions at the
Detroit Free Press.
1971
Alex Belida has been working on a new
project at Voice of America, the VOA News
Blog, which discusses the editorial integrity
and quality of VOA content and responds
to inquiries, comments and complaints from
the general public and others related to that
content. The News Blog is a public source
of information, explanation and analysis
regarding VOA’s journalistic standards and
practices.
Reginald Stuart has been appointed to the
board of the Student Press Law Center, a
Washington, D.C., non-profit whose mission
is to advocate for free-press rights for high
school and college journalists. Stuart is
a corporate recruiter for The McClatchy
Company, one of the largest newspaper
companies in the nation. He has worked
throughout his career to support open-records
laws and free-press rights.
1972
Bhaskar Menon has a new blog on
international issues/stories from the United
Nations: http://undiplomatictimes.blogspot.
com.
1976
Solange De Santis has been named editor
of Episcopal Life Media (ELM) in New
York City. De Santis — a staff writer since
2000 for the Anglican Journal, the national
newspaper of the Anglican Church of Canada
—will shape and plan content for both
ELM’s online and print editions and provide
editorial leadership for its 225,000-circulation
Episcopal Life monthly newspaper.
Anita Sama is editor-in-chief of CEO Update,
a niche publication in Washington, D.C., that
covers executives in trade associations, nonprofits and professional societies.
1977
Gordon Bock has rejoined the journalism
community as managing editor of the weekly
Northfield (Vt.) News and Transcript. Gordon
was with UPI, U.S. News & World Report,
Business Week and Time before moving to
Vermont, where he has largely worked in sales
and marketing for a decade. Gordon has served
the J-School in various capacities: teaching
assistant (media management seminar) while
he was a Columbia undergraduate, member
of the alumni executive committee, RW1
adjunct professor and alumni proctor.
Ti-Hua Chang is primarily an investigative
reporter, not a general assignment reporter,
for My9News in New York City.
Lisa Hammersly Munn and colleagues at The
Charlotte (N.C.) Observer won a Loeb Award
for “Sold a Nightmare,” a year-long series on
the subprime mortgage crisis.
Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez was inducted into
the 2008 National Association of Hispanic
Journalists Hall of Fame on July 25 during
the UNITY ‘08 Convention in Chicago.
Rivas-Rodriguez is associate professor of
journalism at the University of Texas at Austin
and director of the U.S. Latino and Latina
World War II Oral History Project. An activist
who spearheaded a national campaign against
the exclusion of Latinos from the Ken Burns’
documentary “The War,” Rivas-Rodriguez is
the creator of NAHJ’s The Latino Reporter at
the Dallas convention, a model emulated by
other journalism organizations.
1978
Jane Eisner has been named the editor of
The Forward, the Jewish newsweekly. Eisner
worked at The Philadelphia Inquirer from 1980
to 2005, rising from reporter to editorial page
editor and syndicated columnist. The Forward
has been published in Yiddish for more than
a century; the English-language version was
founded in 1990. Eisner is the first woman to
edit either version of The Forward.
Leslie Goldwater Nelson has joined the
Burton D. Morgan Foundation in Hudson,
Ohio, as senior program officer. The foundation
seeks to strengthen the free enterprise system
by investing in organizations and institutions
that foster the entrepreneurial spirit. Nelson is
responsible for reviewing grant applications,
making recommendations to trustees and
following up to make sure that grants are
properly administered.
1979 Guido Busetto and his wife, Nobuko
Hashimoto, own and operate a vineyard in
Selvole, Tuscany. Their passion for wine goes
back more than 10 years when Busetto was
posted in France as a correspondent for an
Italian economic newspaper and the couple
pursued their studies in oenology at the
University of Bordeaux. William Lubart is a psychologist in private
practice in Manhattan. Lubart specializes in
providing psychotherapy and psychoanalysis
to clients in the media and the arts.
1980
Wayne Dawkins, a professor at the
Scripps Howard School of Journalism
and Communications at Hampton
University in Virginia, recently contributed
articles to “The Encyclopedia of American
Journalism.” Dawkins’ articles included pieces
on David Halberstam and James Reston and
one on American columnists.
Jon Markman is editor and founder of the
investment research newsletters Trader’s
Advantage and Strategic Advantage. A pioneer
in the development of stock-rating systems
and screening software, Markman is a coinventor on two Microsoft patents and author
of the best-selling books “Swing Trading” and
“Online Investing.” Markman is also a weekly
columnist for MSN Money and a contributor
to TheStreet.com.
Manny (Max) Norat won a New York Times
2008 ESOL (English for Speakers of Other
Languages) Teachers of the Year Program
award. Now in its second year, the program
recognizes ESOL instructors who have
consistently gone above and beyond the call
of duty to help students learn English and
develop the skills needed to create successful
new lives in the United States. Norat is an
adult education ESL teacher at HamiltonMadison House.
Carol Polsky is a reporter with Newsday on
Long Island.
1981
Caleb Solomon was appointed managing
editor/news and page one editor of The Boston
Globe.
1982 In addition to writing about the environment
for The New York Times, Andrew Revkin
performs in the band Uncle Wade. Revkin
wrote the song “Arlington” after passing the
Arlington National Cemetery a few years ago
and learning that the cemetery was slowly
running out of room. The song was posted on
the NYTimes.com site on Memorial Day.
1983
Erik Gunn has won the award for Best Topical
Column in the Magazine Division of the
Excellence in Wisconsin Journalism contest
sponsored by the Milwaukee Press Club.
Gunn won the award for “Pressroom,” the
monthly column on the media he writes for
Milwaukee Magazine, where he also frequently
contributes feature articles. He’s been writing
the column since November 2006. This is the
fifth time since 1996 that Gunn’s work for
Milwaukee Magazine has been recognized in
the Milwaukee Press Club’s annual contest.
1984
Peter James Spielmann, a news editor
on the North America division of AP’s
international desk, spent a month teaching
“International Reporting: Special Topics” at
American University of Kuwait as a Fulbright
Senior Specialist. He also moderated a panel
in May at Harvard University’s Nieman
Foundation on religion, human rights and
journalism during the conference “A Paradigm
Revisited: 60 years after the Declaration of
Human Rights — How would we (re)write
it now?” Mike Watkiss is the 2008 recipient of the
Humanitarian Award presented by the
Arizona Women’s Partnership. Watkiss was
recognized for his on-going reporting on
women and children at risk inside the world
of American polygamy.
1985
Scott James, writing under the pen name
Kemble Scott, has been honored as a finalist
for the national Lambda Literary Award for
his debut novel “SoMa.”
1986 Mar y Ellen Murphy Stidham w a s
posthumously honored with a Bartow, Fla.,
Chamber of Commerce “Spirit of Bartow
Award,” which recognizes outstanding service.
Stidham was a former reporter for The Catholic
Free Press and The Tampa Tribune before
becoming the communications director for
the Florida Institute of Phosphate Research in
Bartow. Stidham was an active member in the
Bartow community as a board member of the
Greater Bartow Chamber of Commerce, Polk
Arts Alliance and the Bartow Community
Healthcare Foundation. She died Feb. 17 at the
age of 49 from a respiratory disorder.
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Alumni Journal  www.journalism.columbia.edu
Continued on Page 6