December 1, 2023
The Overseas Press Club board of governors has approved several changes to its prestigious, 84-year-old awards, expanding the universe of journalists it honors when it places their names on awards for coverage of international news and adding a new category to recognize continuous coverage of conflicts around the world...
We invite you to submit entries for international coverage in Newspapers, News Services, Digital, Magazines, Radio, Podcasts, Television, Video, Cartoons, Books and Photography...
The Overseas Press Club of America expresses its shock and outrage at the deaths of journalists covering the Israel-Hamas War.
After years of reporting on some of the world’s worst violence and disasters, it took former Reuters journalist Dean Yates a long time to fully realize the toll these experiences had taken on his mental health....
Veteran climate reporters at an OPC panel on Nov. 2 shared key techniques on how to avoid “climate fatigue” for readers and audiences. This year’s climate news has included wildfires in Maui, record-breaking heatwaves, historically low ice coverage in the Antarctic, and wildfire smoke from Canada that choked states across the eastern U.S...
On Oct. 19, Award-winning international correspondent Jane Ferguson joined an OPC program to discuss the book with Elizabeth Becker, an award-winning correspondent and author whose career spans four decades, including coverage of Cambodia during the Vietnam War...
Freelance journalist Lynzy Billing traveled to Afghanistan at the beginning of 2019 without a clear reporting plan – she was just looking for answers to questions about what had happened to her mother and sister, who were killed during a night raid nearly three decades ago. That story led her on four-year journey in which she uncovered CIA-backed night raids that killed hundreds of Afghan civilians with no accountability...
A diverse group of four journalists and one academic gathered at the American Library in Paris on Oct. 3 to discuss race in France and place recent events in context...
In 1956, photojournalist John Sadovy won the OPC's Robert Capa Award for his coverage of the Hungarian Revolution. Those photographs will be displayed at an exhibition later this month at the Hungarian National Museum. This piece, written by his daughter, reflects on the personal and international importance of those images...
On Sept. 13, the OPC and the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma hosted a training session on coping with stress, burnout and trauma on the job...
The co-authors of a new book on international cyber warfare told an OPC audience on Sept. 20 that shortcomings in computer security and digital literacy have left Americans vulnerable to attacks, intrusion and manipulation from countries with sophisticated cyber systems such as China and Russia...
The Overseas Press Club of America elected seven new governors to its board at the club’s annual meeting tonight. Members also voted to re-elect five journalists or media professionals who have served on the board for the past two years...
The International Press Institute (IPI) said in a statement that since Sept. 1, the organization has been battling "a targeted and sustained cyberattack" that seems to be retaliation for advocacy work on behalf of independent media in Hungary, amid a spate of similar attacks since this summer...
We, the undersigned journalists, press freedom organizations, and unions, write this statement to denounce the war crimes committed by the Russian Federation against journalists in Ukraine and to call for immediate action to hold the perpetrators accountable...
Ana Zellhuber, a psychoanalyst and Emergency Psychology specialist based in Mexico City, for the second time this year held a psychological training session for the OPC, this time with a focus on particular challenges facing women, nonbinary journalists and their allies...
The OPC recently received a letter of thanks from a man who used the OPC's digital archives to research his own family background. We hope you enjoy reading his account and find the story as moving as we have. It is a testament to the importance of the OPC's digital archives as a tool for researchers as well as a chronicle of club history...
The CFWIJ has published its first quarterly report documenting press freedom violations against women and LGBTQI journalists.
International correspondents gathered in New York City for the Overseas Press Club of America’s 84th annual awards dinner on April 27 to celebrate and honor brave journalists whose reporting brought to light stories of conflict, controversy, and resilience from around the world this past year...
The OPC's 84th Anniversary Awards Dinner featured a keynote speech from Alessandra Galloni, editor-in-chief for Reuters, presentation of the President's Award to Christiane Amanpour, CNN's chief international correspondent, lighting of the Press Freedom Candle by Oksana Markarova, the Ambassador of Ukraine to the United States, remarks about Evan Gershkovich from Almar Latour, the chief executive officer of Dow Jones and publisher of The Wall Street Journal, and acceptance speeches from recipients receiving this year's 22 awards for exceptional international journalism...
Simpa Sampson, a freelance videographer who was part of the Bloomberg team that received a Citation for Excellence in the Morton Frank category this year, did not set out to specialize in covering conflict, but career and opportunity nudged him in that direction...
On World Press Freedom Day, the Overseas Press Club of America renews its call for the release of journalists around the world who have been unfairly detained, imprisoned and sentenced to incarceration simply for doing their jobs as journalists and exposing information that governments would prefer to keep secret...
Members of the International Association of Press Clubs (IAPC) – representatives of dozens of press clubs from around the world – presented the IAPC Freedom of Speech Award 2023 to Andrzej Poczobut and Mortaza Behboudi, two journalists imprisoned by authoritarian regimes...
84th Annual Overseas Press Club Awards Honors the Finest International Reporting in 22 Categories; The New York Times Leads Winners for the Fifth Straight Year; CNN’s Christiane Amanpour Receives OPC President’s Award..
The Overseas Press Club of America strongly condemns and expresses its deep concern over the press freedom implications of the detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in Russia for alleged espionage...
Mike Chinoy, the CNN correspondent who has dedicated 25 years to covering China, including the brutal crackdown on protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989, defended the American and Western media’s coverage of China despite the Chinese government’s rhetoric that the media is seeking to foment “color revolutions” and topple the Chinese Communist Party...
When Washington Post staff photographer Salwan Georges fled Iraq with his family in 1998 at the age of 8, he did not expect he would be away from those he left behind for more than two decades, and did not expect conditions to be worse, in many ways, than they were before the war...
Blocked roads, stopped trains and rising hostility toward journalists have been among the biggest challenges for correspondents covering unrest in Peru in recent months, panelists said during an OPC discussion on March 9...
OPC Foundation President William J. Holstein opened this year’s scholarship awards celebration on May 1, the first to be held in person since February 2020, by commending the foundation’s continued support for aspiring international journalists through the challenges of the pandemic...
Ana Zellhuber, a psychoanalyst and Emergency Psychology specialist based in Mexico City, warned journalists during a program on March 2 that while it’s very easy to avoid taking care of your mental and emotional health, the cost of doing so is very high...
Dear Ministers Khan and Maleque - We, the undersigned press freedom and human rights groups, write to seek your leadership in ensuring an immediate end to the harassment of Bangladeshi journalist and human rights defender Rozina Islam...
A common plea for international media emerged from three Ukrainian journalists during an OPC program on Feb. 22: please don’t forget this war. The program, part of the club’s “In the Thick of It” series, are among last year’s 18 recipients of OPC grants of $2,000 each to Ukrainian journalists struggling to continue their work under dire conditions...
On Feb. 15, the OPC hosted a program with Anand Gopal, a four-time OPC Award winner and a club member who is currently a writer for The New Yorker magazine, in conversation with his former editor Christopher Cox, as the two revealed insights about their process of working together, the elements of a strong pitch, safety concerns and other reporting issues...
Filmmaker Michelle Shephard discussed thorny ethical quandaries following a screening of 'The Perfect Story' hosted by the OPC in Toronto on Feb. 2...
On Jan. 26, while Haiti was still reeling from the killing of six police officers the day before, the OPC hosted its inaugural "In the Tick of It" program with reporters who have been covering turmoil in Haiti over the past year...
On Jan. 12, the OPC hosted a discussion with Marcus Yam, a roving Los Angeles Times foreign correspondent and staff photographer...
Bhat Burhan, a Kashmiri multimedia journalist now based in New Delhi, grew up in a region steeped in decades of armed conflict. Inspired by the dedication of local journalists covering the conflicts in the face of government crackdowns, he saw a need for reporting in Kashmir by Kashmiris.
Three Afghan journalists working outside the country before or during the Taliban takeover last year told an OPC audience on Dec. 13 that they are still fighting to tell stories of hope and despair about Afghanistan despite flagging interest from international media...
There are at least two reasons OPC member Jill Langlois seemed bound for a life in journalism from a very early age...
For New York Times reporters Muyi Xiao and Paul Mozur, an updated version of the old journalists’ creed “follow the money” is to “follow the data.” Particularly when covering a country like China where on-the-ground coverage is risky and difficult, the two said during an OPC program on Nov. 30, reporters must rely on data and other digital sources accessible from outside territorial borders...
The Overseas Press Club of America (OPC) announced today that it has begun distributing 18 grants of $2,000 each to journalists who are struggling to continue their essential work under dire conditions in Ukraine. Sony Electronics Inc. kickstarted the fund with a $25,000 donation. OPC members and friends also contributed...
When Elisabetta Zavoli, an OPC member, grant recipient and documentary photographer born in Italy, embarked on her investigative journey, it was not amid the bustle of busy newsrooms or the rush of reporting in the field, it was in muted chemistry laboratories and photography darkrooms...
The Overseas Press Club of America on Tuesday condemned the violent treatment of several Western journalists covering anti-lockdown protests in Shanghai. The group has long supported the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China and others protesting the expulsion of foreign journalists and harassment campaigns that have led at least one family, that of British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) correspondent John Sudworth, to flee the country...
Like many other professions, journalists face trauma during the course of their work. Their jobs often entail witnessing and processing the human costs of war, natural disasters or other humanitarian crises while on assignment...
Christopher Roush, veteran business journalist, author, and dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University, said during an OPC book night on Oct. 11 that the decline of local business news coverage across the U.S. has left consumers, small businesses owners and employees starved for reliable sources of information they need to make key decisions such as when to buy a house or where to expand a business...
News organizations, journalism schools, safety trainers and non-profits around the world are coming with new ideas for how to help journalists prepare to cover difficult stories and then recover emotionally and mentally afterward. But those efforts are still in the early stages and suffer from a relative lack of coordination. Those were the takeaways from a meeting of more than 100 journalists and non-profit representatives organized by the A Culture of Safety (ACOS) Alliance in New York Oct. 3 to 5...
OPC Vice President Azmat Khan spent five years gathering string for an award-winning investigation that exposed the full scale of civilian tolls from U.S.-led airstrikes in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. But she told guests at Columbia University on Sept. 13 that conviction, strategy and a well-researched pitch would help students find publishers for any good story idea...
William Rukeyser, who founded Money magazine and served as managing editor of Fortune, died Aug. 16 in Knoxville, Tennessee, at the age of 83. The cause was lung cancer, his wife of 58 years, Elisabeth, said.
Mainstream media organizations around the world – including America’s most powerful newspapers – are experiencing a surge of coordinated social media attacks against their journalists aimed at discrediting or intimidating them. The attacks, combined with efforts by authoritarian governments to control information flows and paint media organizations as purveyors of “fake news,” are so severe that many editors are worried that the very legitimacy of their organizations is being destroyed. The campaigns are overwhelmingly aimed at female journalists. And the industry has little idea what to do about any of it...
The Overseas Press Club of America, an 83-year-old organization that awards highly coveted prizes devoted to international news coverage for an American audience, elected a new president Tuesday night. Scott Kraft, editor at large for enterprise journalism and special projects at the Los Angeles Times, was elected president of the OPC, as the club is widely known...
In the fall of 2019, I was asked to talk about the OPC’s history to recently elected governors. On the shelves next to my desk were OPC Bulletins dating back to 1945 and Dateline magazines from 1958 to the present. The Bulletins were particularly interesting to me because they were published once a week for decades and gave a detailed description of the club’s programs, parties, and periodic controversies...
The Overseas Press Club of America (OPC) is pleased to announce that it will award a limited number of grants in cash or photographic/video equipment to Ukraine journalists working in any medium whose livelihood or ability to pursue his or her profession has been adversely impacted by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
"We are a group of news and press advocacy organizations in the United States that have previously worked with or assisted a journalist who has previously provided reporting on Central Romana. We write to notify you about some alarming information we have received over the past year, involving threats made to this reporter and ask for your cooperation with this matter."
Longtime OPC member Jaime FlorCruz visited New York in late July, gathering with a group of club members at the Bryant Park Café to chat about his new book, "The Class of ’77: How My Classmates Changed China", and to toast the efforts of OPC President Paula Dwyer and Executive Director Patricia Kranz in guiding the club through two years of the pandemic. Below is a review of FlorCruz’s book by OPC Past President William J. Holstein, who also attended the gathering...
The OPC Annual Meeting, open to all members in good standing, will be held online on Tuesday, Sept. 6 at 6:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time via Zoom.
The Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Hong Kong (FCCCHK) has expressed deep concern about restrictions against some media organizations from covering the inauguration of Chief Executive-designate John Lee and the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover to China...
On June 23, reporters Sandy Tolan and Euclides Cordero Nuel joined editor and producer Michael Montgomery to discuss behind-the-scenes insights about their project, “The Bitter Work Behind Sugar,” produced for Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting...
Club Quarters has launched a special program for members of the Overseas Press Club of America and their family and friends. They have created a special link for OPC members to book rooms that automatically deducts 10% from the best available rates at that time...
Political cartoonists who are past winners of the OPC’s Best Cartoon awards discussed their creative process, their personal “red lines,” and misconceptions of their work during panel hosted by the OPC on May 19...
During the OPC Foundation’s online scholarship awards celebration on May 11, Bill Holstein, the president of the foundation, hailed the talent and tenacity of this year’s 17 winners, who are facing “enormous challenges” in the early stages of their careers amid uncertainty during the COVID-19 pandemic...
The Overseas Press Club of America is posting the “We are Kyiv Press Club” emblem in solidarity with our Ukrainian colleagues....
Freelancers and documentary filmmakers wishing to pitch stories to VICE News should use Gelareh Kiazand’s recent series on women in Iran as a “model” for the kind of storytelling producers want to see, panelists said during an OPC discussion on May 4...
The Overseas Press Club of America is honored to join with colleagues at press clubs around the world in recognizing World Press Freedom Day. We would like to take the opportunity to highlight the grave responsibility we have to support journalists who face significant challenges as they go about their work...
The 83rd OPC Awards featured speeches and stories from recipients receiving this year's 22 awards for exceptional international journalism...
Foreign correspondents gathered on April 21 to honor the best in international journalism after a turbulent year that brought the growing threats to democracy – and the profound risks faced by those who cover them – into sharp relief...
Afghanistan’s collapse, rising military violence and the ongoing plight of migrants emerged as the leading storylines among winners of the 83rd Annual Overseas Press Club Awards...
The Overseas Press Club of America announces that it is making grants of $4,000 each to 17 Afghan journalists who have taken refuge in the United States, raising the total it has given to $133,000. The most recent round of grants was made possible through generous support from the Ford Foundation as well as gifts from members...
American journalist and filmmaker Brent Renaud, 50, was killed March 13 in a suburb of Kyiv, Ukraine, while covering the war there. Photographer Juan Diego Arredondo, the 2020 winner of the OPC Foundation’s Harper’s Magazine Scholarship in memory I.F. Stone, also was wounded in what Kyiv police described as an attack by Russian forces...
OPC member Peter Turnley returned from Ukraine earlier this month after photographing the exodus of more than 2.6 million refugees crossing the border into Poland. In an email to the OPC, he said called it the largest exodus in Europe since World War II. In a Facebook post accompanying a group of photos from his journey, Turnely wrote that “I venture to say that no one reading this has ever taken a train ride like the one that thousands of Ukrainians, women and children, made last night from Lviv, Ukraine to the border of Ukraine in Poland, and I hope to God that you never will!”
Friends, colleagues and family members gathered at the Century Association in midtown Manhattan to honor the memory of OPC Past President Richard Stolley on March 4. His daughter, Martha, hosted the event, and three past OPC Presidents attended: Allan Dodds Frank, Michel Serrill and Alexis Gelber, as well as OPC Executive Director Patricia Kranz. Sonya Fry, past OPC executive director, was one of more than a dozen speakers at the memorial. She talked about about his years as longtime member and as president of the club from 2004 to 2006...
Billionaires and power brokers around the world have exploited the pandemic, as with other crises of the past, by securing government bailouts and shifting more wealth into their own hands, according to Peter Goodman, a former OPC governor and longtime business reporter at The New York Times. On March 3, he discussed his new book on the subject, Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World, with OPC President Paula Dwyer serving as moderator...
On Feb. 22, just two days before Russian President Vladimir Putin authorized "special military operations" in Ukraine and began artillery and missile attacks against Kiev and other major cities, three longtime residents of Ukraine discussed the possibility of war and its aftermath...
The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China (FCCC) is dismayed that the conditions for independent reporting in China continue to fall short of international standards during the Winter Olympic Games...
On Feb. 16, OPC member Mark Clifford discussed his new book, Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow the World: What China’s Crackdown Reveals About Its Plans to End Freedom Everywhere, with moderator OPC Governor Jodi Schneider, political news director at Bloomberg News...
Dear Lt. Governor Manoj Sinha - We, the undersigned 58 press freedom organizations, human rights organizations, and publications write to request your urgent intervention to secure the immediate release of Fahad Shah, editor of the online news portal The Kashmir Walla, from jail, and the withdrawal of all police investigations launched into his journalistic work...
In this introductory video, OPC of America President Paula Dwyer describes the club's activities and mission, with testimonials and clips from past events...
The Overseas Press Club offers photo ID card options for our working press members...
The OPC is pleased to be able to offer OPC press IDs labeled with “PRESS” in Chinese characters. This new option is in addition to IDs that are available with “PRESS” in Arabic script. Both options are available for the larger government-style badges for $40, as well as the credit-card sized press IDs...
I had no idea my new OPC press badges would give me unlimited access to covering one of the most horrific mass shootings of Jewish people in U.S. history. On a rainy October day in Pittsburgh, Pa., I walked quickly to the first of several press conferences that would unveil the somber and tragic acts of Robert Bowers...
Please consider supporting the work of international freelance journalists by donating to the Membership Fund of the Overseas Press Club of America. Accurate, unbiased reporting is more important now than ever. But much of the work is being done by freelancers who have little institutional support from news organization...
In the winter of 2013, I heard a story about U.S.-backed forces burying a child alive in a remote village in Kandahar, Afghanistan. While investigating, I was arrested by forces loyal to the brutal police chief Abdul Raziq, America’s man in Kandahar. I was expelled from Kandahar and barred from ever returning...
