Journalism & Photojournalism

Former New York Times Balkans Bureau Chief and Middle East Bureau Chief Chris Hedges. He's currently living in New York. He has covered war zones in Central America, the Middle East, and the Balkans for over 20 years and is the author of the new book, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.

Photographer and reporter Scott Peterson of The Christian Science Monitor has been covering the war on terrorism since the Sept. 11 attacks. He is also the paper's Moscow bureau chief, and a former Middle East correspondent. Peterson recently attended a training camp for journalists to learn how to deal with kidnappers and gunmen. He was also a friend of murdered journalist Daniel Pearl. Peterson is the author of the book Me Against My Brother: At War in Somalia, Sudan, and Rwanda.

Foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times, Thomas Friedman. He's just won his third Pulitzer Prize, this time for his "clarity of vision, based on extensive reporting, in commenting on the worldwide impact of the terrorist threat." Friedman was awarded the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for his international reporting from Lebanon and the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting from Isreal. He's also the author of From Beirut to Jerusalem, and The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization.

Journalist John Burns is the Islamabad Bureau Chief for the New York Times. He will talk about reporting on Pakistan and Afghanistan. In the past, Burns has been posted in China, Bosnia, South Africa and Russia. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes, one of them in 1997, for his reporting on the Taliban.

The two Washington Post journalists have co-written the book, The News about the News: American Journalism in Peril. (Knopf) Downie has been at the paper since 1964. Hes been executive editor since 1991. Kaiser joined the Post in 1963 and is now associate editor and senior correspondent. Their book is an investigation of why the journalism we watch and read is so bad. They offer suggestions on how to improve the institution.

Rob Siegel and Carol Kolb of The Onion. It's a weekly national newspaper and Web site. The satirical tabloid-style dispatch has headlines like "Lowest Common Denominator Continues to Plummet" and "U.S. Vows to Defeat Whoever It Is We're at War With." Siegel is The Onion's editor-in-chief and Kolb is the senior editor. The Onion began in 1988 as an alternative weekly newspaper and went online in 1996.

Boston Globe reporters Walter Robinson and Mike Rezendes. They're part of the investigative staff that broke the story of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. The staff has written a new book about the scandal called Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church. In January of 2002, the Globe published a two-part series revealing the details of a decades-long cover-up by the Boston Archdiocese. They told how a pedophile priest had been shuttled from parish to parish, and of the millions of dollars paid to victims to keep the story secret.

Michael Kinsley, editor of the online newsmagazine Slate. Hes just announced that hes stepping down from the position. Slate has been a very successful Web site, with over 2 million visitors each month. Kinsley told the New York Times that throughout his career, he has changed jobs every five or six years since he tends to get bored. He will continue to write for the Web site. Previously, Kinsley was editor of the New Republic magazine and co-host of CNNs Crossfire.

Journalist Andrew Meldrum is the Guardian Zimbabwe correspondent. Currently, he covers the upcoming presidential election in Zimbabwe and the crackdown that the media faces as election time nears. In the past few weeks, he written a series of articles focusing on the bill President Mugabe signed, requiring all journalists working in Zimbabwe to have a license from the Minister of Information.

Peter Bergen is a former correspondent/producer and current terrorism consultant for CNN, and the author of the book Holy War Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden. (The Free Press) It both a biography of Bin Laden and an explanation of bin Laden global network. While at CNN, Bergen produced bin Laden first TV interview, filmed at his mountain hideout in Afghanistan. Bergen has written about Islamist militant groups for The New Republic, London Daily Telegraph and The Washington Times.

Journalist Robert Kaplan is a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly. He is the best known for his book Balkan Ghosts which became the book that former President Clinton turned to before the U.S. involvement in the Bosnian crisis. His 1990 book, Soldiers of God: with Islamic Warriors in Afghanistan and Pakistan has just been republished, updating the story. The book now includes a new introduction and a final chapter on how the Taliban came to power.

Shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, Onion editor Rob Siegel and writer Todd Hanson produced two issues of the paper which featured articles including "U.S. Urges Bin Laden to Form Nation It Can Attack," and "Security Beefed up at Cedar Rapids Public Library."

We remember newspaper editor and anti-apartheid activist Donald Woods. His relationship with the slain black South African activist Steve Biko was dramatized in the 1987 film, Cry Freedom. He died yesterday in England, where he had lived for over 20 years. Well listen back to a 1987 interview.

We remember one of the most respected historians of the media Erik Barnouw. He died last week at the age of 93. He was the author of the classic three-volume History of Broadcasting. Barnouw was the first chief of the Library of Congress' Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recording Sound Division. In 1996 Barnouw wrote a memoir about his life, Media Marathon: A 20th Century Memoir.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews –The Fourth Hand— (Random House) by John Irving.

We remember the former publisher of The Washington Post, Katharine Graham. She died July 17th at the age of 84. Graham's father owned The Post in 1933 and later her husband, Phil Graham, took over. Following her husband's suicide in 1963, Graham became publisher, knowing little about the managerial or journalistic aspects of the job. But, learning while she worked, she transformed the paper into one of the country's most respected newspapers. The Post broke the Watergate scandal and published the Pentagon Papers against a federal judge's ruling.

Andrew Kromah lives and works in Sierre Leone. The country has been rated the most dangerous country in the world for journalists. For eight years now Kromah has run an independent radio station (KISS-FM) in Freetown and has reported on the rebels and government. Each week, as Mr. Owl he investigates local corruption. Twice his building has been burned down. During the 1996 election there, Kromah and his staff were forced to broadcast from the bush to escape injury.

They are authors of the new book, Leaving Readers Behind: The Age of Corporate Newspapering (University of Arkansas Press.) The book examines how newspaper reporting is being altered by the buying, selling, and consolidation of papers. In the book, they say the age of corporate newspapering is bringing about –a change that is diminishing the amount of real news available to the consumer.— Thomas Kunkel is dean of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland and president of American Journalism Review.

His book is Privileged Son: Otis Chandler and the rise and fall of the L.A. Times Dynasty.(Perseus) It is a history of the paper from 1960 to 1980. During that time Otis Chandler, a fourth generation member of the family, took control of the paper. His reign had elements of fabulous success and major scandal. He was described as –larger than life transforming The Times from a dreadful newspaper into one of the two or three best in the country.— (NYT magazine 1/23/2000) Dennis McDougal is a former investigative journalist for the L.A. Times.

El Tiempo is one of Columbia's leading dailies. Enrique Santos Calderon will talk about putting out a newspaper under the threat of kidnapping, torture or death from leftist guerillas and right wing paramilitary groups. In Columbia, more journalists have been killed in the past five years than in any other country.