January 26, 2021
The Overseas Press Club of America announced today that it has received a substantial grant from the Ford Foundation that will allow it to launch a third round of microgrants for freelance journalists around the world who have worked for American news organizations and whose careers have been disrupted by COVID-19.
We invite you to submit entries for international coverage in Newspapers, News Services, Digital, Magazines, Radio, Podcasts, Television, Video, Cartoons, Books and Photography.
Yulia Slutskaya, the founder and president of Press Club Belarus, Sergei Olshevsky, the club’s director, Alla Sharko, program director and cameraman Pyotr Slutsky were detained on Dec. 22, 2020...
On Jan. 14, the OPC hosted a discussion with reporters whose work was part of a series that won the Roy Rowan Award, including Malachy Brown, senior producer of the visual investigations team, Michael Schwirtz, Dionne Searcey and David Kirkpatrick. Head judge James B. Steele moderated.
On Jan. 12, the OPC hosted a discussion with Malachy Browne, senior producer for the New York Times team that produced “The Russia Tapes: Health Care and Civilians Under Attack in Syria,” which won this year’s Kim Wall Award. The moderator was Louise Roug, executive editor, international at HuffPost, who served as head judge for the award...
On Jan. 8, OPC Past President David A. Andelman joined Deborah Amos, international correspondent for NPR and Treasurer of the OPC, for an online discussion to discuss his new book, "A Red Line in the Sand: Diplomacy, Strategy, and the History of Wars That Might Still Happen."
The Overseas Press Club of America denounces the detention of five staff members of Press Club Belarus on charges of tax evasion...
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 detentions of Yulia Slutskaya, founder and president of Press Club Belarus, Sergei Olshevsky, the club's director, Alla Sharko, club program director, Sergei Yakupov, Media Academy program director for the club, and Pyotr Slutsky, cameraperson, are new examples of the war that was launched by the regime of Alexander Lukashenko on freedom of speech and independent journalism in Belarus. In addition, Press Club Belarus’ headquarters and homes of some of the club’s managers were searched...
On Dec. 17, the OPC hosted a discussion with Azam Ahmed, whose work won a Robert Spiers Benjamin Award for best reporting in any medium on Latin America. His series, “Kill or Be Killed: Latin America’s Homicide Crisis,” included stories about Honduras, Mexico, Brazil, Guatemala, and Jamaica. The moderator was William Booth, London bureau chief for The Washington Post, who served as head judge...
Two years ago, BuzzFeed journalists Tom Warren and Katie J.M. Baker set out to unravel a vast global system that had supported human right abuses and atrocities against indigenous communities, including rape, torture and murder. Those abuses were funded and bolstered by a pattern of denial and secrecy within the largest conservation organization in the world, the World Wide Fund for Nature, or WWF...
The Overseas Press Club of America strongly condemns the detention of a Bloomberg News employee in Beijing by Chinese authorities...
On Dec. 8, the OPC hosted a discussion with winners of the Joe and Laurie Dine Award, including Angus Berwick, Reuters correspondent for Venezuela, and Brian Ellsworth, senior correspondent for Venezuela. Reuters’ Venezuela Bureau won for their series of articles titled “Maduro’s Venezuela.” The discussion covered some of the sticky ethical and logistical challenges the team faced as they reported on Maduro’s Special Action Force death squads, links with Cuba’s intelligence networks, how the country’s military was reshaped to serve Maduro’s vision, the fate of a Chinese rice project that fanned the flames of corruption, endemic malnutrition and stories of immigrants fleeing the country...
The Overseas Press Club Board of Governors, noting the conclusions of The New York Times's internal review of its “Caliphate” podcast, has rescinded its 2018 Lowell Thomas Award for “Caliphate” to Rukmini Callimachi, Andy Mills, Larissa Anderson and Wendy Dorr...
On Dec. 2, Gregory Warner, Jane Arraf, Michael May and Sana Krasikov of NPR’s Rough Translation podcast participated in an online OPC program to discuss “DIY Mosul,” which won this year’s David A. Andelman and Pamela Title Award for best international TV, video, radio, audio or podcast reporting showing a concern for the human condition. Doyle McManus of the Los Angeles Times, who served as head judge on the award jury, moderated...
Chris Yeung, chair of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, told the OPC and Foreign Press Association (FPA) on Nov. 23 that four months after a sweeping security law went into effect in Hong Kong in June, it has become clear that officials plan to carry out its restrictions in a “rigorous, aggressive manner.”
During an online OPC program on Nov. 12, OPC member Jim Laurie described his new memoir as a “coming of age” story for a young journalist navigating the trials of war reporting in Southeast Asia in the 1970s, as dawn broke on the revolution and rise of the Khmer Rouge..
On Nov. 10, 2020, the OPC hosted an online program with Cornelius Ryan Award winner Katherine Eban, whose grim look at the pharmaceutical industry has taken on new and chilling relevance as the world races to find treatments and vaccines to curb the coronavirus pandemic, amid easily gamed FDA inspection systems, lack of transparency in pharmaceutical companies and regulators, rampant data fraud and even less oversight than when the book was published...
The OPC is saddened to learn that longtime OPC member Seymour Topping, a veteran foreign correspondent and editor who cut his teeth during China’s civil war at the end of the 1940s, died on Nov. 8 at the age of 98...
(by OPC member Jim Laurie) It has been a very tough year. Many have died, been sickened, lost their jobs, or locked down as the world fights a global pandemic: a disruption like no other I can remember. For one old reporter, thankfully, it’s been more of an inconvenience. I have been grounded. For the first time in fifty years, I have not spent at least part of the year outside the United States; not travelling in China, Vietnam, Cambodia or other parts of Asia or Europe...
On Oct. 28, Nick Kostov and Sean McLain of The Wall Street Journal retraced months of reporting that unraveled events leading to the arrest of Brazilian-born business executive Carlos Ghosn. Their series of articles following the Ghosn saga won this year’s Malcolm Forbes Award for best international business news reporting in newspapers, news services, magazines or digital...
The Overseas Press Club and the Foreign Press Association oppose proposed rule changes by the Department of Homeland Security that would restrict the freedom of foreign journalists to work in the United States, and could invite retaliation by other governments against U.S. journalists overseas...
On Oct. 21, the OPC hosted a webinar with members of the team who won this year's Morton Frank Award, including Rick Young, Emma Schwartz, Laura Sullivan and Fritz Kramer, with Jane Sasseen, executive director of the McGraw Center for Business Journalism, moderated. She served as a judge on the Morton Frank Award jury...
On Oct. 14, 2020, the OPC hosted an online program with Adam Zyglis of The Buffalo News, who won the the OPC’s Best Cartoon Award for best print or digital graphic journalism, including cartoons, on international affairs. His list of accolades also includes the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning...
Almost by stealth, Homeland Security is proposing ill-considered changes that will dampen foreign reporting in the U.S. and on the U.N. – while risking provoking foreign governments to retaliate with restrictions on U.S. reporters going abroad. Foreign Reporting of the U.S. and the U.N. is about to be completely transformed with “I” visa changes that threaten the livelihoods and legality of foreign correspondents – and no one is reporting it or protesting...
On Oct. 7, the OPC hosted a webinar with Waad Al-Kateab and Raney Aronson-Rath, the executive producer of FRONTLINE, PBS’ investigative journalism series,about the Peter Jennings Award-winning documentary For Sama. Robert Friedman of Bloomberg News, who served as head judge for the Jennings award jury, moderated...
Sir Harold Evans was a longtime friend of the Overseas Press Club who occasionally took time from his busy schedule to show up at an OPC event...
The Overseas Press Club strongly opposes the new Hong Kong Police policy established Sept. 22 that narrows the definition of “media representatives” and grants law enforcement the power to determine which journalists can report on demonstrations in the city...
On Sept. 17, the OPC hosted an online discussion with the film’s producers, whose work won this year’s Edward R. Murrow Award for best TV, video or documentary interpretation of international affairs with a run time up to 30 minutes...
The OPC is saddened to hear that longtime OPC member, Governor and supporter Jacqueline Albert Simon died on Aug. 10 at the age of 98...
China, at the urging of President Xi Jinping, is pursuing technological goals and investment programs to build a China-centric global model, not to mention its militarization of the South China Sea and its clampdown on Hong Kong, panelists said during the webinar on Aug. 13...
This week’s OPC Press Freedom update looks at Belarus in the wake of mass protests following the controversial Aug. 9 presidential election...
Jimmy Lai, the 71-year-old Hong Kong pro-Democracy media mogul, was arrested Monday under the new National Security Law. His newspaper offices were raided and Lai along with six others were charged with “suspicion of collusion with foreign forces,” according to news reports...
Veteran reporter, editor and columnist Pete Hamill, husband of OPC member Fukiko Hamill, died on Aug. 5 in Brooklyn at age 85...
The OPC is deeply saddened to learn that Christopher Dickey, legendary foreign correspondent, former OPC Governor and longtime member, died suddenly in Paris at the age of 68.
Freelance journalists around the world are suffering financial hardship as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some are stranded at home or abroad, because of travel restrictions and closed borders. Others have seen assignments dry up or have had payment for work underway or already completed reduced or canceled outright...
Arlene Getz, Past OPC Vice President and former editorial director of Newsweek: "There's another word that needs to be added to these moving memories of Chris. It's prescient...."
Christopher Dickey was a giant among us. He accomplished five times what the normal driven world-watcher does. He’d produce a solidly researched, poetically composed book in the time it would take most of us to do a Sunday feature. But he was never too busy to spend an hour or two in the Tuileries over a glass of something admirable and some properly aged Conté. He was thrilled when those old Nokias evolved, enabling him to work his magic from a cafe table on the Champs-Elysees when he wasn’t poking into some distant mayhem...
On July 9, the OPC hosted an online discussion with Hassan and two other members of her team: Joe Hill, associate producer and researcher; and Julia Lindau, producer. The moderator was Terry McCarthy of the American Society of Cinematographers, who served as head judge for the Kaplan Award...
Two generation-defining stories are colliding in America; the first wave of the great virus and the second wave of the civil rights movement. Journalists’ heads are spinning. Reporting on COVID-19 created a sudden and necessary urgency by media leaders to validate government precautions, while protests following the death of George Floyd rapidly diminished the foundational credibility of government institutions altogether. Journalists are called on now to make sense of these enormous social disruptions...
Hong Kong’s new National Security Law, a draconian rule which was drafted by Beijing and took effect July 1, is grave news for press freedom supporters, in addition to citizens of the former British colony who believe it will be used to permanently alter the laissez-faire nature of life in the island city...
On June 19, the OPC hosted an online discussion via Zoom with journalists and people close to the story who worked on a two-part podcast series about Najm’s disappearance, and family and friends’ long mission to track him down...
On June 10, 2020, the OPC hosted an online discussion via Zoom with this year’s photography award winners, including Dieu Nalio Chery of The Associated Press, winner of the Robert Capa Gold Medal Award for best photographic reporting from abroad requiring exceptional courage and enterprise; Moises Saman of National Geographic, winner of the Olivier Rebbot Award for best photographic news reporting from abroad in any medium; and Rena Effendi of The Wall Street Journal, winner of the Best Feature Photography award for best feature photography on an international theme published in any medium...
On June 3, the OPC hosted a discussion via Zoom with the journalists who worked on the series, including reporter Isabel Coles and photojournalist Rena Effendi. Peter Spiegel, US managing editor of the Financial Times and the head judge for the Bob Considine Award, moderated...
The Overseas Press Club of America denounces a Philippine court’s wrongful conviction of journalist Maria Ressa and her former colleague at the news website Rappler, a verdict that underscores dire threats to press freedom under President Rodrigo Duterte...
In this week’s OPC Press Freedom Update, we look at a press freedom role reversal for the U.S. and the Covid-19 outbreak..
The Overseas Press Club condemns the harassment and targeted attacks on journalists covering the protests across the United States. The OPC and its Press Freedom Committee calls on U.S. law enforcement agencies as well as protesters to stop the use of violence and intimidation against the news media and accept the essential role that journalists play in a democracy.
On May 27, the OPC hosted a discussion with this year’s Hal Boyle Award winners, kicking off a series of online discussions with OPC Award Winners via Zoom...
OPC Past President Deidre Depke writes about the recipients of the club's $750 freelancer grants. Designed to offset some of the financial hardship created by COVID-19, 27 grants were awarded to freelance writers, photographers, and film and video reporters abroad and in the United States. A committee of OPC governors made the awards, working from nearly 50 applications...
The Overseas Press Club asks that people join us in supporting global advocates for press freedom, free speech, and human rights...
More than four decades ago, Saudi Arabia stepped up its soft-power campaign of influence across the Muslim world and permanently shaped the geopolitical landscape, with the campaign’s fruits now taking on a life of their own. On May 14, journalist Krithika Varagur, OPC member and 2019 Sally Jacobsen Fellowship winner, shared insights and discussed her new book about the Saudi fundamentalist program, titled The Call: Inside the Global Saudi Religious Project.
World Press Freedom Day on May 3, the annual event organized by the United Nations in 1993, kicks off a weeklong series of observances. The commemorations will take place amid the ongoing battle against the coronavirus pandemic, which has brought some unfortunate side effects for journalism...
During the OPC’s first post-quarantine event online last week, author and club member Dexter “Tiff” Roberts said during a Zoom discussion that fallout from China’s COVID-19 outbreak will likely threaten the country’s ability to transform its economy and worsen an already precarious rural-urban divide. On April 23, Roberts discussed how the pandemic might shape the country’s future, as well as a host of issues raised in his new book “The Myth of Chinese Capitalism,” which was published on March 10 just as the U.S. was starting its lockdown...
In March, China expelled more than a dozen U.S. journalists in retaliation against tightened controls on Chinese journalists imposed in the month before. Among them was Gerry Shih of The Washington Post, the recipient of the OPC’s Citation for Excellence in the Hal Boyle category this year. Shih had served as China correspondent for the Post since September 2018, most recently following the coronavirus outbreak from the beginning of the crisis...
OPC Past President William J. Holstein and his longtime friend and colleague, Toshio Aritake, wrote a blog post from self-quarantine on the tradition of bowing in Japan, and its possible use as a replacement for handshakes in a world threatened by current and future pandemics...
The plight of immigrant populations fleeing violence across several continents and the state of ISIS after the caliphate emerged as the leading storylines among the 22 winners of the 81st Annual Overseas Press Club Awards...
The Trump Administration’s methods of undermining press freedom and media credibility have been “dangerously effective,” according to a special report prepared for The Committee to Protect Journalists. The CPJ has formally requested a meeting with President Trump to discuss its concerns...
Ivan Flores is an American multimedia journalist based in Afghanistan covering conflict, political and cultural issues. He has filed for a range of media organizations, including The New York Times, Foreign Policy, CBS Radio, CBC, The Guardian, The National, Al Jazeera, NPR, La Repubblica, VOX Media, and others...
The Overseas Press Club offers photo ID card options for our working press members...
OPC member Marcy McGinnis writes a tribute about her friend and colleague, Maria Mercader, CBS network veteran who died on Sunday, March 29...
The Overseas Press Club of America has made the sad but inevitable decision to cancel the club’s annual awards dinner this year, originally scheduled for April 23...
On Feb. 20, New York Times op-ed columnist and OPC member Nicholas Kristof, along with his wife and co-author, business executive Sheryl WuDunn, joined the OPC to talk about their new book Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope, which focuses on the crisis facing America’s working class...
The OPC is saddened to learn that OPC Foundation board member Maria Mercader, CBS network veteran who covered breaking news for nearly three decades, died from COVID-19 in a New York hospital...
Clare Baldwin, award-winning special correspondent for Reuters based in Hong Kong, urged journalists embarking on new careers to balance hard data with ground-level human stories during the OPC Foundation’s Scholar Awards Luncheon on Friday, Feb. 28, 2020...
Every time you shop on Amazon, you can support the Overseas Press Club Foundation...
The Overseas Press Club condemns the Chinese government’s retaliatory decision to revoke the media credentials of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. The OPC hopes that U.S. and China officials can find a solution that would allow more media coverage and greater transparency,..
Harriett Sloan Corporon, wife of OPC Past President John Corporon (1996 – 1998) passed away on Sunday, Jan. 26 in hospice care at home in Park Slope, Brooklyn...
Jim Lehrer Longtime PBS NewsHour anchor and recipient of the OPC's President's Award in 2009, died on January 23rd, at age 85...
As the New York Times correspondent covering Iran, OPC Governor Farnaz Fassihi has been in extra high gear since before the new year, keeping up with assassinations, attacks, mass protests, the tragedy of a downed jetliner, and volatile Iran-US brinksmanship...
The culture of Safety alliance (ACOS) is expanding its geographic reach and the range of support it is providing to help editors, producers and freelance journalists of all stripes as they seek to cover an increasingly dangerous world...
The ACOS Alliance, the coalition that came together following the murders of James Foley and Steven Sotloff, is working with insurers and stakeholders to facilitate access to affordable insurance for all journalists...
Online harassment of journalists, particularly women and minorities, is at an all-time high and only going to get worse. That’s the warning delivered by an expert panel of press freedom defenders who conducted an Editors’ Safety Workshop at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism...
OPC President Pancho Bernasconi participated in a panel titled “The Power of the Image in Foreign Coverage” at the 7th Foreign Editors Circle at the New York headquarters of The Associated Press on Nov. 15. The day-long gathering was hosted by AP and the International Press Institute’s North American Committee...
The OPC donated $950 from its freelance safety training fund to cover the fees for psychosocial and digital security trainers at a hostile environment awareness training course in Nairobi and Limuru, Kenya on Nov. 30...
The number of journalists killed for their reporting dropped to a 17-year low in 2019, according to the annual report by The Committee to Protect Journalists...
The Committee to Protect Journalists found in its annual press freedom survey that at least 250 journalists are imprisoned around the world, and declared China as the top jailer of journalists in the world, overtaking Turkey for the first time in four years...
The world observed a seismic shift of history when the Berlin Wall opened on Nov. 9, 1989, as images and reporting from journalists on the ground showed throngs of residents celebrating the end of a divided city, sparking hope and optimism across the East and West...
OPC member Suzanne Sataline has witnessed turmoil in Hong Kong from close range while covering protests, and experienced firsthand how police are targeting and intimidating journalists. She wrote an extensive piece for The Atlantic recounting how over the last five months, “police tactics have grown more sudden, more violent, and more arbitrary against civilian demonstrators and the press.”
OPC past president William J. Holstein wrote an op-ed piece for The Wall Street Journal warning that the recent arrest of a California tour guide on espionage charges is only a symptom of Beijing’s wider tech espionage campaign...
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...
OPC member and former governor Rukmini Callimachi has closely followed escalating conflict in northern Syria after President Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops. She is a New York Times foreign correspondent covering Al Qaeda and ISIS, currently at home on maternity leave. Callimachi warned of a growing humanitarian crisis, and expressed dismay that Turkey’s invasion of Syria could revive ISIS and reverse hard-fought gains against the group...
Since the passage of Hong Kong’s controversial extradition bill in June, the country has seen massive protests against the government. The bill was withdrawn, but demonstrations aren’t stopping anytime soon, and their methods are only growing more sophisticated. On Sept. 19, author and journalist Philip Bowring joined New York-based activist Anna Yeung-Cheung to discuss the future of Hong Kong in a panel moderated by OPC governor Pete Engardio, called “Can Hong Kong Survive?”
In late 2018, a caravan of migrants embarked on a journey that would span more than 2,500 miles from Central America to the U.S.-Mexico border. On Sept. 16, the OPC and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism co-sponsored a program with two journalists who were in the ground and followed the story closely...
The mastheads of Cambodia’s two storied English news outlets look the same as they did when I arrived in the country, but for those of us working covering the swiftly developing Southeast Asian country, the last two years have been a sea change...
New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger wrote an op-ed about a relentless global campaign targeting journalists because of the "fundamental role they play in ensuring a free and informed society.”
This article is reprinted with permission from the online magazine Witness, where it first appeared. Co-authors are Jason Reich, ACOS Alliance Board Member, and Elisabet Cantenys, Executive Director, ACOS Alliance...
The OPC is pleased to announce it is donating $5,500 to pay the cost of one of three trainers at a hostile environment and first aid training course (HEFAT) in Beirut for freelance and local journalists during the last week of November. The program is run by the ACOS Alliance in partnership with International Women’s Media Foundation, Samir Kassir Eyes Center, Golf Center for Human Rights, Frontline Freelance Register, Rory Peck Trust and the Maries Colvin Journalists’ Network.
Chateau Vouilly has loomed large in my mind ever since OPC member John Morris and I worked together to present several events, most notably introducing his book Quelque Part en France in Bayeux, Normandy...
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...
