Russia Hands to Gather and Swap Stories at Reunion
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THE MONTHLY NEWSLETTER OF THE OVERSEAS PRESS CLUB OF AMERICA, NEW YORK, NY • February 2016 Russia Hands to Gather and Swap Stories at Reunion By Patricia Kranz David Hoffman will join him on to take the severance money and Covering Russia in the 1990s the panel, along with Ann Cooper, run to Russia. There was a visa war was the highlight of my journalism NPR’s first Moscow bureau chief, at the time, and the Soviet Foreign career, so when Bill Holstein sug- Tom Kent of the Associated Press Ministry would not give U.S. news gested that the OPC sponsor a Rus- and the Harriman Institute, and Sey- organizations permission to bring sia Hands reunion, I jumped at the mour Topping, former correspon- in more full-time correspondents. I chance. Since November, I have dent and editor of The New York was certain that if I could get myself had a great time reaching out to old Times. there, I could get work. Thanks to friends and colleagues and asking The gathering is an opportunity my Russian teacher, who persuaded them to spread the word. By Feb. 18, to reminisce with old friends as well friends in Moscow to sponsor me on over 170 people had signed up for as analyze Russia’s political and me- a private visa, I hopped on a plane in the event, which is co-sponsored by dia landscape. Columbia University’s Harriman In- July, and stayed for much of the next I fell in love with Russian history stitute and will be held there on Feb. decade. I worked my way up from 24, starting at 4:00 p.m. and literature in college. When Mc- stringer to Moscow bureau chief for The program includes two panels Graw-Hill abruptly closed the news BusinessWeek. followed by a reception. The first service I was working for in Wash- I look back on my time in Russia panel, moderated by Harriman Di- ington DC in early 1990, I decided (Continued on Page 3) rector Alexander Cooley, will look at the challenges of covering Putin’s Mei Fong Discusses ‘One Child’ Aftermath Russia. Panelists are Carol Wil- EVENT RECAP liams, who has reported on every regime since Konstantin Chernenko By Chad Bouchard in the mid-1980s for the Los Ange- When a deadly earthquake hit les Times; Vladiimir Lenski, an an- Sichuan, China in 2008, Mei Fong, chor for Russian TV International; longtime China correspondent for and Timothy Frye, a professor at the The Wall Street Journal, traveled Harriman Institute. from Beijing with migrant workers Chad Bouchard The second panel is focused on to report on the disaster. Mei Fong, left, with Minky Worden. the Communist era and the fall of They arrived to devastating required to be sterilized soon after Communism. Robert Kaiser, former news. The quake struck during having their first child. managing editor of The Washington school hours and thousands of chil- “Of course, 30 years later all Post and a Moscow correspondent, dren were killed when poorly con- these people were trying to reverse will moderate. His Post colleague structed school buildings collapsed. the procedures. They were so des- Many of the workers lost their only perate.” children. This reporting eventually Inside. Sichuan, she discovered, had spurred her to write a personal Recap: Remembering Castro.............2 also been a pilot site for China’s memoir and analysis of the policy, Recap: Book Night for ‘The Lovers’....3 one-child policy before it was im- One Child, The Story of China’s Recap: Encryption for Journalists......4 posed nationally in the late 70s. Most Radical Social Experiment. People Column...............................6-8 In the aftermath of the earth- On Feb. 9, OPC Governor Press Freedom Update..............9-10 quake, parents who lost their only Minky Worden hosted a Chinese Q&A: Jim Maceda.........................11 children soon flocked to hospitals New Year-themed Book Night to New Books.....................................12 to get sterilizations reversed. discuss Fong’s work with OPC Under the policy, parents were (Continued on Page 4) Karl Meyer Recounts 1958 Meeting With Fidel Castro EVENT RECAP By Chad Bouchard When Washington Post reporter Karl Meyer first met Fidel Castro as a rebel leader in the Sierra Maestra mountains in the summer of 1958, his first impression was of a “slightly manic” man with what he described as an “enormous ego.” “The impression you got from Castro was very much of a guy of overweening self-confidence and a sense of mission, and a sense of humor.” “Like Donald Trump?” an attendee joked. “The two would get along absolutely!” Meyer re- Chad Bouchard sponded. Karl Meyer, center left, and David Andelman. On Feb. 3, the OPC hosted a lunch in the Club Quar- When he was ready to depart for the mountains, he ters dining room to talk about Castro’s legacy with the sent a telegram from Santiago to Post editor Bob Esta- veteran reporter, who served on the editorial boards of brook, which read “Dear Bob, business in our line is ex- The New York Times and The Washington Post. Former cellent. Have a possibility of making a deal, but involves OPC President David Andelman, who worked for many seeing two brothers. And that means a side trip from Via years at The New York Times and World Policy Journal, Hermosa. Probably be out of touch for a week or more. moderated. Unless I hear from you within 48 hours, I will assume Castro and his army had been hiding and out of touch that you said ok,” he recalled the telegram reading. “And with the press for weeks when Meyer, still a cub reporter then I left immediately.” for the Post but slowly making a name as a Latin Amer- Meyer got into a car with his guide and went through ica specialist, contacted Castro’s movement in Wash- a series of checkpoints. They rode on horseback for three ington and hatched a plan to meet “El Comandante” in days through the Sierra Maestra before finally meeting Cuba. Castro at his camp. Risking arrest if he’d been discovered as a journalist, The two soon struck up a friendly conversation, in Meyer slipped into the country under guise as a teacher mixture of broken English and broken Spanish. He re- and told his editors that he was going on a “vacation.” (Continued on Page 5) OVERSEAS PRESS CLUB OF AMERICA • BOARD OF GOVERNORS PRESIDENT ACTIVE BOARD Scott Gilmore Paul Moakley ASSOCIATE BOARD PAST PRESIDENTS Marcus Mabry Jacqueline Albert- International Columnist Deputy Director MEMBERS EX-OFFICIO U.S. Lead Simon Maclean’s Magazine Photography and Brian I. Byrd Michael Serrill U.S. Bureau Chief Visual Enterprise Twitter Moments Time magazine Program Officer David A. Andelman Politique Internationale Peter S. Goodman NYS Health John Corporon Editor-in-Chief FIRST VICE PRESIDENT Hannah Allam Robert Nickelsberg Foundation Allan Dodds Frank Calvin Sims International Freelance Alexis Gelber Foreign Affairs Business Times President and CEO Correspondent Photojournalist Bill Collins William J. Holstein Director, Public & Marshall Loeb International House McClatchy Mary Rajkumar Newspapers Charles Graeber Business Affairs Larry Martz Freelance Journalist International Enterprise SECOND VICE PRESIDENT Editor Ford Motor Company Roy Rowan Deborah Amos and Author The Associated Press Larry Smith Abigail Pesta Correspondent Freelance Journalist Emma Daly Richard B. Stolley NPR Steve Herman Lara Setrakian Communications Bureau Chief Co-Founder & CEO Director Molly Bingham Southest Asia News Deeply EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR THIRD VICE PRESIDENT Human Rights Watch Patricia Kranz Pancho Bernasconi Freelance Journalist Voice of America Vice President/News Martin Smith Rukmini Callimachi President Daniel Sieberg OFFICE MANAGER Getty Images Anjali Kamat Rain Media Foreign Correspondent Global Head Boots R. Duque Correspondent Fault Lines of Media Outreach TREASURER The New York Times Liam Stack Al-Jazeera Breaking News Google EDITOR Tim Ferguson Chad Bouchard Anupreeta Das Reporter Editor Azmat Khan The New York Times Minky Worden Forbes Asia Reporter Wall Street Journal Investigative Reporter Director of Global Charles Wallace Initiatives OPC BuzzFeed News Financial Writer SECRETARY Chris Dickey Human Rights Watch ISSN-0738-7202 Deidre Depke Foreign Editor Dan Klaidman Vivienne Walt Copyright © 2015 New York Bureau Chief The Daily Beast, Deputy Editor Correspondent Over seas Press Club Marketplace Paris Yahoo News Time and Fortune of America 40 West 45 Street, New York, NY 10036 USA • Phone: (212) 626-9220 • Fax: (212) 626-9210 • Website: opcofamerica.org OPC Bulletin • February 2016 • Page 2 (‘Russia Hands’ - Continued From Page 1) than once. I remember the braggadocio of Mikhail as one big adventure, and one that afforded me the privi- Khodorkovsky, who was so proud to call himself “an lege of witnessing history in the making. I will never industrialist,” and who ended up in a Siberian prison forget being in the Russian White House in August 1991 when he underestimated the wrath of Putin; baby-faced when the mayor announced over the loudspeaker (in typ- Mikhail Fridman, who ruthlessly manipulated local ically sexist Russian fashion), “All women and children courts to take over companies he coveted; and the Don- must vacate the building,” because the hardline putsch ald Trump-like cockiness of Boris Berezhovsky, who leaders had ordered KGB troops to storm the building. thought anything good for him was good for the country. (The troops defied the order, which spelled the end of Politicians of that era courted the Western press. I in- the 3-day revolt.) When Yeltsin triumphantly returned to terviewed Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov in the White House, only to realize when I got back to the of- the White House and waved to the crowd, I was a half fice that my slacks had been unzipped.