Spring 2012: Class Notes

Read his obituary in The Salt Lake Tribune.Hays Gorey, a longtime political correspondent for Time magazine, died at a health care facility in Salt Lake City on April 5th, 2011, from complications with dementia. He was 89.

Gorey was best known nationally for his work at Time from 1965 to 1991. He was in Los Angeles covering the campaign of Robert Kennedy in 1968 when the senator was assassinated and covered three presidential campaigns as well as the Watergate scandal and resignation in 1974 of President Nixon.

He collaborated with photographer Bill Eppridge on "Robert Kennedy: The Last Campaign," and co-wrote, with Maureen "Mo" Dean, the wife of White House counsel John Dean, "Mo: A Woman's View of Watergate." He also wrote a biography of Ralph Nader and co-wrote Florida Congressman Claude D. Pepper's autobiography.

A native of Salt Lake City, Gorey started working for The Salt Lake Tribune at age 17, using his salary to pay his way through the University of Utah. He was promoted to city editor at age 24 and was news editor before joining Time's Washington bureau.

In a tribute by Paul Rolly on the paper's website, former Tribune publisher Jack Gallivan called Gorey "a journalist's journalist." Gallivan continued, "When he first started at The Salt Lake Tribune, his professionalism quickly endeared him to everybody on the staff. I did everything I could to dissuade him from leaving us to work for Time, but Washington was too attractive. I consider Hays one of the most distinguished sons of The Salt Lake Tribune."

He is survived by his wife, Nonie, four children, nine grandchildren, and 10 great-grandchildren.

 

Bob Giles has been named commentary editor for GlobalPost, after serving on the international news website's editorial advisory board for the past three years.
Giles, who spent 11 years as curator of the Nieman Foundation before retiring this past summer, will be responsible for recruiting commentators from around the world and screening submissions for the site's recently re-launched commentary section.

Before being offered the position, Giles had discussed the section's lack of activity and editorial oversight with CEO and co-founder Philip Balboni. "I feared that clashing opinions and ideological arguments did not serve GP's mission of hard news," Giles wrote in an e-mail to Nieman Reports. The pair worked out a plan for the section, and Balboni asked Giles to run it.

"One of the joys of this new assignment will be to reconnect with a world of international and U.S. Nieman Fellows working overseas," Giles wrote. "I anticipate that some will contribute to the section and others will put me in touch with knowledgeable voices in their countries who might contribute commentary for GlobalPost."

 

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Ralph Hancox has written two novels about contemporary challenges facing the world. "Knock, Knock — Who's There?" and "The Latte Project," dealing with immigration and the illegal drug trade, respectively, were published in 2011 as print-on-demand books. They can be ordered from him at rhancox@pmd26.hbs.edu. Hancox is retired from teaching at the Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing at British Columbia's Simon Fraser University.

 

Edward C. Norton self-published his 10th novel, "Hell in a Cold Place," as an Amazon e-book in January. Set at the beginning of the Korean War, it focuses on the withdrawal from the Chosin Reservoir of U.S. Marines under attack by Chinese "volunteer" divisions. In an e-mail to Nieman Reports, Norton writes that "retirement is a bore, and thus I've been writing books I want to read." Much of his work relies on the research skills he learned as a journalist.

 

Ron Javers moved to China in February to teach in the School of Communication and Design at Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou.

The former executive editor of Newsweek International, Javers wrote in an e-mail to Nieman Reports that he made the move at the request of Hu Shuli, the dean of the school and editor in chief of Caixin Media.

Javers will maintain his media strategy and consulting group, Ron Javers Worldwide. The group, based in New York, has consulted with companies and nongovernmental organizations in Turkey, Pakistan and in several countries in Eastern Europe, but most of its work has been in China, where media development and investment activities have remained strong, despite the slowdown in the U.S. and in Western Europe.
At Newsweek, Javers was responsible for the growth and development of its worldwide special editions, most of which he launched, working with writers, editors and publishers in China, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Argentina, Russia, Poland, Kuwait, Turkey and Pakistan.

 

Danny Schechter has published "Occupy: Dissecting Occupy Wall Street" through ColdType.net. The book is a collection of reports and commentaries about the Occupy movement that he wrote for Al Jazeera English, his News Dissector blog, and other outlets. In the introduction, he explains that he covered the movement as a participatory journalist "reporting less on the day-to-day than on deeper trends" and that he "was totally sympathetic—it was an 'awakening' that I and so many were waiting years [for]—but I was not always uncritical."

In the preface, investigative reporter Greg Palast writes "the media made the occupation in New York and the USA a tale of cops and tarps and conga drums and young white kids with dreadlocks but without jobs. Schechter opens the lens wide and gives you the full picture of a movement which encompasses all of America's dispossessed ... and that's a lot."

 

David Lamb will receive the University of Maine's annual Alumni Career Award at his class's 50th reunion this June.

During nearly 40 years as a journalist, Lamb traveled to 145 countries as a foreign correspondent with United Press International and the Los Angeles Times. He was elected to the Maine Press Association's Hall of Fame in 2005.

In February 2011, he led a 23-day tour of nine UNESCO World Heritage Sites for National Geographic Expeditions.

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Don McNeill's first novel, "Hear, O Israel" was published by Puna Press in January.

The book, written under the pen name Sam Jon Wallace, is set in modern-day Israel and across the Mediterranean. Three story lines come together in an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. McNeill is also the author of "Submariner's Moon," a story collection published under his own name in 1996.

 

Buzz Bissinger's fifth book, "Father's Day: A Journey Into the Mind and Heart of My Extraordinary Son," will be released on May 15th by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. It's a memoir about his son Zachary, who suffered severe brain damage when he was born three and a half months premature in 1983. In contrast, Zachary's twin, Gerry, born three minutes earlier, is a high achiever. In the hope of better understanding Zachary, Bissinger decides that the two of them should drive across the country to visit all the cities where the family has lived. Bissinger is a contributing editor for Vanity Fair and a sports columnist for the Daily Beast.

 

Ken Armstrong and Michael J. Berens received the 2012 Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting from the University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Journalism for their Seattle Times series "Methadone and the Politics of Pain."

The series looks at the more than 2,000 people who, since 2003, have fatally overdosed on methadone, a drug that was often prescribed in Washington state to Medicaid patients with chronic pain. Within weeks of publication, the state changed its policy regarding the drug.

"It's deeply satisfying that a family-owned metro, The Seattle Times, has won this recognition for their fine work on a little-understood public-policy issue," said Geneva Overholser, NF '86, director of the School of Journalism.

 

Matthew Schofield joined the three-person national security reporting team in McClatchy's Washington, D.C. bureau on March 1st.

Schofield had been a columnist for the McClatchy-owned Kansas City Star, where he started in 1984. From 2003 to 2008, he served as European bureau chief for McClatchy, covering Iraq and the Israel-Hezbollah war.

 

Masha Gessen started a new job in January as editor of the Moscow-based Read more about Gessen, her book, and journalism in Russia »Vokrug Sveta, one of the oldest science magazines in the world. She also is editor in chief of the company's publishing house.

Her book about Russia's president, "The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin," was released on March 1st by Riverhead Books.

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Margaret Kriz Hobson has joined the staff of Environment & Energy Publishing as a reporter for EnergyWire, a new website that launched in March.

It focuses on "unconventional fuels—meaning natural gas fracking, deep-water oil drilling, oil development in the Arctic waters, and oil from tar sands and tight formations," Hobson wrote in an e-mail to Nieman Reports. "These are by far the nation's most lucrative and the most controversial sources of energy for the future."

Prior to joining E&E in December, Hobson was at Congressional Quarterly for a year and had previously been the energy and environmental reporter for National Journal. In the two decades she's covered the field, she wrote, "I've always respected the unbiased, comprehensive news approach at Greenwire and ClimateWire—two of the company's [E&E's] other online publications/newsletters."

"With more news outlets in Washington focusing on breaking news and (for some) political gossip," she continued. "I saw this as a rare and attractive opportunity to write comprehensive articles on some of the coolest energy and environ-mental issues I know."

 

Bill Schiller has returned to Toronto after a stint as Asia bureau chief for The Toronto Star. He offered this update:

"After having spent nearly five years in China and 10 years abroad previously for the Star, I won't be heading out for another permanent posting anytime soon. Like so many papers, we have now closed all our foreign bureaus except Washington, D.C.

"But—happily—management remains dedicated to covering the world and we've been sending people here, there and everywhere continuously over the past year. At one point during the Arab Awakening, we had eight reporters in the zone. I'm also told the travel budget will remain unchanged for the coming year, which is great.

"But my humble desire now is to report frequently from the United States in the coming year, which I believe will be the most fascinating story of all in 2012."

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Brent Walth has been awarded a master of fine arts in creative writing from Warren Wilson College. Now the managing editor for news at Portland, Oregon's Willamette Week, he was inspired to enter the program after taking Anne Bernays's writing course during his Nieman year. The program required travel to North Carolina for classes as well long-distance project work with faculty.

Walth, the class correspondent, sent in the following updates:

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Zippi Brand Frank won a 2011 News & Documentary Emmy Award for the HBO documentary "Google Baby." She produced and directed the film, which examines surrogacy and the online purchase of donated eggs and sperm through the experiences of women in the United States, Israel and India. "Google Baby" won in the category for outstanding science and technology programming.

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Jon Palfreman won a 2011 Health Care Research and Journalism Award for the Frontline documentary, "The Vaccine War," which he wrote, produced and directed. The judges deemed it "the definitive story of the vaccine debate." The award is sponsored by the nonprofit National Institute for Health Care Management Research and Educational Foundation.

Palfreman, a journalism professor at the University of Oregon, was also producer, director and co-writer of the Frontline documentary "Nuclear Aftershocks," which examined the safety of nuclear power in the wake of the nuclear accident in Fukushima, Japan. It aired in January.

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Nancy San Martin, interactive editor of The Miami Herald, led the team that won a regional Emmy Award for "Nou Bouke," a documentary on Haiti in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake. It was the Miami Herald Media Co.'s first Emmy.

"We hope this award will serve to bring attention to the many needs still facing that nation," said Nancy, a longtime Herald reporter who became interactive editor in 2009. "Haiti remains far from recovery."

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Takashi Oshima will be covering U.S. and Japanese issues from the Washington, D.C. bureau of The Asahi Shimbun, a daily newspaper based in Tokyo.

Oshima started as a staff writer for the paper in 1995. After two years at Harvard for his Nieman Fellowship and a master's program at the Kennedy School of Government, he moved to the New York bureau of TV Tokyo America. In 2010 Oshima returned to Tokyo and The Asahi Shimbun. He covered the aftermath of the earthquakes and the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster.

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Beena Sarwar won the 2011 Pakistan Blog Award for best blog by a journalist. She writes about politics and freedom in Pakistan on her blog, Journeys to Democracy.

Sarwar is currently a visiting fellow with the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

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Jeb Sharp is now show producer of Public Radio International's "The World," after 13 years as a reporter for the program.

In an e-mail, she explained the position: "The show producer sets the agenda for the daily broadcast. Think curator and logistics manager all rolled into one. I lead the morning meeting, assign producers, coordinate with editors, work with the engineering staff. I sit at the vortex of all the action so my main role is keeping all the channels of communications open."

Leading the team of journalists who put the program together is thrilling, but she looks forward to getting back to her own reporting. "I think many reporters who've become managers can relate," she added. She tweets @jebsharp.

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Alice Tatah has earned a master's degree in communication for development from the Advanced School of Mass Communication at the University of Yaounde II in Soa, Cameroon.

In addition to her work as a reporter for CRTV in Cameroon, Tatah is editor of Change Magazine, a quarterly publication she founded in 2011 that focuses on politics, health care and social issues in Cameroon.

"Our country is in dire need of development and every one of us has a contribution to make," Tatah wrote in the premiere issue.

 


Anja Niedringhaus's photography book "At War" was released by Hatje See a selection of images from the book in a photo essay »Cantz.

Santiago Lyon, NF '04, photography director for The Associated Press and a colleague of hers for 20 years, wrote an introduction for the book, which was released in conjunction with exhibitions of her photographs in Europe and elsewhere.

 

Anita Snow joined the editing desk at The Associated Press's Latin America bureau in Mexico City this March.

Snow has spent much of her career in Latin America, including a decade as the AP bureau chief in Havana, Cuba. She spent the past year and a half in New York City covering the United Nations.

From Nieman to Shorenstein

Nazila Fathi, NF '11, a journalist who worked for The New York Times in Iran until she was forced to leave the country in 2009, and David Greenway, NF '72, a contributing columnist and former editorial page, foreign and national editor at The Boston Globe, are fellows this spring at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy.

Alex S. Jones, NF '82, the center's director, said the two are part of a class "bursting with brain power and talent." He called Fathi "a courageous Iranian journalist" and Greenway "one of the nation's most respected commentators on foreign affairs."

Fathi is tracing the influence of satellite television, the Internet, and the press in Iran from 1993 to 2003 for a book she is writing. Greenway is researching conflicts between the government and the press over keeping secrets.

Hollman Morris has returned to Colombia and is now director of Canal Capital, the public television station in Bogotá.

In an interview with the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, Morris said that he wants to provide television that is "in the service of the people … that is popular and shows that television in Latin America isn't only about distraction, but an instrument for development."

A documentary filmmaker and broadcast journalist, Morris last year wrote that "the desire to return—so common in those like me who have left Colombia because of persecution—stays with me."