Winter 2014: Class Notes

Nicholas Daniloff received the 2013 New England Newspaper Press Association Journalism Educator of the Year Award during the association’s annual conference in October. He has taught at the Northeastern University School of Journalism in Boston since 1989 and plans to retire at the end of the current academic year. He is known for engaging his students though role-playing exercises, taking on the part of an administration spokesman holding a press conference on Iran or donning a black robe and curly wig to portray philosopher Immanuel Kant. Daniloff previously served as a correspondent in London, Paris, Moscow and Washington for United Press International and U.S. News World Report, and has written three books.

Read Dolan’s Obituary in The Buffalo (N.Y.) News Thomas J. Dolan, a longtime investigative reporter at The Buffalo (N.Y.) News, died of Parkinson’s disease at a retirement community in Getzville, New York, on August 23, 2013. He was 70. After starting his journalism career at the South Bend (Ind.) Tribune, Dolan arrived at The Buffalo Evening News in the 1960s. A native of Illinois, he left Buffalo after a few years to become an investigative reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times and, later, a producer at WBBM-TV. He returned to the News in 1982 and spent the next 26 years as a financial, city and suburban reporter. He retired in 2008. His second wife, Marion G. Dolan, died in 2011. He is survived by a son and daughter from his first marriage and two stepsons.

Micha Bar-Am’s photojournalism is distilled in “Insight: Micha Bar-Am’s Israel,” published in September 2011 by Koenig Books to coincide with a traveling exhibition of the same name. Exhibit curator Alexandra Nocke edited the book. For almost 60 years Bar-Am followed the history of Israel with his camera. He covered ordinary moments in the lives of Israeli citizens and the numerous wars across the Middle East. Images from the book were exhibited at the Willy-Brandt-Haus in Berlin and at the Open Museum of Photography in Israel.

Emily O’Reilly became the European Ombudsman in October, following her election by the European Parliament in July. From her office in Strasbourg, France, O’Reilly fields complaints from the 28 member states of the European Union (EU) about EU institutions. The European Ombudsman typically receives about 2,500 complaints a year from citizens, businesses, and other entities. Many of them are about a lack of transparency, including access to documents. For the previous 10 years O’Reilly had served as the National Ombudsman of Ireland. Prior to that she was a longtime political reporter for The Sunday Tribune, The Sunday Business Post, The Irish Press, and The Sunday Times.

Peter Richmond‘s book “Phil Jackson: The Lord of the Rings” was published in December by Blue Rider Press. Jackson is a retired National Basketball Association player and coach who won 11 championships—six with Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls and five with Kobe Bryant’s Los Angeles Lakers. Jackson, the son of Pentecostal ministers who became the most successful coach in the history of professional sports, declined to be interviewed for the book so Richmond interviewed everyone he could find who knew him.

Ying Chan received the 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Asian American Journalists Association in August. Chan, a former reporter for New York’s Daily News, is currently a professor of journalism at the University of Hong Kong and founding director of the school’s Journalism and Media Studies Centre. She was also the founding dean of Shantou University’s School of Journalism and Communication. “She’s helping to train, inspire and motivate an entirely new generation of curious young journalists,” award judge Josh Awtry wrote of Chan. “I can think of no better time and place for leadership in the principles of a free press. As issues of social inequality and free speech come to the fore, it’s a comfort to know that journalists like Ying Chanare assisting in engagement and education outreach efforts.”

Mary Schmich has collected more than 150 of her Chicago Tribune columns from the past 20 years in the new collection “Even the Terrible Things Seem Beautiful to Me Now,” published in August by Agate Midway. The book includes the 10 pieces for which she was awarded the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary, as well as her series on the demolition of an infamous housing project, a 12-part series about a district judge whose mother and husband were murdered, and “Wear Sunscreen,” her widely quoted graduation column from 1997.

Christine Chinlund received the Yankee Quill Award from the New England Newspaper Press Association in October. The award honors the lifetime achievements of journalists in New England who “have had a broad influence for good, both inside and outside the newsroom,” according to the association’s website. Chinlund started her journalism career as a volunteer with VISTA (Volunteer in Service to America) in Vermont, producing and delivering a monthly newspaper for low-income residents. She worked at several newspapers in Vermont before joining the Globe’s bureau in Concord, New Hampshire. She has been with the Globe for 30 years, serving as political and investigative reporter, editor of the national and foreign desks, and ombudsman. She is currently the managing editor for news. The nomination submitted by Globe reporter Emily Sweeney, president of the New England chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, praised Chinlund’s leadership and experience: “She’s one of the sages of the newsroom, and highly regarded by her peers. She’s the one reporters and editors turn to when they need advice on a story. They respect her, and trust her judgment.”

Mark Pothier was promoted to business editor at The Boston Globe in August after three years as deputy business editor. Pothier joined the Globe after his Nieman Fellowship, becoming the first editor of Globe South, one of the newspaper’s zoned sections.

Peter Turnley published a new book of photographs documenting his nearly 40 years living in Paris. “French Kiss: A Love Letter to Paris,” which he self-published in November, features moments of everyday life in Turnley’s adopted hometown—a stark contrast from the photographs of war, famine and disaster around the world for which he is best known. Turnley was a contract photographer for Newsweek from 1986 to 2001, and his work has also been featured in Harper’s, National Geographic, and other magazines.

Jeffrey Fleishman is now a senior reporter for the Los Angeles Times’s arts and entertainment team after spending the past 11 years as a foreign correspondent for the paper.

Giannina Segnini was recognized for journalistic excellence with a Gabriel Garcia Márquez Prize for Journalism in November. Segnini founded the investigative unit at La Nación newspaper in Costa Rica, where she has been a pioneer in computer-assisted reporting and data mining to uncover corruption. Most famously, the newspaper’s reporting about two former presidents accepting bribes led to both being sent to prison. In announcing Segnini’s selection, the advisory board for the award, which includes Rosental Alves, NF ‘88, wrote that what “the investigative team at La Nación has done under Segnini’s leadership has permitted the discovery of deliberately hidden relationships between facts and persons, and abuses of power.”

Masha Gessen is the author of “Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot,” published by Riverhead in January. In February 2012, the five women known as Pussy Riot performed a “punk prayer” in a Moscow church to rid the nation of Vladimir Putin. Security forces shut them down. A video of the performance went viral.

Read Milne’s obituary in The Guardian Kirsty Milne, a journalist who later turned to academia, died of cancer in July. She was 49. Milne was raised in a media family—her father, Alasdair Milne, was director-general of the BBC and her brother Seumas is a journalist with The Guardian—and followed that path out of college as a trainee at the BBC. She soon turned to print journalism, writing for the New Society and New Statesman magazines in London. She moved to Scotland, where she had spent part of her childhood, to cover the newly established Scottish Parliament for the Sunday Herald and The Scotsman in 1999 until she left for her Nieman Fellowship in 2003. The year at Harvard was followed by a career change. She completed a master’s degree in intellectual and cultural history at Queen Mary University of London and a doctorate in English language and literature at Magdalen College in Oxford—the latter after being diagnosed with lung cancer. Her doctoral thesis, “Vanity Fair From Bunyan to Thackeray: Transformations of a Trope,” is scheduled to be published as a book next year. She is survived by her husband, Hugh Shaw Stewart.

Alagi Yorro Jallow self-published the book “Delayed Democracy: How Press Freedom Collapsed in The Gambia” in October. After its independence from the United Kingdom in 1965, Gambia was one of the few successful multiparty democracies in Africa, Jallow writes, with a press that was free to criticize its leaders. But after current President Yahya Jammeh seized power in a 1994 coup, the government cracked down on dissent in the media. The newspaper that Jallow founded and edited, The Independent, was one of the casualties of that repression; staff members were harassed, threatened and arrested, and its presses were destroyed. In addition to recounting this grim history, Jallow also offers some hope. Several former journalists from The Independent have created online outlets in exile.

Andrea McCarren won five Emmy awards from the National Capital Chesapeake Bay chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts Sciences in June. McCarren, a reporter and part-time anchor for WUSA in Washington, D.C., has now won 15 Emmy awards in her career. Her reporting from the past year that was honored includes a series on underage drinking and “Six Terrible Seconds,” about a woman who survived an accident that killed two of her friends, one of whom was driving drunk. That report also won a regional 2013 Edward R. Murrow Award for hard news reporting. Her series “Wasted: Young and Using” received awards for outstanding news series and best investigative reporting from the Chesapeake Associated Press Broadcasters Association and the Washington Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, respectively.

Jenifer McKim became the assistant managing editor and senior investigative reporter at the New England Center for Investigative Reporting in August. The nonprofit center, based at Boston University’s College of Communication, partners with local news media to conduct in-depth investigative reporting with the assistance of student researchers. McKim spent the past six years as a reporter at The Boston Globe, where she covered business and social issues and won the 2011 Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism for a series on child sex trafficking. She was previously on the investigative team at the Orange County Register.

Dan Vergano joined NationalGeographic.com as a senior writer and editor in September. He covers daily news for the site, with a focus on the science angle. During the government shutdown in October, for example, Vergano wrote about how a plan to move a Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton from Montana to Washington, D.C. was put on hold. Vergano previously covered science, technology and energy for USA Today, where he had worked for the past 14 years.

Alissa Quart profiles fringe groups that are changing mainstream culture in “Republic of Outsiders: The Power of Amateurs, Dreamers and Rebels,” published by The New Press in August. Her subjects range from “mad priders” who choose to treat mental illnesses with peer counseling instead of drugs to retired Wall Street bankers forming an Occupy Bank Working Group to create new financial networks.

Rob Rose’s new book “The Grand Scam: How Barry Tannenbaum Conned South Africa’s Business Elite,” was published in November by Zebra Press. Rose broke the story of Tannenbaum’s scheme while working as an investigative reporter for The Financial Mail magazine in 2009. He currently covers business and corruption for South Africa’s Sunday Times.

Pablo Corral Vega self-published a photo book “My Garden in the Wild” in December. In early 2013, Vega began taking photographs of the natural “gardens” of Ecuador as a tribute to his girlfriend, Carolina Hidalgo, who was killed in a car accident in January 2013. He raised money with a Kickstarter campaign, which raised nearly three times its goal.

David Skok, formerly director of Globalnews.ca, the online portal for one of Canada’s largest broadcast news companies, has joined The Boston Globe as digital adviser to the editor. In a memo to staff, Globe editor Brian McGrory said, “David will play a key role in our upcoming push to further define our two brands— bg.com as a broader, more ambitious site that better reflects the creative journalism of the Globe, and a redesigned boston.com as a sharper, edgier site with a strong news spine.”

Ludovic Blecher was named director of the Digital Innovation Press Fund when it launched in September. A joint effort of Google and a French publishing trade group, the Association of Political and General Information, the fund will disburse 60 million euro (approximately $80 million) over the next three years to French media organizations with ideas for innovation in digital media. Blecher previously was in charge of digital strategy for French newspaper Libération.

Alexandra Garcia joined The New York Times as a senior video journalist in October. For her first piece posted to the newspaper’s website, Garcia traveled to Conyers, Georgia, to report on “The Great Bull Run,” an Americanized version of Pamplona’s famous running of the bulls. She formerly worked at The Washington Post.

Beauregard Tromp, who was a visiting assistant professor and Knight Chair at the University of Miami School of Communication during the fall 2013 semester, helped to produce “20 Years On,” a student reporting project documenting life in South African townships 20 years after apartheid ended.