- Trip: TBD
- Affiliation: International Reporting Project
- Country: Rwanda
- Year: 2000
John Schidlovsky is the founding director of the International Reporting Project. He created the program in 1998 with the goal of encouraging more international coverage in the U.S. media. Previously he spent four years as the first director of The Freedom Forum’s Asian Center in Hong Kong from 1993 to 1997, monitoring media changes in the transition of Hong Kong to Chinese rule and working with journalists in virtually every country in the Asia-Pacific region. From 1990 to 1993 he was the curator of the Jefferson Fellowships program for journalists at the East-West Center in Honolulu.
Schidlovsky was a reporter for nearly 20 years, including 13 years with The Baltimore Sun. He was The Sun’s Beijing bureau chief from 1987 to the end of 1989, and closely covered the Tiananmen Square demonstrations and aftermath. Earlier he served as The Sun’s New Delhi bureau chief and covered events in the Indian Subcontinent and throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Before joining The Sun in 1977, he was a freelance reporter in Cairo and Beirut, covering the region for NBC, ABC and Newsday.
Schidlovsky studied Arabic at the American University in Cairo and at Columbia University, from which he received a bachelor’s degree in English in 1970. He began his career in journalism as a reporter at the Springfield (MA) Union in 1971. He was awarded a Gannett Fellowship in Asian Studies at the University of Hawaii in 1983 and was named journalist-in-residence at the East-West Center in 1989. He has written about media issues for the Media Studies Journal, Nieman Reports, IPI Reports, American Journalism Review and other publications.