IRP Fellows for 2009 Program Announced
By IRP Staff, June 16, 2009
Ten U.S. journalists have been awarded International Reporting Project (IRP) Fellowships in Washington D.C. for the 2009 program, including four journalists focusing on global environmental topics and three on stories dealing with loose nuclear materials.
The nine-week-long fellowships, which are designed to encourage coverage of international issues by the U.S. news media, will begin in late August 2009. The International Reporting Project (IRP), now in its 11th year, is based at The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of The Johns Hopkins University.
The 2009 IRP Fellows will report from Bangladesh, Brazil, Georgia, India, Kenya, the Middle East, Pakistan, Russia, Rwanda and Thailand. The IRP Fellows, their affiliations and the countries from which they will report are:
- Perry Beeman, environment reporter, The Des Moines Register – Rwanda
- Theresa Bradley, freelance journalist – Brazil
- Joanna Kakissis, freelance journalist – Bangladesh
- Miranda Kennedy, freelance journalist – India
- Julia Lyon, reporter, The Salt Lake Tribune – Thailand
- Tara McKelvey, senior editor, The American Prospect – Russia
- Amna Nawaz, producer, NBC News, Pakistan
- Jessica Silver-Greenberg, staff editor, BusinessWeek – Kenya
- Joby Warrick, national staff reporter, The Washington Post – Middle East
- Sharon Weinberger, freelance journalist – Georgia
“Global environmental coverage has been a major focus of our program for years,” said John Schidlovsky, director of the International Reporting Project (IRP). “With the global climate change conference in Copenhagen this December, we’re delighted that we’ll be underwriting so many timely stories on international environment-related issues.”
Judges for this year’s competition included David Lamb, contributing writer for Smithsonian and a 2001 IRP Journalist-in-Residence; Tyler Marshall, a former Los Angeles Times foreign correspondent; Katie Thomas, a reporter with The New York Times and 2006 IRP Fellow; Louise Lief, deputy director of the IRP, and John Schidlovsky, IRP director. This year’s competition attracted a record number of nearly 200 applications from U.S. journalists.
Since its founding in 1998, the International Reporting Project has enabled more than 300 U.S. journalists to pursue reporting projects overseas from more than 85 countries. IRP Fellows’ prize-winning stories have appeared in hundreds of U.S. media organizations, including online, TV, radio, newspapers and magazines.
The next deadline for applications for the IRP Fellowships is April 1, 2010, for the program to be conducted in the fall of 2010. For more information, call (202) 663-7761, fax (202) 663-7762, email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)