People Column
SCHOLARS
Two past OPC Foundation winners were chosen to be members of the 2025-2026 Report for America Corps. Jack Brook, the David R. Schweisberg Scholarship winner in 2018, will report for The Associated Press in Louisiana, especially New Orleans. He will focus on the Louisiana statehouse and its spending decisions on topics from levees and floodwalls to coastal evacuation highways that affect people across the state. Jake Kincaid, the Reuters Fellowship winner in 2020, will cover the local impacts of Trump administration funding and policy changes on institutions and community members across the San Diego region for the Federal Impact Reporter. He had an OPC Foundation fellowship with Reuters in Mexico City.
Annika Hammerschlag, the Irene Corbally Kuhn Scholarship winner in 2016, is now the Oceans and Climate correspondent for The Associated Press based in Seattle. Before joining the AP, she spent six years in West Africa as a freelance photographer, videographer and reporter. Previously she was the education reporter at the Naples Daily News.
UPDATES
Nilo Tabrizy, a visual forensics reporter for The Washington Post who serves as OPC governor, has been analyzing U.S. airstrikes in Iran along with the paper’s forensics team, using satellite images to pick through the aftermath of attacks on sites considered key to the country’s nuclear program. On June 23, Tabrizy and the team identified entry points for deep penetrating bombs as well as damage at aboveground facilities. The reporting includes an extensive timeline of attacks on all three sites, including the Fordow and Natanz uranium enrichment facilities and the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center, from B-2s with support from submarines.
Alexis Okeowo, an OPC Governor and contributing writer for The New Yorker, wrote a longform piece for the magazine on June 16 that follows up with women who accused alleged abusers of sexual assault during the height of the #MeToo movement in 2017. The piece is drawn from her upcoming book, titled Blessings and Disasters: A Story of Alabama, that is slated to be published by Henry Holt and Co. on Aug. 5. In the piece, she delves into each of their cases, finding that high-profile survivors have faced retaliatory legal campaigns, defamation suits, smear tactics, the release of addresses and personal information (called doxing) and threats that caused some to relocate their families, among other disruptions. Okeowo found that #MeToo initially gave rise to more accountability, but retaliation and a lack of support systems have left survivors on their own. She wrote that perpetrators’ campaigns to deflect blame have a chilling effect on complaints against abusers. “Powerful men often have more resources to wage legal battles than their accusers. And the suits allowed them to cloud public opinion about even the most verifiable claims,” Okeowo wrote.
OPC Vice President Deborah Amos started writing about Ukraine from Lviv on her Substack on June 18, saying that she was embarking on an extended trip to report on “accountability, war crime trials, and the limits of justice.” Her work in Ukraine is supported by a grant from the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF). Amos rounded up local headlines for readers, mentioning a city council calling for restricted celebrations during a funeral for three soldiers who died defending Ukraine, a community art project to heal those with loved ones lost in the war, and a new training center for Ukrainian drone operators to learn how to shoot down Iranian drones. She wrote that the Israel-Iran conflict is already entangled with Ukraine, with five Ukrainians, including three children, killed in an Iranian missile strike south of Tel Aviv, and the potential for a war in Iran to change Vladimir Putin’s standing on the world stage. Amos’ Substack can be found here.
OPC Governor Azmat Khan, an investigative reporter with The New York Times and The New York Times Magazine and professor at Columbia Journalism School, spoke to Maurice Oniango of The Reuters Institute for a June 19 interview posted on the Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN) site. She talked about her award-winning reporting on civilian casualties of U.S. airstrikes, which won the OPC’s Ed Cunningham Award for 2017 and a Roy Rowan Award for 2021, as well as a Pulitzer Prize and other accolades. Khan also talked about her approach to interviewing survivors and families affected by war, saying it’s important to give sources experiencing trauma time to build trust and respond on their own terms. “Giving people space to tell their stories and really listening to them, not just asking the questions you’re interested in. This helps build trust and allows them to open up. Many survivors have never spoken to a journalist before or don’t know the rules,” she said.
OPC Governor and freelance filmmaker Singeli Agnew collaborated with New York Times Magazine staff writer Susan Dominus on a multimedia piece about a family that created an artificial intelligence avatar of a loved one who had been diagnosed with blood cancer. The June 13 piece, “Never Say Goodbye,” includes Agnew’s video of Peter Listro participating in generative AI training interviews with a company called StoryFile, which often works with foundations and museums to bring past figures to life, to help preserve his memory. The piece also includes footage of a sample session in which the avatar answers questions from his son. The family had stipulated with StoryFile that the avatar of Peter would only answer questions that had been posed while he was alive. “Everything he said, they would know, was something he believed to be true, rather than an extrapolation,” Dominus wrote.
Yinka Adegoke, an OPC Governor and founding editor of Semafor Africa, wrote an article for Semafor on June 18 about prominent East African political activists who are suing the governments of Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda for allegations that they were abducted and tortured by Tanzanian security agents. Adegoke wrote that Boniface Mwangi, a veteran Kenyan activist, and Agather Atuhaire, a Ugandan human rights lawyer, filed lawsuits at the East African Court of Justice, the East African Legislative Assembly, and the International Criminal Court for incidents. The two have stated publicly that they were subjected to various forms of sexual torture and physical intimidation after being abducted in Dar es Salaam in May.
Stephen Kalin, an OPC Governor and foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, has been closely covering the wars in Yemen and the Israel-Iran war for the paper. On June 24, he co-wrote with colleague Saleh al-Batati about how Yemen’s Houthi militants, allies of Iran, had claimed that the cease-fire agreement between Israel and Iran did not include them, and that their operations against Israel would continue. He also wrote on the same day that Israeli attacks on Iran since June 13 had killed 610 people and injured 4,746 others, according to an Iranian Health Ministry spokesman. On June 23 alone, Kalin had eight bylines for the Journal related to the conflicts, and five more on June 24. Kalin is also an OPC Foundation scholar. He won a Roy Rowan Scholarship and had a fellowship with Reuters in 2013.
OPC member Kathy Gannon is covering the rise of militant groups flourishing in Pakistan and Afghanistan for her Substack. On June 2, she wrote about a group in Pakistan’s southwestern Baluchistan province that is carrying out attacks across the region. Gannon said the 15 million residents there are caught between the Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP) and the Baluchistan Liberation Army (BLA), with the former accusing the latter of receiving training from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and funding from India. She said the “increasing frequency and ferocity of attacks, which are slowly creeping beyond the region and into international territory, is a testimony to the failure of America’s so-called War on Terror.” Gannon also spoke on a panel in Islamabad on June 7 about militant groups on Afghan soil that she said threaten regional security. Read Gannon’s Substack here.
OPC member Ruchi Kumar co-wrote a piece for The Guardian on June 12 about women working in the sugar industry in India still being pushed into having hysterectomies. The two reported that the women work long hours for low wages, and the threat of fines for missing or partial workdays pressures them to undergo hysterectomies to end menstruation and allow them to work longer hours. According to local NGOs, the rate of hysterectomies among women in one of India’s top sugar cane producers was 36 percent, compared with a national average of 3 percent. Separately, exploitation in Indian cane fields was the subject of the piece that won the OPC’s Joe and Laurie Dine Award this year, with Qadri Inzamam and Megha Rajagopalan reporting for The Fuller Project with The New York Times.
Mellissa Fung, an OPC member and filmmaker, wrote an opinion piece for the Toronto Globe and Mail on June 6 about U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s scuttling of a program to leverage women in all aspects of conflict, including peacemaking and reconstruction. In the piece, titled “By Alienating Women, America’s Military Is Undermining Itself,” Fung wrote about Hegseth’s tweet in late April declaring the department had ended the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) program, which he called “yet another woke divisive/social justice/Biden initiative that overburdens our commanders and troops – distracting from our core task: WAR-FIGHTING.” She added that “Hegseth’s ignorant post is still up on X, suggesting the Trump administration is foolhardily committed to making America’s military small again – while the rest of us understand that having women at the table increases the likelihood of enduring peace.”
OPC member Elena Becatoros reported from Afghanistan for The Associated Press on June 14 about Pakistan’s crackdown on foreigners, which has led to migration of nearly 1 million Afghans since the campaign started in October 2023. Becatoros spoke with displaced families at Torkham camp, run by Afghanistan’s Taliban government, where people are allowed to stay for up to three days before moving on. Camp officials said 150 families were arriving daily from Pakistan, a decrease from the 1,200 families that arrived each day about two months beforehand.
OPC member Vivienne Walt wrote two pieces about ocean conservation for TIME magazine in June from Nice, France. On June 14, she wrote about ways that artificial intelligence could help humans save their oceans. From a U.N. Oceans Conference, Walt reported on dire conditions of plastic pollution, dead zones, and the projected collapse of marine species, and how generative AI tools such as virtual modeling of oceans, tracking data on individual fish, and monitoring of fishing vessels could tackle those complex issues. On June 16, she wrote about the detrimental effects of the 1975 film Jaws on marine conservation. June 20 marked the 50th anniversary of the thriller, which was shown in theaters with a new introduction by director Steven Spielberg. Walt wrote that ocean advocates lament the film’s effect on perception of sharks as villains or mindless killers, which led to a global campaign against sharks that has decimated many species.
The print edition of Line in the Sand, a book by Dean Yates, an author and former Reuters journalist whose memoir was featured at an OPC book night in 2023, is now available in the U.S. and Canada. The book recounts his experience grappling with post-traumatic stress disorder and his 7-year recovery process after events that include terrorist bombings in Bali in 2002, the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, and the deaths of two of his Reuters colleagues who were shot and killed from an American helicopter while he was serving as bureau chief in Baghdad. In an email, Yates said readers of his book from multiple occupations and life circumstances have been responding strongly to the concept of moral injury, “a wound to the soul, a condition that shatters people’s sense of self. It has similarities to PTSD but is a distinct affliction. All that’s needed is for someone’s idea of what’s right to be violated strongly enough.” Line in the Sand can be ordered through the Independent Publishers Group website (IPG), Barnes & Noble and Amazon.
Kevin “Kal” Kallaugher, cartoonist and winner of multiple OPC awards, has launched a twice-weekly newsletter featuring the best of his work from the last 50 years. He said in an email that the Substack will feature “loads of interesting cartoons along with insights, backstories, hidden gems, interviews and more.” Kallaugher won the OPC’s awards for best cartoons for 2020, 2013, 2004, 2002 and 1998, as well as Citations for Excellence for 2008, 2017 and 2024.