People Column
SCHOLARS
Stephen Kalin, the Roy Rowan Scholarship winner in 2013, has been named to the 2024 class of Ochberg Fellows at the Dart Center at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Fellows attend seminars with leading experts in trauma science and journalism practice. Kalin is a foreign correspondent based in Dubai for The Wall Street Journal.
Alex Pena, the first Walter and Betsy Cronkite Scholarship winner in 2011, has joined The New York Times as a senior video journalist, focusing on breaking and continuing video news coverage. Most recently he was with VICE News and before that, he spent eight years at CBS News as a producer and digital journalist based in Miami.
Anupreeta Das, the Reuters Scholarship winner in 2006 who is now finance editor of The New York Times, has written a book titled Billionaire, Nerd, Savior, King: Bill Gates and His Quest to Shape Our World, slated to be published on Aug. 13. The book is billed as an examination of Bill Gates, “one of the most powerful, fascinating, and contradictory figures of the past four decades, and an eye-opening exploration of our national fixation on billionaires.”
AWARDS
Staff of The New York Times won the Pulitzer Award for International Reporting for the same coverage of the Israel-Hamas war that won the OPC’s Hal Boyle Award this year. Two past OPC award winners were also among the crop of Pulitzer winners. Hannah Dreier, the 2016 winner of the Hal Boyle Award, won the Pulitzer for Investigative Reporting for stories about migrant child labor in the U.S. for The New York Times, and Sarah Stillman, winner of the 2011 Joe and Laurie Dine Award, won the Pulitzer for Explanatory Reporting for reporting on inequality in the U.S. legal system for The New Yorker. Stillman spoke on a panel co-hosted by the OPC on May 6 about OPC member Adriana Carranca’s book, Soul by Soul. See the recap above or watch a recording of the program here.
Staff of the Outlaw Ocean Project, which won this year’s Roy Rowan Award for reporting on China’s shady seafood operation, also won the 2024 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights journalism award for the same reporting in the International Print category.
UPDATES
ProPublica has named OPC Governor Ginger Thompson as the organization’s managing editor. Thompson has worked for ProPublica for 10 years, as reporter and then as chief of correspondence. In a release, the organization applauded her achievements, including establishing a department that manages recruitment and professional development, leading an investigative editor training program, and working closely with ProPublica’s diversity and inclusion committees. Thompson’s new role will include oversight of immigration coverage and the Washington D.C. bureau, among other duties. Before joining ProPublica, she worked at The New York Times for 15 years and served as a correspondent in Washington and as bureau chief in Mexico City. She has won several awards during her career, including the OPC’s 1995 Eric and Amy Burger Award for human rights reporting in Honduras for The Baltimore Sun.
OPC members Jon and Kem Sawyer are stepping down from their positions with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting this month after serving in key roles at the organization for many years. Jon, the organization’s founder and CEO, has been with the organization since its launch in 2006. Lisa Gibbs, vice president for philanthropic development at The Associated Press, will serve as the Center’s next CEO and president. She previously served as director of news partnerships and as global business editor for the AP. In an invitation for an event to celebrate the changes on June 3, Jon said Gibbs “shares our values and passion for the work and will also bring her own bold ideas to make the Center stronger.” Kem is stepping down as reporting fellows program director after serving the center since 2011. She has led the center’s Campus Consortium program, which “provided hundreds of fellowships for undergraduate and graduate students and developed a robust alumni network spanning the globe.” In addition Emily Pulitzer, who has chaired the center’s board since its beginning, is retiring. She will now be chair emeritus while continuing to serve on the board. Dick Moore, a longtime board member and great-grandson of the first Joseph Pulitzer, will replace her as chair.
The Nieman Foundation for Journalism has selected OPC member Marcus Yam as one of 24 Nieman fellows for 2024. The fellows from around the world will spend two semesters studying at Harvard University, where they will research climate change, the use of artificial intelligence in newsgathering, the proliferation of misinformation, campaigns to silence press freedom, among other issues. The cohort will begin this fall. So grateful to [the Los Angeles Times] for allowing me on this journey and [the Nieman Foundation] for this incredible opportunity,” he wrote in a tweet on May 10 on X. “Looking forward to spending an academic year at Harvard, exchanging ideas and growing with everyone!”
For the first time in OPC member, author and photojournalist Steve Raymer’s career, which spans more than 110 countries and six decades, a person in one of his photographs recognized themselves and contacted him. Raymer, now a professor emeritus at the Indiana University Media School, took the photograph in Hanoi in 1994 while working on his book, Land of the Ascending Dragon: Rediscovering Vietnam. The photo depicts a couple with their daughter riding a motorcycle outside of the Metropole Hotel in Hanoi during the Tết Lunar New Year. The girl in the photo, Linh Do, had recognized her father in an image posted on Facebook, noted Raymer’s watermark and tracked him down. “Imagine how I felt when I got this email: ‘Dear Professor Ray, I am the little girl in the blue outfit in the picture you took 30 years ago this month in Hanoi?’ I couldn’t imagine it,” he said. Raymer, Do and her sister Hong Do Thuy have continued to correspond since that first email. He served as a young lieutenant in the U.S. Army in Vietnam from 1968 to 1969, and returned to the country 24 times since. “It’s my favorite country for lots of reasons. Part of it is the beauty and the beauty of the people too,” Raymer said in a piece for the IU Media School’s website.
OPC Vice President Azmat Khan and Governor Anup Kaphle participated in a panel about international reporting for the South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA) on May 17. Khan talked about her first experiences reporting in Pakistan in 2008, “pitching herself backwards” for local TV channels covering the U.S. election. “Having that opportunity to see the country through the lens of people who live there meant that I was working on stories that wouldn’t necessarily get told otherwise,” she said. Kaphle moved to the U.S. to study journalism and soon landed an internship at Newsweek International in 2006 and started studying at Columbia University. He said SAJA played an important role in his transition to international journalism with a fellowship with The Atlantic and received a grant to report in Afghanistan. “The goal was to tell stories that other people weren’t telling,” he said. Morgan Till, foreign editor for PBS NewsHour whose work won OPC awards in 2016 and 2021, also joined as panelist. SAJA board member Jennifer Chowdhury served as moderator.
PEOPLE REMEMBERED
Longtime OPC member Robert Essman, who worked as art assistant and art director for LIFE magazine and later creative director for Businessweek, died on May 1 at the age of 87. Essman joined the OPC in May 1974, and this year was among the members who celebrated their 50th year with the club. For an article honoring 50-year members in January, he recalled first meeting veteran correspondents who were OPC members at a club venue downtown, saying he was “quite young and a bit overwhelmed being in their company and even more impressed that they never made an issue of my youth!” Essman designed the OPC’s previous black-and-white logo was in use by the OPC club until 2017 and is still used by the OPC Foundation. He designed many other logos, including the 1976 New York City Bicentennial logo. During his tenure at LIFE, which began in 1962, he produced layouts covering banner stories such as Winston Churchill’s funeral in 1965, the Beatles in 1968, and the lunar landing in 1969, among others. After working as art director at Businessweek, he served as founding art director for People magazine from 1974 to 82. After retiring from People, Essman moved first to California and then Vermont, to be closer to his niece’s family.