People Column

SCHOLARS

Noelle Harff, the Walter and Betsy Cronkite Scholar Award Winner in 2024, returned home after a fellowship with Reuters in Argentina. In a message to the OPC Foundation in August, she reflected on her experience over the last six months as she began her final semester at the University of North Carolina. “As an economics major, I arrived with a fascination for finance, but exploring economics from Argentina has changed how I see the world,” she said. “Six months ago, the subway fare in Buenos Aires was 67 pesos. Today it’s around 630. From credit to crypto, I was never short on ideas. I was even able to break the news that Argentina won its 16th consecutive continental title during Copa America! Thanks to the OPC Foundation, those ideas turned to bylines.”

Olivia George, the Irene Corbally Kuhn Scholarship winner in 2022, was named Outstanding New Journalist by the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) at its annual Sunshine State Awards presented in a ceremony at the Hollywood Central Performing Arts Center, Hollywood, Florida, on Aug. 17. George covers local government at the Tampa Bay Times, a job she started shortly after graduating from Brown in 2022.

AWARDS

The Radio Television Digital News Association (RTNDA) has announced that 20 Days in Mariupol, a documentary by FRONTLINE (PBS) and The Associated Press that won this year’s Peter Jennings Award from the OPC, has also won two RTNDA 2024 Edward R. Murrow Awards. OPC Governor Raney Aronson-Rath, the executive producer of FRONTLINE (PBS), was part of the team that produced the documentary, with Michelle Mizner, Derl McCrudden and Mstyslav Chernov. Chernov was also part of the team that won the 2022 Hal Boyle Award for AP coverage of Mariupol. The film also won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature earlier this year.

UPDATES

OPC Governor Alexis Okeowo, a longtime staff writer at The New Yorker, is writing a new memoir slated for publication in August 2025. Blessings and Disasters: A Story of Alabama, to be published by Henry Holt & Company, will examine Okeowo’s own history growing up in Montgomery as the child of Nigerian immigrants, weaving memoir with state history and reporting on present-day legislative battles. Okeowo also wrote a longform piece for the New Yorker on Aug. 26 about a cult leader in Kenya. The story follows a doomsday pastor named Paul Mackenzie, who is alleged to have led more than 400 followers in a starvation suicide pact, their bodies later found in mass graves in Kenya’s Shakahola Forest. He was arrested in April and along with co-defendants has pleaded not guilty to murder charges.

OPC Governor Singeli Agnew directed a four-part series for PBS that follows high school students across the country as they grapple with critical questions about democracy. The first episode, “Chasing Victory,” premieres on Tuesday, Oct. 8 at 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time on PBS and the next three episodes will air each Tuesday in October at the same time. The series, created by Retro Report, will also stream on Amazon Prime. Agnew and her team spent more than 145 days on the ground with students and teachers across the US over the last year. “While it’s easy to get discouraged about the state of politics in this country, this new generation of voters shows us what it means to be civically engaged and civil,” Agnew said. “After decades spent following war and conflict, this was one of the more inspiring projects I’ve been part of.” The Wrap flagged the series as one of their “60 Most Anticipated Shows of Fall 2024.”

Brian Byrd, an OPC Governor, a program officer at the Foundation for Opioid Response Efforts (FORE) and a freelance photographer, recently wrote an article for Hot Mirror Magazine about Paul McCartney’s photo exhibit “Eyes of the Storm.” The exhibit, which ran from May to August 2024 at the Brooklyn Museum, featured images captured by McCartney during The Beatles’ rise to global fame in late 1963 and early 1964. In his piece, Byrd, a lifelong Beatles fan, described approaching the exhibit with both excitement and trepidation. He wrote, “To my delight and surprise, McCartney’s photographs revealed an even more nuanced and human story than I had hoped.” Byrd was particularly captivated by images depicting quiet, intimate moments with the band’s inner circle of “confidants, protectors and loved ones who formed the Beatles’ inner sanctum during this whirlwind period.” Byrd highlights photography’s power to “actively shape perception, memory, and cultural narratives,” and notes how “in the act of observing, we often become part of the story ourselves, forever altering the narrative we seek to document.” Hot Mirror, the online photo publication where Byrd’s article appeared, serves as an educational partner of the BarTur Photo Award. The OPC is collaborating with this award to create new opportunities for OPC member photographers, with a particular focus on supporting freelancers.

OPC member Stephen Shepard is publishing a book titled Salinger’s Soul: His Personal & Religious Odyssey, which examines how J.D. Salinger’s private life influenced his famous stories. Shepard writes that Salinger’s son, Matt, has been sorting through the unpublished writing his father left behind after his death in 2010. Most of these stories will be released soon, and are heavily influenced by his years in seclusion. Salinger’s Soul recounts his traumatic experience in World War II, as well as his transition from the Judaism of his youth to his embrace of a mystical form of Hinduism known as Vedanta. The book is available for Kindle and is slated for publication in print on Sept. 10.

A book by OPC member Adriana Carranca has been named as a finalist for the Christianity Today Book Awards. Soul by Soul, which was discussed at a book talk co-hosted by the OPC at Book Culture on May 2, follows the rise of evangelical Christian missionaries secretly trying to convert Muslims in Kabul. Winners will be announced in December. Carranca will be participating in a series of book events this fall, including a discussion at CUNY on Sept. 17 and an online discussion hosted by New America on Oct. 9. She received the OPC Foundation’s 2018 Harper’s Magazine Scholarship in Memory of I.F. Stone.

PRESS FREEDOM

To mark the 10-year anniversary of American-Israeli journalist Steven Sotloff’s murder by a member of ISIS, Marc Marginedes, a Spanish reporter who was in captivity with Sotloff, wrote a piece for TIME magazine remembering Sotloff’s courage, “humor, and relentless quest for justice, despite the incredible dangers they’d experienced.” He said over the six months they were held captive together, he had witnessed “how this young and brilliant journalist, 14 years younger than me, had dealt with the harrowing situation he was put in with serenity, efficiency, honesty, and enormous bravery, becoming an example for me and, very likely, for others.” Sotloff was killed on Sept. 2, 2014, just two weeks after American journalist and video reporter James Foley was killed by ISIS. In an opinion piece for The New York Times to mark that anniversary, Diane Foley, James’ mother, said on the day of his murder she “felt almost more rage against our government than I did against his killers,” adding that it seemed “that Jim was considered collateral damage by our political leaders. The government has claimed that it did all it could to bring Jim home, but I refused to accept what I saw as its inaction.” She said since her son’s death, she has tried to direct her grief to enable hope and change. “To be moral, we must have courage, and we must speak out about our loved ones captured and wrongfully imprisoned overseas.”

Reuters safety adviser Ryan Evans was killed in a strike on a hotel in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk on Aug. 25. Two of the agency’s journalists were treated in a hospital, and one of them was seriously injured. Evans, a former British soldier, advised journalists on safety around the world, including in Ukraine, Israel and at the Paris Olympics. He was 38.

This installment, catch up on news about OPC Foundation scholars Noelle Harff and Olivia George; and OPC community members Raney Aronson-Rath, Alexis Okeowo, Singeli Agnew , Brian Byrd, Stephen Shepard and Adriana Carranca.

SCHOLARS

Dani Morera Trettin, the 2024 Flora Lewis/Jacqueline Albert-Simon Scholarship winner, landed his first byline in Reuters in June after covering the Meta Conversations conference in Brazil and writing about the latest WhatsApp AI features for businesses. Since then, he has filed stories from Brazil on Olympics news, opposition to the tightening abortion ban, Sao Paulo’s Japanese neighborhood, and sharks that tested positive for cocaine. In a post on LinkedIn, he thanked Katie Paul, a former OPC Foundation scholar who won the 2007 Irene Corbally Kuhn Scholarship and is now with Reuters in New York, for “all the editorial and emotional support in the process.”

Cadence Quaranta, the David R. Schweisberg Scholarship winner in 2022, is starting as a reporter for TaiwanPlus, an English-language media new site based in Taipei. She has spent the last year in Taiwan on a Fulbright grant.

Jacob Kushner, who won the OPC Foundation’s Nathan S. Bienstock Memorial Scholarship in 2013, is joining the Columbia Journalism School faculty as the Newsday/Laventhol Visiting Assistant Professor of Journalism. He will teach reporting and long-form magazine writing in the fall semester. An award-winning freelance journalist, Kushner is based in Nairobi. He had an OPC Foundation fellowship in the AP bureau in Nairobi. In May, the OPC and Grand Central Publishing hosted a discussion of his new book, Look Away at the Rizzoli Bookstore in Manhattan.

J.p. Lawrence, the H.L. Stevenson Fellowship winner in 2015, is now a reporter at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis covering southwest Minnesota. In a tweet expressing his excitement on his first day at the new job, he said it was “wild to have a childhood dream come true.” He spent more than six years as a down-range reporter with Stars and Stripes. Lawrence had an OPC Foundation fellowship with AP in Uganda.

Artis Henderson, the 2010 Irene Corbally Kuhn Scholarship winner, has been named a 2024 Fulbright-National Geographic Award recipient. She will spend eight months in Shark Bay in Western Australia studying marine stromatolites, the world’s oldest living microorganisms. Her project will include the voices of the Malgana people – traditional custodians of Gatharragudu, the Malgana name for Shark Bay. Marine stromatolites play a key role in understanding both early conditions on Earth and the potential for life on Mars and are in danger of disappearing within the next 30 years due to climate change. Henderson had an OPC Foundation fellowship with AP in Dakar.

The 2005 David R. Schweisberg Scholarship winner, Emily Steel, and her colleagues Sydney Ember and Mike Baker at The New York Times, won the Michael A. Dornheim Award at the National Press Awards for their insider look at issues facing air traffic controllers in their investigative piece, “Flight Risks.”

Edward Wong, an author and New York Times correspondent who won the 1998 David R. Schweisberg Scholarship, published a book in June about mysteries in his personal family history as a lens to examine 80 years of history in China. The Atlantic named At the Edge of Empire as a top summer read, and it ranked as the number one release in Chinese history on Amazon.

AWARDS

OPC Governor Beth Knobel has won the 2024 Diversity in Journalism History Research Award for her history paper “Breaking Barriers: Ed Bradley’s Early Years in Radio.” The award, given by the History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), honors an outstanding paper in journalism or mass communication history that address issues of inclusion and the study of marginalized groups and topics. Judges said her submission “wove oral history, archival broadcast media, and traditional print journalism sources into a vivid narrative of overcoming structural inequality in the radio industry.” Knobel will receive a cash prize during a gala on Aug. 7 at the AEJMC National Convention in Philadelphia.

UPDATES

OPC Governor Rod Nordland spoke on a July 11 podcast that centers on a type of brain tumor, glioblastoma, which Nordland has grappled with since he had a seizure in India in the summer of 2019. The podcast, Glioblastoma AKA GBM Podcast, covered his storied career in journalism, his personal battle with the daunting diagnosis, and his advocacy for disability awareness. Nordland wrote about his experiences with the disease in Waiting for the Monsoon, which was published by Mariner Books in March this year. He was Kabul bureau chief for The New York Times and worked as a foreign correspondent in more than 150 countries. Previously, he was Newsweek’s chief foreign correspondent, serving as Baghdad bureau chief from 2003 to 2005. His work has won the OPC’s 1999 Ed Cunningham Award for reporting from Kosovo for Newsweek, a Pulitzer Prize for news reporting, two George Polk awards, and many other honors. He is also the author of The Lovers: Afghanistan’s Romeo & Juliet.

Sewell Chan, an OPC member who has served as editor-in-chief of The Texas Tribune since October 2021, has announced he will join Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism as the next executive editor of the Columbia Journalism Review. In a post on LinkedIn, he said he was excited to take the helm of the CJR, which he believes “has the potential to advocate for journalists worldwide as they confront pressing challenges – technological disruption, authoritarianism, misinformation, attacks on the free press – while explaining to the public why journalism matters more than ever.” He will join CJR on Sept. 16.

A book by OPC member and photojournalist Robert Nickelsberg is slated to be released on Sept. 3. Legacy of Lies, El Salvador 1981-1984 will feature a series of black and white images that were not published while he was covering the Salvadoran War for TIME magazine. “The book, beautifully printed by Kehrer Verlag, has essays by Alma Guillermoprieto, Jon Lee Anderson, Carlos Dada and Scott Wallace,” Nickelsberg said.

OPC member Alice Driver will also have a book published on Sept. 3. The Life and Death of the American Worker: The Immigrants Taking on America’s Largest Meatpacking Company is an investigation into toxic labor practices at Tyson Foods, the largest meatpacking company in America, and follows the story of immigrant workers who fought back. Driver won a J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project Award in the Work-in-Progress category for her book earlier this year.

OPC member Dian Zhang will speak at the Asian American Journalist Association (AAJA) convention in Austin, Texas next week on pitfalls and biases in AI tools. Zhang, a senior data reporter for USA Today, uses data and quantitative analysis to tell stories and weaves news reporting with technical skills such as Python programming, scraping, and data visualizations. She has covered a wide range of topics including business and finance, crime and justice, politics and more.

Peter Schwarztein, an OPC member and author who serves as Global Fellow at the Wilson Center and fellow at the Center for Climate and Security, is slated to publish a book in late September. The Heat and the Fury: On the Frontlines of Climate Violence from Island Press will cover some of his most harrowing experiences while covering climate conflicts, including pursuit by kidnappers, beatings, police detention, and getting kicked out of some countries. He visited Iraqi towns where ISIS used drought as a recruiting tool, interviewed desperate farmers who turned to piracy in Bangladesh, and grappled with security forces who blocked him from a dam along the Nile that brought Egypt and Ethiopia to the brink of war.

André Liohn, who won the OPC’s Robert Capa Gold Medal in 2012 for his work in Libya, spoke at the Bronx Documentary Center on July 27 after a screening of a documentary, You Are Not a Soldier, that focuses on Liohn’s experiences as a war photographer. He held a Q&A session with attendees and discussed current risks for photographers working in an increasingly fractured industry as well as the importance of documentary work. His photos have appeared in Der Spiegel, The New York Times, Newsweek, The Guardian, El Pais, TIME, Stern and more. His video work has been broadcast on BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera English and France 24, among others.