Melody Wilson's Blog

  • India’s Radical Transformation and Persisting Traditions: A Discussion with Miranda Kennedy

    “I was determined to be more than a casual visitor to India,” Miranda Kennedy writes in her new memoir, Sideways on a Scooter: Life and Love in India.

    “I’d been saving everything I earned at my job as a producer at a public radio show so that I could pick up and go overseas to try my hand at becoming a freelance foreign correspondent. The lack of transcendent, transformative experiences in my life so far had disappointed me: My days seemed a blur of headlines and deadlines.”

    And so, armed with just her recording equipment and ambition, Kennedy moved to New Delhi. She quickly became a regular freelance correspondent for shows such as NPR and Marketplace, focusing upon India’s changing traditions and culture—particularly marriage.

    Miranda recently spoke about the book and her experiences in India at an IRP event.

    When she first took off for India, she told the audience, she was not unprepared. She had researched the rapid changes occurring in India, and she

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  • Jill Abramson Named Executive Editor of The New York Times

    The New York Times announced today that Jill Abramson will succeed Bill Keller as executive editor of the paper.

    Jill, a member of our advisory board and a Gatekeeper Editor who traveled to India with IRP in 2005, is a very talented journalist and editor. We have enjoyed watching her advance in her career at The Times, and wish her all the best in her new

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  • Maggie Jones Named 2012 Nieman Fellow

    Maggie Jones, a 2001 IRP Fellow, was named a 2012 Nieman Fellow today.

    As an IRP Fellow, Jones reported on efforts to shut down brothels in Thailand.

    More from the Nieman Journalism Lab:
    "Maggie Jones, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine based in Newton, Massachusetts, will study immigration public policy, law and literature, particularly as they relate to families in the United States and abroad."


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  • Making Inroads in Infrastructure

    Kanthi Koeniger, a freelance journalist in Indonesia, points to the outline of a distant mountain as we enter the city. We are lucky, she tells our group. That mountain is only visible once every six months; the rest of the time, it is obscured by the smog that coats Jakarta’s skyline.

    Much attention is paid to the devastating environmental impact of deforestation in Indonesia, the third largest greenhouse-gas emitter in the world. But few focus upon another major pollutant: vehicles.

    About 500 cars are registered in Jakarta each day, Koeniger says; others have reported that as many as 7,000 new motorcycles are registered every week in this commuter city, in part because of tax credits for the more efficient vehicles.

    Traffic jams are a part of life in Jakarta. Just to get to another part of the city, we have to plan to leave at least an hour early—and that’s on a good day.

    Obviously, this is a major infrastructure problem. Approximately 2 to 4 million people

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