Columbia Journalism School E-News
--October 5, 2011-================================================
UPCOMING ALUMNI EVENTS
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SAVE THE DATE! ALUMNI WEEKEND AND CENTENNIAL KICK-OFF
APRIL 20-21, 2012
PHILADELPHIA, Tuesday, Oct. 11: Alumni Reception with Craig LaBan ’94, Restaurant Critic,
Philadelphia Inquirer. Click here for more information and to register.
LOS ANGELES, Wednesday, Oct. 19: Evening with Janice Min ’91, editorial director, The
Hollywood Reporter, at the Pacific Design Center. Click here for more information.
MIAMI, Friday, Oct. 21: Alumni Drinks during the Society for Environmental Journalists
Conference. 5:30 – 7:00 p.m., Indigo Bar, Lobby Level, Intercontinental Miami, 100 Chopin
Plaza, Miami. Cash bar.
CHICAGO, Tuesday, Nov. 1: Alumni Reception with Professor James B. Stewart hosted by
Jim Robins ’73. For more information and to register, email: jalumni@columbia.edu
BOSTON, Tuesday, Nov. 8: Alumni Reception with Professor James B. Stewart hosted by
Phil Balboni ’71. For more information and to register, email: jalumni@columbia.edu
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FEATURED NEWS
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CENTENNIAL KICKS OFF ALUMNI WEEKEND 2012 & CONCLUDES ALUMNI WEEKEND
2013
The Journalism School’s year-long celebration of its Centennial will commence on April 20, 2012,
the first night of Alumni Weekend, and culminate Alumni Weekend 2013 (April 12-13). The
launch of the Centennial will include a program in Miller Theatre with remarks from Dean Nicholas
Lemann and notable alumni, including Pulitzer Prize winning author and historian Robert Caro
'67, followed by a special cocktail reception in Low Library. For up-to-date Centennial
information: www.journalism.columbia.edu/centennial
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------NOMINATIONS FOR ALUMNI AWARDS DUE!
Deadline: Oct. 15, 2011
The Columbia Journalism School Alumni Awards are highly prized because they represent
recognition of excellence by one’s professional peers. The awards are given to alumni of the
Graduate School of Journalism for a distinguished journalism career in any medium, for an
outstanding single accomplishment in journalism, for notable contributions to journalism
education or for achievement in related fields. The awards are given at the Alumni Weekend Low
Library lunch on April 21, 2012. For information, click here.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------PROFESSOR STEWART’S “HEART OF A SOLDIER” PREMIERES AS OPERA
To commemorate the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, San Francisco Opera
presented the world premiere of “Heart of a Soldier,” based on the book by Professor James B.
Stewart. It tells the dramatic story of Rick Rescorla’s extraordinary life. A British-born adventurer
who fought in Vietnam before settling in New York as head of security for a brokerage firm based
in the World Trade Center. On Sept. 11, 2011, he led all of the 2,700 people under his care to
safety—literally singing them down the stairs—before heading back into the burning building for
one last check. He never emerged.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------FCC'S STEVEN WALDMAN JOINS JOURNALISM SCHOOL AS VISITING SCHOLAR
As a part of a Knight Foundation-funded effort, Steven Waldman, author of the Federal
Communications Commission report "Information Needs of Communities," will join Columbia
University’s Graduate School of Journalism as a visiting senior media policy scholar. He will study
emerging media issues and explore implementation strategies for the report’s recommendations.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------PROF. SYLVIA NASAR'S "GRAND PURSUIT" PUBLISHED
Prof. Sylvia Nasar, author of the bestselling biography, “A Beautiful Mind,” recently published
“Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius,” which tells the epic story of economics from
Charles Dickens to Milton Friedman, arranged dramatically into three “acts”: Hope, Fear and
Confidence.
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EVENTS OF INTEREST
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CONTINUING EDUCATION COURSES THIS FALL
There is still time to register for the Journalism School’s fall digital media and reporting Continuing
Education courses. Alumni receive a 10% discount off course fees. Offerings include:
Introductory and Advanced Multimedia Storytelling with Prof. Duy Linh Tu ’99, and one-night and
four-night social media workshops with Prof. Sree Sreenivasan ’93. For info and to register, visit
http://bit.ly/digital-media-training. Additionally, 4-week reporting and writing workshops by leading
journalists will focus on covering health, financial literacy/business news and investigative
reporting techniques. These Saturday workshops extend Columbia's core mission of preparing
journalists with great fundamentals in accountability skills. Learn more and register at
http://bit.ly/reporting-writing to view our course offerings. To receive updates about new
continuing education classes, please email ce@jrn.columbia.edu.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------WORKSHOP: REPORTING ON INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE
Deadline: September 26. Click here for more information and to register.
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ALUMNI NEWS
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The alumni news below will also appear in a future issue of the Journalism School newsletter,
which is published two times each year.
David McHam ’60 will be honored for his 50 years of teaching by the Baylor Journalism & Media
Arts Department on Oct. 20. McHam (Baylor ’58) began his teaching career in 1961 at Baylor,
where he taught for 13 years. He also taught at SMU and UTA, and now teaches at the University
of Houston. Among his many accomplishments and honors, he was named the nation’s
outstanding journalism professor by the Society of Professional Journalists in 1994. Colleagues
and former students are invited to submit letters of congratulations and to share their favorite
memories. You may mail the letters to: Department of Journalism & Media Arts, Baylor
University, Attn. Jan Loosier, One Bear Place #97353, Waco, TX 76798-7353. For more
information, call 254-710-3261.
Ron Bonn ’63 has a new edition, the first in 16 years, of “How to Help Children Through a
Parent’s Serious Illness” (St. Martin’s Press, Dec. 20, 2011), which he co-authored with Kathleen
McCue, C.C.L.S. A manual for parents based on McCue’s work as a child life specialist, it aims
to help children of all ages emerge whole and emotionally sound from the trauma of a parent’s
grave or fatal illness. The original, which has become a standard in its field, has never been out of
print. New chapters, based on developments since the original publication, include “The
Wonderful, Terrible Internet,” “When the Single Parent Falls Ill,” “Trauma,” “The Mentally Ill
Parent” and “Genetic Diseases.” In addition to completely updating the original, the new edition
contains well over 100 pages of new material. The book grew out of a TV report on McCue’s
work with children, which Bonn produced for NBC News “Sunday Today.”
Paul Wilkes ’67 has written “The Art of Confession: Renewing Yourself Through the Practice of
Honesty” (Workman Publishing, February 2012), a timely look at the endemic oversharing that
characterizes our culture and redefines confession as a secular, daily practice of self-examination
that can enrich our inner selves. It draws on traditions from ancient Greece, psychoanalysis,
Judaism, Catholicism, Buddhism and Islam to show readers how to incorporate a confessional
practice into their daily lives. A prolific writer, Wilkes recently authored “In Mysterious Ways: The
Death and Life of a Parish Priest,” which won a Christopher Award and, most recently, “In Due
Season: A Catholic Life.”
Tom Davis ’79 has written “A Legacy of Madness: Recovering My Family from Generations of
Mental Illness” (Hazelden Publishing, September 2011), which relays the author’s journey to
uncover, and ultimately understand, the history of mental illness that led generations of his
suburban American family to their demise. Davis is the Jersey Shore regional editor for
Patch.com and an adjunct professor of journalism at Rutgers University. The Columbia
Bookstore will have a signing on Oct. 20 at 6:00 p.m.
Rick Berke ’81 was appointed assistant managing editor of The New York Times.
Henry Dubroff ’82 is the owner of Pacific Coast Business Times, which was the winner of the
Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi award for breaking news in the non-daily
newspaper category. Dubroff was on hand to receive the award at the SPJ's annual conference
in New Orleans on Sept 24. The award was for coverage of the banking industry meltdown on
California's Central Coast.
Marilyn Milloy ’82 is deputy editor for AARP magazine. She recently interviewed President
Barack Obama for his 50th birthday and talked to Michelle Obama and Jill Biden for the story
“Moms on a Mission.”
Andrew Revkin ’82 became the first two-time winner of the Communication Award bestowed
jointly by the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of
Medicine. One of the most prestigious awards in science journalism, it recognizes “excellence in
reporting and communicating science, engineering, and medicine to the general public.” Revkin
is now a Senior Fellow for Environmental Understanding at Pace University and writes the “Dot
Earth” blog for The New York Times.
Greg Goldstein ’83, chief operating officer of IDW Publishing, received a 2011 Will Eisner Comic
Industry Award in the category of Best Archival Collection/Project – Strips” for editing “Archie: The
Complete Daily Newspaper Strips, 1946 - 1948.” The "Eisners," which honor comics' best and
brightest, were presented at Comic-Con International, the premier comic book and popular arts
event. IDW Publishing is a San Diego-based publisher of comic books and graphic novels.
Goldstein and his wife, Fran Aller Goldstein ‘84, relocated to San Diego from New York in 2007.
Pamela Hogan ’83, filmmaker, Nina Chaudry ’95, senior producer, and Lauren Feeney ’08,
web producer, are part of the upcoming 5-part series “Women, War & Peace” premiering on PBS
starting Tuesday, October 11. The series uncovers the untold stories of women’s strategic role in
global conflict.
Adam Bryant ’87 was appointed senior editor for features at the New York Times.
Natalia de Cuba Romero ’88 co-presented a workshop “(In)Civility in America: Academic and
social etiquette for pre-college ESL students,” at the Long Island TESOL Annual Conference at
Molloy College on April 16, 2011. De Cuba Romero is now in her fifth year teaching fulltime at
Language Immersion at Nassau Community College (LINCC). She presented with LINCC cocoordinator Ashley Fifer. They will offer a similar workshop at the NYS TESOL Annual
Conference, October 28-29 at the Marriott Hotel, Melville, NY. A former fulltime (and now
intermittent) food, wine and travel writer, de Cuba Romero is also blogging on food at Hot, Cheap
& Easy, http://hotcheapeasy.wordpress.com.
Len Hollie '89 wrote an interview with Helen Benedict for the Huffington Post, "A Conversation
with Helen Benedict: Writing Fiction and Non-Fiction," discussing the unique undertaking of
writing both fiction and non-fiction from the same research material.
Michael Reilly ’94 is the author of “Fresh Heir” (Fresh Heir, May 13, 2011), a riotous portrayal of
a father desperate to have the promise of his youth fulfilled through the life of his son. With good
grades, extracurricular activities, and solid SATs no longer the benchmark for entrance into top
colleges, the pressure and stress of giving children the best opportunities for success can often
lead to misplaced motivations. It accurately depicts the push-pull of parenthood and childhood
and the need for adults to understand the voices of their children.
Kimberly Winston ’94 is a full time national reporter for Religion News Service
(http://www.religionnews.com), covering the freethought/atheist community.
Erika Angulo '96 was part of the NBC News team honored with the Society of Professional
Journalists' Sigma Delta Chi award for breaking news coverage of the Chilean miners' rescue.
C.J. Hughes ’96 was married to Misty McGee on Sept. 4 at Omi International Arts Center, a
writers’ retreat and sculpture park in Ghent, N.Y. McGee works in New York as a planner in the
women’s division of Ralph Lauren, providing forecasts of buying trends for department stores.
Hughes is a freelance journalist in New York.
Dan Simmons ’00 is a reporter at the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison, Wis. He recently won
two first-place awards in the Milwaukee Press Club's 2010 Excellence in Wisconsin Journalism
contest: for short-form feature writing about Bucky Badger's 535-pushup day
(http://bit.ly/bGDEwO), and for live online coverage of President Obama's visit to U.W. (shared
with five colleagues).
Mark Stroh ’00, a U.S. Foreign Service Officer since 2003, began his posting as the Press
Officer and Spokesman at U.S. Embassy Islamabad, Pakistan, on September 15, 2011. Stroh
just completed two years as a Special Assistant for U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton. Prior to that, he was the Press Officer and Spokesman at U.S. Embassy Kabul,
Afghanistan, from 2007-2009. He has also served in Kuwait, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. He can be
contacted at strohme@state.gov.
Sarah Richards ’01 is the author of "Motherhood, Rescheduled: Five Quests to Stop the
Biological Clock" (Simon & Schuster, due out 2012), a first-of-its-kind account of what happens to
women after they freeze their eggs. Do they benefit from extra time? Do they make better
decisions about men and mating? Finally, do their frozen eggs help them have babies years later
when their natural fertility is gone? In a fascinating, fast-paced non-fiction book that reads like a
novel, the author tackles these deeply human dilemmas – while examining the controversial
science and social consequences of older motherhood.
Mark Herz '02 won a National Murrow award for a two-part public radio series on police training
to deal with the mentally ill.
Amos Jones ’03 is of Counsel at Newton & Partners and Assistant Professor of Law at Campbell
University's Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law (Raleigh, N.C.)
Thrupthi Reddy ’04 recently joined the Associated Press in New York as the Marketing Manager
for the Americas, supporting the Images, Digital, Entertainment, Mobile and Video Archive
businesses. She previously worked at the AP from 2006-2008 as part of their Online Video
Network Team.
Until recently, she was the Director of Travel Deals Publishing at
ShermansTravel.com, where she managed all aspects of the company’s travel deals site,
including content optimization, email and social media marketing efforts for the company.
Bret Hovell ’05 was married to Rebecca Blatt on Oct. 1 in Chevy Chase, Md. They met at the
University of Pennsylvania. Blatt is a senior news editor for special projects at WAMU, a public
radio station in Washington. Hovell is a political producer for CBS News’s “Early Show.” He
works in the Washington bureau.
Tamara Duricka Johnson ’06 is the author of “31 Dates in 31 Days,” her first book (Seal Press,
Oct. 4) about her intense one month “master’s class in men,” which took her on 30 dates with
single men who she hoped would teach her something about where she was going wrong in her
relationships.
Rebecca Kaufman ’07 won the National Association of Black Journalists Salute to Excellence
Award for best television documentary for “There Goes the Neighborhood.” Kaufman is now a
producer with energyNOW! on Bloomberg TV.
William Wheeler '07, MA '11 and Aymann Oghanna '08 are returning this month to Libya on a
grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. The two spent three weeks reporting from
Libya, Tunisia, and Italy in September on the human smuggling boats crossing the Mediterranean
with refugees from the Arab Spring for The New York Times Sunday Review, TIME Video, and
GOOD Magazine. They are returning on assignment for the long-form literary nonfiction epublisher, Byliner.
David Cohn ’08 will join UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism as a full-time instructor
under a grant from the Ford Foundation. Cohn will be conducting research on economic models
of online journalism publications and help to develop business products for supporting hyperlocal
news websites. Specifically, Cohn will be working in concert with three community websites run
by the school: MissionLocal.org, OaklandNorth.net and RichmondConfidential.org. These sites
will be testing grounds for experimentation to aid in the research for building sustainable business
models for small news websites. Cohn is the creator of Spot.Us, a nonprofit website that
launched in 2008 and pioneered community funded reporting. Recently Cohn was a fellow at the
Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri.
Sitara Nieves, '07 has been named Senior Producer for The Takeaway, a national live radio
show co-produced by WNYC in partnership with New York Times Radio and the BBC. She'll be
managing the dayside production and the digital team at the show. She was previously working
as the show's line producer, and is pretty happy she no longer has to wake up at 2 am for her
new gig.
Katie Strang ’07 has joined ESPNNewYork.com, covering the Rangers, Isles and Devils hockey
teams. She spent the past two seasons as the Islanders beat writer for Newsday.
Franz Strasser '09 started his position as Reporter/VJ for the newly launched
http://bbc.com/news in Washington, DC, where he will work on four unique video franchises each
week.
Jay Irani '10 and Edward Chun '10 have founded JiNi Productions, a fully-equipped
documentary/production company. Nikolia Apostolou ’10 will be running their European office,
from Athens, Greece. If you ever need a freelance news crew, either in the states or abroad,
they're happy to help.
Chine Labbe ’10 was hired as a reporter for the general news service in French at Reuters in
Paris.
Dan Lieberman ’10 co-produced the ABC News Primetime Nightline "A Model Life".
David Alexander ’11 is finishing up a 3-month contract producing short documentaries for a nonprofit in Cambodia. The Atlantic recently interviewed him about his work from the region.
Sandro Mairata ’11 is Latin American Editor at Univision Interactive Media.
Karla Zabludovsky ’11 just published her master’s project on pollution in Mexico in The
Economist, titled “Black Sand in the Desert.” Her master’s advisor was Professor Sheila Coronel.
Zabludovsky has been hired to be part of The New York Times Mexico bureau team.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Christopher Ringwald ’88, a well-known Capital Region journalist and author whose work
focused on spirituality, addiction and the lives of people at the margins of society, died Sept. 26.
Ringwald, 55, of Albany, worked as a reporter for the Times Union between 1989 and 1998 and
most recently had worked at the (Schenectady) Daily Gazette. As a journalist, he concerned
himself with faith and justice. He was the author of three books: “A Day Apart,” about the
importance of the Sabbath in the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim faiths; “The Soul of Recovery,”
which explored the role of spirituality in addiction recovery (both published by Oxford University
Press); and “Faith in Words,” a series of interviews with writers about their spirituality. He was a
Kaiser Foundation Media Fellow in 1997 and, in 2002, was named the 37th Albany Author of the
Year. Ringwald’s work appeared in Newsday, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The
Washington Post, Commonweal and National Catholic Reporter. Compelled by a need to bear
witness, he reported from Iraq in 1999 and, in 2005, on an insurrection in Uganda. Inspired by a
series of Ringwald’s articles, the New York State passed a law in 1995 ordering substance abuse
programs to be evaluated. He founded and directed the Faith and Society Project at The Sage
Colleges, and was editor of “The Evangelist,” a weekly Catholic newspaper, from 2008 to 2011.
He is survived by his wife, Amy Biancolli Ringwald ’87, and their three children: Madeleine,
Jeanne and Mitchell.
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FELLOWSHIPS AND AWARDS
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Criminal Justice Initiative: Soros Justice Media Fellowships
Deadline: Oct. 12
The Soros Justice Media Fellowships support writers, print and broadcast journalists, bloggers,
filmmakers, and other individuals with distinct voices proposing to complete media projects for
local, regional, and national markets that engage the public and spur debate on one or more of
the Open Society Foundations' U.S. criminal justice priorities. For more information, go to:
http://www.infoed.org/new_spin/spin_prog.asp?68459.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------New York Civic Fellowships
Deadline: Oct. 31
New York Civic announced it will award six fellowships worth a total of $6,000 to professional
reporters, bloggers and journalism students in order to foster and support investigative reporting
in New York. For more information contact: 212-564-4441, email morgan@nycivic.org or go to
www.nycivic.org/fellowships.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Immigration Journalism Fellowship
Deadline: Nov. 16
The Fellowship aims to provide media professionals with the financial means to produce objective
and challenging material on one of the most heated and controversial contemporary issues. To
that end, the French-American Foundation will award fellows up to $10,000 for their work, to be
completed over a 4-6 month period. For more information, click here.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Congressional Fellowships for Journalists
Deadline: Dec. 1
The purpose of this fellowship is to give early- to mid-career journalists an opportunity to learn
more about Congress and the legislative process through direct participation. A comprehensive
orientation begins in November of each year. Office assignments as full-time legislative aides in
the House of Representatives and/or Senate run from December to August. Fellows receive a
stipend of $38,000, plus a small travel allowance. For more information, go to:
http://www.apsanet.org/content_5046.cfm.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Congressional Fellowships for Communications Scholars and Journalists
Deadline: Dec. 1
The purpose of this fellowship is to give early- to mid-career scholars and journalists an
opportunity to learn more about Congress and the legislative process through direct participation.
Ideal candidates should have an analytical interest in politics, communications, and public policy,
and show promise of making a significant contribution to the public's understanding of the political
process.
A comprehensive orientation begins in November of each year. Office assignments as full-time
legislative aides in the House of Representatives and/or Senate run from December to August.
Fellows receive a stipend of $38,000, plus a small travel allowance.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The E-News is sent monthly to all graduates of Columbia Journalism School. Check out all the JSchool news and programs at: www.journalism.columbia.edu
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