MONTHLY NEWSLETTER I February-March 2018 Jeff Glor Tells OPC Foundation Scholars INSIDE to ‘Stay Focused’ Amid Threats to News Biz Event Preview: Book Night With Steve Coll 2 EVENT RECAP The list of recipients included 16 graduate and undergraduate stu- by chad bouchard Marshall Loeb dents aspiring to become foreign Memorial 3 BS Evening News an- correspondents, with six scholars chor Jeff Glor told a packed from Columbia University, two from Symposium Preview: Peace, Conflict room at the OPC Founda- City University of New York, one C from New York University, two from and The Media 3 tion Scholar Awards Luncheon that journalists at the start of their Brown University, and one each from Scholar Profiles 4-5 careers should remember that this the University of Missouri, DePauw is not the first time that the industry University, University of California- People Column 6-8 Berkeley, University of Texas at Aus- has faced challenges. Remembering “This is not a completely tin and Yale. George Bookman 7 unique moment in our history,” he Each of the scholars spoke about Jeff Glor said during a keynote address at DAMES MICHAEL their own paths to journalism, many Press Freedom Update 8-9 the Feb. 23 event at the Yale Club. as shrinking overseas bureaus and sharing anecdotes from the field. Among them was Jack Brook, “If the reporting is extraordinary, faltering public trust in news. “Good New Books 10 people will find it.” journalists make other journalists the David R Schweisberg Memorial The Emmy-award winner called better. We can and must inspire each Scholarship winner, who opened the Q&A: for optimism despite obstacles such other. Stay focused,” Glor said. Continued on Page 2 Christopher Dickey 11 PEN America to Share Report on Censorship in China are cut down to size. sive interviews with writers, poets, Cognitive Surplus; James Tager, EVENT PREVIEW: MARCH 13 PEN America’s report includes artists, and others whose lives senior manager of free expression an examination of how such have personally been impacted by programs at PEN America; and he OPCand PEN America censorship impacts the lives of this system of censorship, as well Edward Wong, an international are co-sponsoring a pro- Chinese writers and artists, for as interviews with anonymous correspondent for The New York gram to discuss PEN’s new T whom social media is often a employees at Chinese social media Times and a Nieman Fellow at report on social media censorship creative and financial lifeline. For companies. Harvard University. Wong served within China. The report will writers and other creatives, the The panel will include: Kaiser as Beijing Bureau Chief and China help demonstrate how, under the censorship of their social media Kuo, co-founder of Sinica podcast, correspondent from 2008 to 2017. tenure of President Xi Jinping, presence is an erasure not just of a current affairs podcast in Bei- The moderator will be Minky the Chinese government’s control their opinions, but of their work jing, and former director of Worden, director of global over the social media space in the and their creative expression. communications at Baidu. initiatives at Human country has both tightened and At a time when the line be- com – prior to that he Rights Watch. expanded. The Chinese govern- Click here tween a writer’s official work and was a journalist with The program will be- ment is wielding its ability to to RSVP for the his or her social media presence is Red Herring and China panel. gin at 6:30 in the Priestly surveil and censor as a way to increasingly blurred, censorship Now; Clay Shirky, fac- Room at Club Quarters. control civic discussion online, to and surveillance of social media ulty in Interactive Media Visit the OPC website to prevent dissatisfaction and dissent, means that there is no safe outlet Arts at NYU Shanghai and read more, or click on the and to protect the reputations of its for uncensored expression. author of two books on social me- gold button to RSVP. highest members while ensuring The report includes comprehen- dia: Here Comes Everybody and that influential social media users 1 1 Steve Coll to Discuss Book on Covert U.S. Wars United States to apprehend the motivations The moderator will be Robert Nickelsberg, EVENT PREVIEW: MARCH 22 and intentions of the Pakistan intelligence author of the prize-winning book, Afghanistan agency’s “Directorate S.” This highly secretive – A Distant War. He has worked as a contract teve Coll, author of the Pulitzer organization had its own views on the Taliban photographer for TIME magazine for over 25 Prize-winning Ghost Wars and the dean and Afghanistan’s place in a wider competi- years. His new book of photographs, Afghani- of the Graduate School of Journalism at S tion for influence between Pakistan, India stan’s Heritage: Restoring Spirit and Columbia University, will talk to OPC mem- and China, and which assumed that bers about his new book, Directorate S: The C. Stone, done in conjunction with the the U.S. and its allies would soon be I. A. and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan Click here U.S. Department of State, will be leaving. and Pakistan, 2001-2016. His book explains to RSVP for the published in May, 2018. Coll is also a staff writer forThe book night. how America came to be so badly ensnared in The program will get underway New Yorker, and previously worked an elaborate, factional, and seemingly intermi- at 7:00 p.m. in the Priestly Room at for twenty years at The Washington nable conflict in South Asia. Club Quarters. Click on the gold button Post, where he received a Pulitzer Prize for As Coll makes clear, the war in Afghani- to make a reservation. v explanatory journalism in 1990. stan was doomed because of the failure of the ‘Scholars’ ence pitching big political stories in Beirut Continued From Page 1 only to have editors reject them one by one. MANY THANKS She recalled nearly falling into a big hole in acceptance speeches with a story about his the street one day, and pitched road conditions The OPC Foundation is especially first assignment covering protests in Chile as a story. “That actually turned into my first grateful for its Patrons and last summer while working for the Santiago feature on how unsafe walking conditions in Friends who supported the Times, showing up in jeans and a tee shirt Beirut were quite literally killing people.” 2018 Scholar Awards Luncheon. amid riot police in armored vehicles and pro- She also wrote about anti-sectarian university Their contributions ensure testers wearing gas masks. clubs and chased down a sexual health hotline “And that’s how I ended my first day in the continued success of the number she found on a restroom wall at a foundation’s scholarship/ Santiago, soaking wet from water cannons, club. She said those kinds of stories “taught my face stinging from tear gas, alone in a me a value that I will always strive to carry fellowship program. metropolis where I knew no one,” he said, with me: Fresh eyes. Not necessarily those Patrons adding that the while the adventure of such of a young foreign naïve reporter, but those experiences is exciting, he cares more about of someone who takes notice and takes every Bloomberg “holding conversations with people quite conversation experience as an opportunity to CBS News different than myself and listening deeply to indulge curiosity and follow it.” DeBré will Daimler those stories and engaging their perspectives head to Jerusalem on an OPC Foundation fel- General Motors without judgement.” Brook plans to work as a lowship with The Associated Press. Reuters freelancer in Hong Kong this summer. This year marked the launch of the Sally Marcus Roy Rowan Other comments from scholars included Jacobsen Fellowship, named after the veteran Toyota Motor North America those of Harper’s Magazine Scholarship win- Associated Press correspondent based in Friends ner Adriana Carranca Corrêa, a Brazilian Mexico City and Brussels who died suddenly The Associated Press multimedia journalist with several years of last May. Bill Holstein, OPC Foundation BlackRock foreign reporting experience. She said at the president, said Jacobsen was the AP’s first Boies Schiller Flexner LLP beginning of her career many editors warned female international editor who “smashed the Hong Kong Economic her that the profession of journalism was un- glass ceiling.” and Trade Office in New York stable and dying. The first recipient was Hiba Dlewati, who “I refused to believe that. I think it’s a talked about her experience reporting on the Pamela Howard Family Foundation great time to be a journalist. It has become U.S. coalition defeat of ISIS forces in June International House even more relevant, and the good news is 2015 near the Syria-Turkey border, where thou- Knight-Bagehot Fellowship, Columbia that people are realizing that.” As evidence sands of people were displaced from the fight- University of the profession’s importance, she recalled ing. She said she discovered many different and Leibner/Cooper Family Foundation recently that her copy of The New York Times conflicting perspectives among survivors. “We Quest Diagnostics was stolen from her doorstep in the Bronx. are living in increasingly polarized times, and William S. Rukeyser “We are back in the game!” she joked, since it’s easy to just hear what you want to hear,” S&P Global it means someone still thinks the news is she said. “One of the most humbling and eye The Wall Street Journal valuable enough to steal. Corrêa will serve opening lessons journalism has taught me is as an OPC Foundation fellow with Reuters in that there are many truths to any story.” v Brussels.