Fellows & Editors
Julia Lyon
- Trip:
- Fellows Fall 2009
- Affiliation:
- Salt Lake Tribune
- Country:
- Thailand
- Year:
- 2009
Julia Lyon covers social services at The Salt Lake Tribune in Utah, where she has written about poverty issues ranging from hunger to homelessness. Over the past year, she became the paper’s lead refugee reporter and began to explore the huge challenges facing Salt Lake City’s newest arrivals from Africa, Iraq and Burma.
She was previously a reporter at The Bulletin in Bend, Ore. where she began her journalism career in the farm fields of Jefferson County. There she learned to appreciate how a town’s love for basketball could transcend race and socio-economics and how a proposed power plant could divide a community.
In both Bend and Salt Lake City, Julia also covered K-12 education issues including charter schools and No Child Left Behind. She is a graduate of Columbia’s Journalism School and Columbia College. Prior to her newspaper career, she worked as a dance critic for CitySearch.com in New York City. A native of Bethesda, Julia and her husband live in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Post-IRP Stories
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May 22, 2010 | The Salt Lake Tribune
Angry outburst derails plea hearing in Burmese girl's slaying
Stories
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A Missing Piece: A family’s unrealized dreams reflect the plight of refugees
Click here to view the multi-media package for The Salt Lake Tribune After a lifetime of losses, they believed America would save them. But their fragile new start in Utah faded into...
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Video: Hser Ner Moo’s life
Seven-year-old Hser Ner Moo moved to Salt Lake City from a Burmese refugee camp in Thailand with her family. Eight months later she was found dead after she was murdered in an...
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Video: Mae La refugee camp
Mae La Refugee camp from Jeremy Harmon on Vimeo. Mae La is the largest refugee camp on the Burma/Thailand border. Thousands of refugees come to the United States from camps like...
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CHAPTER 4: Fleeing grief A mother worries “We may not be able to regain the strength we had before.”
Adapting to life in Iowa News of Hser Ner Moo's murder raced across the ocean to Mae La, where thousands of families believed immigration to the U.S. would be their salvation. ...
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Invited to escape to America, some refugees just say no
Go inside Umpiem refugee camp Four years ago, when the U.S. offered impoverished Burmese refugees freedom in America, thousands of them didn't care. Despite years of living in primitive camps on...
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Those lucky enough to get to America not so lucky after all
From New York to Utah, refugees who can't find a job, don't have enough food or feel abandoned by caseworkers look for help -- in Thailand. And eight thousand miles away, at...
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CHAPTER 3: After an uneasy start in Utah, parents devastated by daughter’s death
Orientation to a Western lifestyle At Mae La, Hser Ner Moo was her father's shadow. When he put on his sandals, she put on hers, too. When he washed dishes in a...
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CHAPTER 2: Parents face delays, confusion in a slow wait for justice
Meet the children of Burma Cartoon walked across the flat, grassy expanse of Elysian Burial Gardens and gently placed Hser Ner Moo's polka-dotted sunglasses by her brown and gray stone. He sometimes...
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CHAPTER 1: Stolen hope: Daughter’s death comes after years of fear, running for a Burmese family
Hser Ner Moo. She is probably dead before anyone reports her missing, still wearing her pink shirt, pink skirt and pink coat, lying face down in the shower where FBI agents would...
Blog Posts RSS
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December 14, 2010 | by Lyon, Julia
IRP Fellow Wins UN Correspondents’ Gold Medal Award
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