April 2, 2025
86th Annual Overseas Press Club Awards Honors the Finest International Reporting in 22 Categories; the New York Times Dominates Awards this Year
Longtime OPC member and former governor Steve Herman, chief national correspondent for Voice of America, is speaking out about the Trump administration’s gutting of the global news service...
As the OPC marks the 86th anniversary of its founding at the Annual Awards Dinner on April 17, the club will honor all the journalists who dedicate, risk, and even lose their lives covering the world...
Read a recap of the OPC/NYU panel on March 10 that was originally published by the Ethics & Journalism Initiative at New York University.
Reporters covering the war in Ukraine cited resilience, integrity and humanity as essential qualities for journalists on the ground in conflict zones during an OPC discussion on Feb. 20...
Journalists covering South Korea from Seoul have faced unsettling threats and political disruption since President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law on Dec. 3...
When OPC member Alice Driver started reporting on the effects of Covid on the meatpacking industry in her home state of Arkansas in 2020, she had no plans to turn it into a book. She initially secured funding from the National Geographic Society and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project to write a single article in the Arkansas Times newspaper...
On Jan. 13, the OPC joined 24 civil society organizations in urging recently elected Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake to uphold press freedom....
OPC Past President David A. Andelman writes about the recent release of Iranian cartoonist Atena Farghadani, who had been jailed at the infamous Evin prison since her arrest in April. Andelman has been covering her case and the international campaign to free her on his Substack, Andelman Unleashed...
Journalists covering upheaval in Georgia said during a Dec. 13 panel that police are targeting journalists as well as protesters, and norms of press freedom have shifted suddenly in recent weeks...
Edward Wong, a diplomatic correspondent for The New York Times, shared photos and stories about his father’s past life in China that he seldom spoke about, during an OPC event on Dec. 10. Wong’s father’s story started in post-World War II China, wending through his service in the Chinese Army and flight during the Cultural Revolution, ultimately landing in Washington, DC...
The OPC and the American Library in Paris on Dec. 3 convened a panel of French and American journalists for an autopsy of the U.S. election in November, to discuss factors leading to President-Elect Donald Trump’s victory in November and what it means for for his coming term...
The OPC strongly condemns the government of Saudi Arabia's 23-year prison sentence of cartoonist Mohammed al-Ghamdi, who draws under the pen name of Al-Hazza, for expressing himself via his cartoons...
A young Yazidi woman who was the central figure of a documentary received a standing ovation after its screening at the Film Forum in New York starting on Oct. 11...
With polls and political soothsayers predicting another close U.S. presidential election on Nov. 5, analysts and government officials are raising alarms about the role of foreign interference, as countries ramp up disinformation campaigns to sway a sharply divided electorate...
OPC member Vivienne Walt, a Paris correspondent for TIME and FORTUNE magazines, said during a panel on global populism at the American Library in Paris on Sept. 18 that “it’s safe to say we’re in a bit of a perilous moment, politically,” particularly in the U.S., but warned those living in Europe to be vigilant...
The OPC strongly condemns the Israeli military’s recent raid upon the Ramallah bureau offices of Al Jazeera, confiscating documents and removing journalists from the newsroom. According to news reports, the Israeli military ordered that the office be closed for 45 days, saying that the news organization was “being used to incite terror.”
The Overseas Press Club of America elected Scott Kraft, editor at large for enterprise journalism and special projects for the Los Angeles Times, to a second term as president...
The Overseas Press Club of America condemns the guilty verdicts in Hong Kong of two former editors-in-chief of Stand News, Chung Pui-kuen and Patrick Lam, on charges of sedition. A Hong Kong court has found the editors, arrested in December 2021, guilty on charges of publishing and reproducing seditious publications. The conviction is part of a crackdown on news publications in Hong Kong since an opaque National Security Law went into effect in mid-2020...
Robert C. Neff, who was at the center of America’s debate about a rapidly rising Japan in the late 1980s, died on July 31 at his home in Hayama, Japan, south of Tokyo, after a long illness. He was 77 years old...
The Overseas Press Club of America is thrilled with the news that Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has been freed from a Russian prison where he was unjustly held after being wrongly convicted of spying charges. Along with Paul Whelan and journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, among others, Gershkovich is being released as part of a prisoner swap...
On July 23, the OPC hosted a training session with Andrew Mercier, senior director of editorial at Muck Rack, who walked participants through steps for setting up a profile on the platform, getting verified, and curating links to their work. He also covered filters to help track coverage from competitors and analyze news topics...
Associated Press visual journalists Renata Brito and Felipe Dana were shocked when they first stumbled on a local news story in May 2021 about a small boat that had turned up in Trinidad and Tobago with the decomposing bodies of more than a dozen men. Having reported extensively on global migration issues, they noticed that the type of boat shown in the story was one they had often seen migrants use to cross from Mauritania to Spain...
On June 7, a group of current and past OPC governors and presidents gathered at Hutong in Midtown to celebrate Patricia Kranz’s 10th anniversary as executive director of the club...
Before OPC member and author Jacob Kushner started research for his new book, Look Away: A True Story of Murders, Bombings, and a Far-Right Campaign to Rid Germany of Immigrants, the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall had mostly evoked images of celebration and families reuniting in the streets...
Brazilian journalist Adriana Carranca, an OPC member who received the OPC Foundation’s 2018 Harper’s Magazine Scholarship in Memory of I.F. Stone, stumbled into an unusual story during a reporting trip to Afghanistan in 2008 when she learned that a couple from her home country was running a pizza delivery business in Kabul. She wondered why a couple with two children would relocate to one of the most dangerous places in the world to make pizza. After some digging, she discovered the two were operating covertly as Christian missionaries, trying to convert Afghans in the face of extreme risks....
If you have ever wondered what motivates a journalist such as Nick Kristof to travel to hellholes such as the Sudan’s Darfur region, Myanamar and Yemen, or to ride his bicycle into the middle of the Chinese army’s crushing of pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989, then you will be intrigued with Kristof’s latest book, Chasing Hope: A Reporter’s Life...
Watch a celebration of Terry Anderson's life, held at the Associated Press headquarters on May 8.
On World Press Freedom Day, the Overseas Press Club board of governors announced that it is naming the Continuing Coverage of Conflict Award, a new category created in 2024 to honor deep, dedicated reporting that sustains focus on underreported conflicts and global crises, after Shireen Abu Akleh, a prominent Palestinian-American journalist who was killed during assignment in 2022...
The OPC’s 85th Anniversary Awards Dinner featured a keynote speech from Maria Ressa, the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize winner and CEO of the Philippine digital media company Rappler, presentation of the President’s Award to David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, lighting of the Press Freedom Candle by Ayman Mohyeldin, host of MSNBC’s “Ayman," and acceptance speeches from recipients receiving this year’s 22 awards for exceptional international journalism. Explore the page below to see photos and videos from the celebration...
On April 25, international correspondents and their colleagues gathered for the Overseas Press Club America’s Annual Awards Dinner at Cipriani 25 Broadway to honor courageous reporting that shed light on the realities of conflict, survival, and resilience from around the world. The evening marked with recognition for the brave journalists who embarked on a dangerous mission to cover the wars plaguing the international community, from Gaza and Ukraine and Sudan...
85th Annual Overseas Press Club Awards Honors the Finest International Reporting in 22 Categories; New York Times, Reuters Are Top Winners.
The OPC held a book night on March 13 to feature Newshawks in Berlin by Larry Heinzerling and Randy Herschaft with Ann Cooper. The book delves into The Associated Press' editorial decisions and reporting on Nazi Germany, spanning from its inception in the 1930s to the post-World War II era...
On March 5, OPC Foundation President John Daniszewski opened this year’s scholarship awards celebration, his first time presiding over the event since he took the helm last year. He addressed the crowd of family, friends and supporters who gathered to honor 18 journalists chosen by judges to be among the best of their generation...
Maria Ressa, co-founder and CEO of Rappler, and winner of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, will be the keynote speaker at the OPC’s 85th Annual Awards Dinner on April 25 at Cipriani 25 Broadway. David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker and winner of the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction for his book Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire, will receive the President’s Award for lifetime achievement...
On Feb. 29, the OPC hosted a book night with two authors whose books detail Russia’s repressive tactics in two different eras. Alan Philps, a former Moscow correspondent for Reuters and the Daily Telegraph, wrote The Red Hotel: Moscow 1941, the Metropol Hotel, and the Untold Story of Stalin’s Propaganda War...
Robert Black, a longtime OPC member with a distinguished career in journalism and public relations, died on Feb. 4 from complications related to Covid. He was 94 years old.
On Jan. 24, author Yaroslav Trofimov, the chief foreign-affairs correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, told a capacity crowd at Columbia University’s Simon and June Li Center for Global Journalism that reporters working in conflict zones should not so distracted by geopolitics that they neglect humanity in their work...
Late last year, OPC member Andrew Lluberes mentioned that 2024 would mark his 50th year since joining the OPC, and wondered if there were others who had earned the same distinction. After poking around in OPC archives, we reached out to Lluberes and four other members who had passed the 5-decade mark and asked them to reflect on their careers and time with the OPC. Many thanks to Lluberes, as well as Robert Essman, Irwin Chapman, Virginia Widenmyer and Robert Black for sharing memories...
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...
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 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...
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...
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...
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...
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.
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
