WALLACE HOUSE JOURNAL Fall 2018 Volume 29 | No. 1 The world’s gone mad! At least there’s Wallace House... and a royal baby! BY CATHERINE MACKIE ‘19 are still demanding a second referendum, while the Twitteratti, from both sides of the argument are still shouting a lot and putting eghan Markle is due to give birth in the Spring of 2019. their thoughts in capital letters to show HOW RIGHT THEY ARE. MHallelujah! I’m guessing I’m not alone in hoping the And if you don’t agree with me, THEN YOU’RE AN IDIOT. Queen’s eighth great-grandchild arrives in the world on March 29th. Ideally at around 11pm (GMT) because that’s the time the Which brings me to Donald Trump. No, stop it! I’m not calling the UK is scheduled to leave the European Union. If there’s one thing U.S. president an idiot. You’re taking me out of context! that’s guaranteed to give a brief respite to hours and hours of All I’m saying is that in coming to the U.S. for a year, I’ve moved hand-wringing, tediously repetitive arguments and media naval from a Brexit-obsessed media to a Trump-obsessed gazing, it’s a royal baby. media. I’m not arguing that what happens with Brexit I had hoped that coming to Ann Arbor would free me and Trump aren’t vitally important. Brexit is a key from the daily reports of EU “crisis talks” post-Brexit, moment in British modern political history. Donald and to some extent it has. The day to day news obsessions Trump is the President of the United States. But I wonder from home have given way to the joy of entering Wallace what we’ve learned from these major movements? House and grasping with both hands the luxury of time – After the Brexit referendum, journalists lined up to to think, question and learn. My fellowship study plan is say we should have listened more to the public. After focussed on social class and how we can reconnect with all, more than 17 million people voted to leave the EU and the audiences outside of elite bubbles. The shock of Brexit wasn’t as questioning was endless. What had gone wrong? Social media much of a shock to some journalists like me who don’t work in commentators professed to offer some answers and Brexit shaming London. was unrelenting. If you voted Leave you must be a) racist b) But I’m not quite free of it – I’d forgotten about social media which stupid, or c) both. You couldn’t possibly be someone who was just has followed me here. On Facebook timelines everywhere, ‘friends’ CONTINUED ON BACK PAGE FROM THE HEAD FELLOW BY LYNETTE CLEMETSON ‘10 As of the end of October, the Committee to In this case, we’re extending that enveloping support beyond our Protect Journalists had confirmed 43 journalists walls to join ranks with a coalition of journalism organizations in killed this year as a result of their work. Reporters a public fight for press freedom. As journalists, we are certainly Without Borders estimates the total to be above not activists. But we can – and must – advocate for the freedom 50 and says that more journalists were killed in and safety of journalists around the world. And sometimes that the first nine months of 2018 than in all of 2017. requires a very tangible expression of our values. Some of the deaths have been in combat zones, but press safety To draw attention to Emilio’s plight, the Knight-Wallace experts say there is an alarming increase in journalists being Fellowships signed onto two amicus briefs in the case last March. murdered merely for doing their jobs. The grim tally includes We announced his invitation to the Fellowship at a live-streamed Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, brutally murdered conference at the National Press Club on May 3, which is World in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, four writers and one sales Press Freedom Day. And in October, I accompanied Emilio back assistant ambushed at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, to El Paso to offer testimony at what may be the final hearing Maryland, and Mario Leonel Gómez Sánchez, in his case. a local reporter in Chiapas, Mexico gunned Our engaging the system on his behalf has down in front of his home following a death allowed Emilio to exhale and enjoy fellowship threat on Facebook. These brazen murders have life - taking classes in the history of immigration ticked upward amid an atmosphere of heightened policy and Civil Rights, improving his English, public antipathy toward journalists and have learning Afro-Cuban drumming, and adding shaken even democratic countries that have been warmth to Wallace House with his guitar historically less prone to violent attacks playing and an abundance of home-cooked on the press. Mexican food. Wallace House has a distinguished history of Outside our cocoon, the world is still spinning supporting journalists through difficult times. wildly, careening in a way that leaves us itching The Fellowship has been a safe haven to reporters to jump in as journalists, and anxious about Emilio Gutiérrez Soto physically and psychologically battered from the fomenting hostility toward our work and covering combat and genocide, from seeing our rights. Alongside Emilio and our American friends and colleagues killed, and from persistent threats of harm. journalists, we have Fellows from Sweden, Brazil, Britain, Israel, Afghanistan, Uganda and Korea. Together we watched the U.S. This year we welcomed Mexican journalist and U.S. asylum seeker midterms unfold while still trying to make sense of the political Emilio Gutiérrez Soto to the fellowship following his release in late upheaval in Brazil and the nationalist waves rippling across July from an ICE detention facility in El Paso, Texas, where he had Europe. been held for nearly eight months. His captivity was one chapter in a 10-year saga with the American immigration system. He applied In some moments it feels dizzyingly abstract. In others it feels for asylum in 2008 following death threats related to his reporting sharply focused and painfully urgent. A judge is scheduled to rule on military corruption. Since then, targeted murders in his home in Emilio’s case in early January. We do not know if he will still be country have escalated. Mexico is now the deadliest country in the here with us at the end of the academic year. Western Hemisphere for journalists. A former Fellow recently posted a picture on social media of her In some ways Emilio’s introduction to the fellowship was daughter, a high school journalist, wearing a T-shirt that filled strikingly different than that of most Fellows – I interviewed him me with hope. In simple block letters it read: AMERICA NEEDS last April not in the warmth of Wallace House or via Skype, but in JOURNALISTS. It certainly does. And so does the world. I a detention facility, at a cold, steel table monitored by ICE guards ordered a few of the shirts, and Emilio took one with him to his through two-way glass. But in the most important ways, his hearing in El Paso. If you are interested in one, too, let me know. presence is not at all unusual. Providing a respite to journalists in Wallace House can use an infusion of new swag. need of a new start, providing a community of peers, intellectual bounty, emotional safety, and a fiercely supportive atmosphere in which to imagine new possibilities is what we do. 2 WALLACE HOUSE JOURNAL A Fellowship of Her Own After more than 18 years of helping to create life-changing fellowship experiences for other people, it is high time that our Wallace House Associate Director, Birgit Rieck, gets to experience a fellowship of her own. Birgit has been accepted into the inaugural class of the Media Transformation Challenge, a one- year executive leadership program at Harvard’s Kennedy School, designed to help news leaders find creative, sustainable solutions to challenges facing the industry. For the next year, Birgit will spend one week each quarter in Cambridge with a cohort of news executives working on a focused initiative to help Wallace House move in new directions. The timing for this unique development opportunity is ideal. Wallace House is in an exciting period of growth. Allowing Birgit the space to step away from the busy daily churn of the Knight-Wallace Fellowships to develop new ideas will benefit us for years to come. Birgit’s focus during her fellowship year will be examining ways for Wallace House to provide targeted support to journalism initiatives After many years of greasing the wheels of the Knight-Wallace Fellowship, Birgit Rieck is preparing to embark on a Fellowship of her in the Midwest. own. She is pictured in Moscow while traveling with the Class of 2010. Photo by Carlos Sacchetto ’10 “Over 63 million people live in the twelve Midwest states between North Dakota and Ohio but stories from the region seldom make headlines and most midwestern newsrooms continue to shrink In the quarterly training sessions, Birgit will join her fellowship or disappear completely. I’d like to find ways Wallace House cohort for coaching and group problem solving, designed to help can specifically support regional journalists and their work,” she news leaders drive long-lasting change within their organizations. said. “At the same time, I want to explore ideas that would make In the weeks between the group sessions she will spend time national audiences more interested in stories from the Midwest.