Highlights Archive

See our home page for current highlights.

FRONTLINE/World Nominated for National Emmy Awards
Nine current and former J-School students and faculty worked on three FRONTLINE/World stories nominated recently for national news and documentary Emmy Awards, honoring superior work in online stories and video. (continue reading)

Berkeley Skills Displayed at Unity Conference in Chicago
Faculty, staff, students, and alumni traveled to Chicago for Unity '08, the biggest journalism conference of the year, recruiting new applicants, joining panels, and teaching multimedia skills to eager young participants.

School Wins Ford Foundation Grant To Develop Digital News Sites in Bay Area
The J-School is pleased to announce an exciting new teaching, research, and technology development initiative supported by a $500,000 Ford Foundation grant to produce digital news sites for San Francisco Bay Area communities. (continue reading)

Clay Felker Remembered
The legendary magazine editor was the namesake of the J-School's Felker Magazine Center, a distinguished member of the faculty, and beloved teacher.(continue reading)

Felker Magazine Center Wins Awards
The 2007 student magazine, J-Spam Magazine won the Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence Award for Region 11, taking 1st Place for Best Student Magazine. In addition Meghann Farnsworth, '07, won the Region 11 3rd Place award for Best Non-fiction Article. At the national level Edwin Okong'o, '07, won the Mark of Excellence award for Best Non-fiction Article and Shane Bauer won the Mark of Excellence award for Feature Photography.

Carnegie Approves New Berkeley Grant
The $375,000 award will support new J-School courses in a range of fields from Business to Public Health, and Key Issues and international travel classes. Read press release for more information about the Carnegie-Knight Initiative.

'Frontline' UC Berkeley Co-Production Wins Mirror Award
"News War" has won the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University's Mirror Award for Best Investigative Piece. The award honors the reporters, editors and teams of writers who hold a mirror to their own industry for the public's benefit. The awards were presented on June 23rd in New York City.

'Frontline' UC Berkeley Co-Production wins NPC Award
"News War" has won the Arthur Rowse Award for Press Criticism honoring the year's best coverage of the media industry. Logan Professor Lowell Bergman was the series correspondent, lecturer Stephen Talbot was a producer and Marlena Telvick was the series associate producer. The awards will be presented in Washington on July 14.

"Mexico: Crimes at the Border," PBS FRONTLINE/World, Tuesday, May 27th
10:00pm KVIE CH-6 and KQED CH-9, June 10th at 9:00pm.
Investigative Reporting Fellow Andrew Becker's nine-month project, "Mexico: Crimes at the Border," a joint investigation by PBS FRONTLINE/World and The New York Times examines the increasingly lucrative business of human smuggling at the U.S.-Mexico border, and the American border officials corrupted by the trade. Through interviews and dramatic undercover surveillance video from U.S. law enforcement, Mr. Becker, along with correspondent Lowell Bergman and producer Oriana Zill, report on how this illicit and growing business has spurred an increase in corruption cases investigated by the FBI and other federal agencies across the southwest border. Berkeley alumni that worked on the documentary include: Andrew Becker, Andres Cediel, Matt Vree, Manal Ahmad, Charlotte Buchen, Josiah Hooper, Andi McDaniel and Alison Satake. An extensive website produced by Jackie Bennion and Matt Vree of FRONTLINE/World will go live immediately after the broadcast.

Winners In Competition For Investigative Reporting Fellowships
To help develop a new generation of investigative reporters in an era of cutbacks at major news organizations, UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism has announced the winners of three fellowships in investigative reporting. The competition was open to all working journalists, but preference was given to graduates of the master's program in journalism. Winners of the $45,000 full-time year-long fellowships are Jonathan Jones, a 2005 Berkeley graduate, Samuel Kennedy, a 2001 Berkeley graduate and Carrie Lozano, a 2005 Berkeley graduate. The fellowships are funded by the Sandler Foundation, the Gruber Family Foundation, Scott and Jennifer Fearon, Ian and Rita Isaacs and the Einhorn Family Charitable Trust. The fellowships will begin on September 1st.

Longform Class Launches TelevisionLives.org
Stories produced by the J-school's second-year longform television class can now be viewed at TelevisionLives.org. Cuban cowboys, Mongolian musicians and Mexican luchadors round out this year's batch of work. Stay tuned for more student productions, and feel free to leave your comments.

The Future of Investigative Reporting
Top brass from The New York Times, ‘60 Minutes', PBS ‘Frontline', The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, ABC News and NPR joined investigative reporters and editors from around the country, and non-profits like ProPublica to debate the future of investigative reporting April 25-27th at the Journalism School. Journalism professors and lecturers Lowell Bergman, Paul Grabowitz, Tom Goldstein, Sharon Tiller and Steve Talbot served on panels.

Frontline/WORLD Wins Webby People's Voice Awards
The 12th Annual Webby Award winners were announced last week.
Nearly 500,000 people voted online for their favorites in the People's Voice Awards, and FRONTLINE/World won two of them: for best online documentary series; and for best single episode of a news and politics series: "Dubai: Night Secrets" by jschool faculty Mimi Chakarova and alum Sachi Cunningham. The series is produced by lecturers Sharon Tiller and Steve Talbot. The production facilities and editorial offices for Frontline/WORLD across from the Journalism School are supported by the Reva and David Logan Family Foundation.

'Frontline' UC Berkeley Co-Production Earns Bart Richards Award
From Penn State
A four-part series produced by "Frontline" titled "News War" has won the 2007 Bart Richards Award for Media Criticism. The award is one of the few in the country to take a hard look at the media and the job being done by publishers, editors, and reporters. Logan Professor Lowell Bergman was the series correspondent, lecturer Stephen Talbot was a producer and IRP Deputy Director Marlena Telvick was the series associate producer. Eighteen current and former Berkeley students contributed to "News War." Major funding was provided by the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Foundation. Additional funding was provided by The Nathan Cummings Foundation and The Reva and David Logan Family Foundation. Students and alumni assisting in the production of "News War" were Jonathan Jones, Lee Wang, Matt Levin, Cathy Bussewitz, Sachi Cunningham, Josiah Hooper, Ariana Reguzzoni, Aaron Selverston, Zachary Stauffer, Kate Golden, Pamela Harris, Charlotte Buchen, Cerissa Tanner, Clayton Worfolk, Jason Blalock, Marjorie McAfee and Matt Levin and Aman Muhar.

J-School Alums at Washington Post
Earn Pulitzer
Chris Jenkins, class of 2000; Michael Chandler, class of 2005; Sandhya Somashekhar, class of 2006; Nick Miroff, class of 2006; and several dozen of their colleagues at the Washington Post have been awarded a 2008 Pulitzer prize for breaking news coverage of last year’s shooting rampage at Virginia Tech. As reporters on the Post’s Virginia desk, they traveled to the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg and worked round-the-clock to help piece together fragments of the worst school shooting tragedy in U.S. history. Prize money for the award is being donated to a scholarship fund honoring victims. Overall, the Post won six awards Monday, a record for the paper.

new multimedia projects - SF Taxi driver

New Multimedia Projects
Students in the Advanced Multimedia class recently completed projects on the growing problems facing San Francisco taxi drivers , the weak state of the U.S. dollar, a look at the life and death of Harvey Milk and Dan White, and the life of immigrant stable workers at Berkeley's Golden Gate Fields .

Outide Slim Jenkins' recreated in virtual world

NPR Segment on Video Game Class
National Public Radio has done a story about a Journalism School project to re-create Oakland's famed blues and jazz clubs scene from the 1940s and 1950s as a virtual world and video game. The project is a partnership between the J-School and the UC Berkeley Architecture School.

Domestic Violence in Mongolia
Daria Tsagaan produced this multimedia project about domestic violence in Mongolia. Video testimonials, graphs and plenty of photos. Clear, shocking, insightful, and interactive. This was her full report to Human Rights Center, UC Berkeley as she was one of 12 selected fellows.

TV Students Win Emmys
The first-year television students have won two Student Emmy Awards for magazine programs produced in spring 2007. China and the Environment was produced stateside by Clayton Worfolk with TaylorPipes, Duane Moles and Rob Krieger reporting from China. Crossroads was produded by Adi Sambamurthy with Carola Mamberto and Fulvio Paolocci reporting on Muslims in Italy, Adi Sambamurthy reporting on nuclear plants in Bulgaria and Zach Stauffer reporting on baseball in Ghana.

Investigative Reporting Fellowship
The Investigative Reporting Program today announced a call for entries for its second annual competition for three year-long fellowships. They are open to all working journalists, but preference will be given to graduates of UC Berkeley's master's program in journalism. The deadline for applications is April 1.

The Black Vote
The African-American vote has become a major focus during this national election with the presence of the first serious black contender, Barack Obama. Black voters are largely choosing between Obama and Hillary Clinton, wife of Bill Clinton, who Toni Morrison affectionately called "first black president." Of those interviewed in Oakland, the vote leaned heavily for Barack Obama and no one voted Republican. Listen to their opinions in a multimedia project produced during Super Tuesday.

News 21
What's at stake in the 2008 presidential election? Forty-four students from the graduate schools of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, Columbia University, Northwestern University, the University of Southern California and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University will be working to answer that question throughout the spring and summer. You can follow their progress on their News21 blog, as they produce innovative and important news content, distributed on a wide variety of digital and traditional platforms..

China Digital Times
China Digital Times is a collaborative news website covering China’s social and political transition and its emerging role in the world. CDT aggregates the most up-to-the-minute news and analysis about China from around the Web, while providing independent reporting, translations from Chinese cyberspace, and perspectives from across the geographical, political and social spectrum. The website is participated by users from more than 100 countries around the glob."

NovoMetro
The adventures of Alums Alex Gronke and Priyanka Sharma-Sindhar, both Class of 2002, who developed NovoMetro and its hardcopy complement, OakBook, are outlined in the Oakland Tribune. NovoMetro published J-School students this fall.

Covering Asia
Covering Asia is an online clearinghouse for Asia-related reporting from students, visiting scholars, alumni and faculty at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. On the site you'll find photography, blogs, events, dispatches, links to articles and a wealth of RSS feeds and news resources from all over the region. Follow the latest developments in Asia with us from the marching saffron monks of Burma to controversial cockroach cartoons about Iran; from India's hottest wedding spots to China's coal industry.

J200: Reporting the News
Getting the daily scoop, reporting outside your comfort zone and putting large news events into perspective. Kathy Corcoran's J200 class did all three in the Fall 2007 semester. Check out our projects: Community News Blogs; Perspectives, and Are We Prepared?

Cop Out
Students in Susan Rasky's J200 (2007) class look behind the conventional wisdom about cops and crime in Oakland.

Digital TV And the World
"Chinese Voices," a series of intimate reports produced in San Francisco and Guangzhou by digital journalists in the class of 2008, has been published on washingtonpost.com. It follows reportage from India, Latin America, Cambodia and Shanghai. The washingtonpost.com publishes the works as part of the Center for Digital TV and the World's global experiment in multimedia, multi-platform reporting. Todd Carrel directs the program with major support from the Skirball Foundation.

Three Frontline Films Produced At North Gate Nominated For Prizes
Parts I and III of News War, and The Enemy Within, each co-written by Professor Lowell Bergman, were nominated for Writers Guild Awards in the Documentary – Current Events Category. Each was broadcast on PBS’ Frontline. For more information, see our press release.

History of the J-School
North Gate Hall and the Graduate School of Journalism have a rich history, extending nearly to the turn of the previous century. Our abridged History of the J-School covers building construction, the early role of the School of Architecture, and the building's transformation into a world-class school of journalism.

Reporting on Violence
InsideBayArea.com, the online publication for the Oakland Tribune and other newspapers in the Bay Area News Group, features on its home page a blog created by students in the advanced multimedia reporting class. ReportingonViolence, a beat blog, covers domestic, homeless, youth and gun violence. The class focuses on modernizing crime reporting to include a solution-oriented and Web-centric approach, and is putting together a violence reporting Web shell.

North Gate News Online
North Gate News Online features breaking news, in-depth stories and special reporting projects by first-year J-School students. Current NGNO topics include the closing days of Ramadan in Berkeley; continuing investigations of last spring's MacArthur Maze collapse; and regional students trying over and over to pass the mandatory high school exit exam.

Knight Digital Media Center
On September 17, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation unveiled a $6.7 million initiative to assist news organizations facing the daunting transition to the digital world (press release). Two Knight grants - $2.8 million to the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and $2.4 million to USC's Annenberg School for Communications - were awarded to fund the expansion of the Knight Digital Media Center's training program for mid-career journalists. National Public Radio was awarded a two-year grant for $1.5 million to work with the Knight Digital Media Center to fund the training of roughly 600 staff members, including executives, reporters, producers and editors.

J-Schooler Wins AP Prize
Garance Burke, class of 2004, won the Associated Press Managing Editor's John L. Dougherty Award for the most outstanding AP staffer worldwide with fewer than three years' experience at the news cooperative. Based in California's San Joaquin Valley, she recently returned home from Utah, where she was covering the collapse of the Crandall Canyon mine.

News21 Team Completes
"God, Sex and Family" Project
A team of eleven J-School students, using a combination of traditional and experimental approaches to storytelling, produced the web-based "God Sex and Family" project. Highlights of the ten-week production lab include an interactive guide to sexual ethics, a data-driven road trip, and week-long experiment in Second Life, that culminated with a live panel discussion in virtual reality. News21 is in the second year of a three year grant funded by the Carnegie and Knight Foundations. For all of the News21 Fellows reporting and more information see newsinitiative.org.

Interested in Applying?
Visit the Admissions section of our site, or attend one of our informational meetings to learn more about the application process and have your questions answered.

Student Projects
Pauline Bartolone traces the stages of reintegration of Colombian landmine survivors. Tara Cuslidge examines the state of California's missions awaiting earthquake safety repairs. Mark Luckie travels to Africa to report on the legal and social persecution gays face in Ghana. Many more listed in Student Projects.

Webcasts
Many school-sponsored events are also webcast as streaming video, either live or as video archives. All events with associated video are listed on the Webcasts page. Currently featured: Winter New Media Lecture Series, GMOs and the Law, and CNS-TV for Dec. 12, 2006.

North Gate Radio
North Gate Radio is a weekly news magazine show put on by the students in the Intro To Radio Reporting Class each semester. The 30-minute program is run entirely by the students, who rotate through producer, assistant producer, anchor, and reporting duties. Listen to archived programs or subscribe to the podcast.

FRONTLINE/World
In an effort to nurture new voices in international reporting, PBS' FRONTLINE/World Fellows Program provides graduate students in journalism the opportunity to report original stories for the FRONTLINE/World Web site.

Multimedia Tutorials
The J-School hosts a sizable collection of tutorials on multimedia reporting, including how to use digital cameras, audio recorders and photo cameras, as well as software applications such as Dreamweaver, Flash, Photoshop, and Final Cut Pro.

Neil Henry Appointed Dean
Neil Henry, a former Washington Post reporter and Newsweek staff writer who joined the Graduate School of Journalism faculty in 1993, has been appointed dean of the school. Henry will serve for up to 18 months, and a search for a permanent dean will begin in Fall 2008.

Student Stories
J-School students have hundreds of pieces published in the media every year, and we try to link to them all in our Student Stories database. A parallel Faculty Stories database tracks the published output of our faculty and fellows.

CNS-TV
CNS-TV produces several local daily news shows with stories from around the Bay Area, as well as news magazine shows featuring stories from around the country and around the world. The most recent episodes of the CNS News show will air on Berkeley Community Media, Channel 28 in Berkeley, during these times: Sun 02/25/07 03:30 PM; Fri 02/23/07 07:20 AM; Wed 02/21/07 06:00 PM.

J-School Announces Reporting Fellowship Winners
To help develop a new generation of investigative reporters in an era of cutbacks at major news organizations, UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism has announced the winners for three post-graduate fellowships in investigative reporting. The fellowships are funded by the Sandler Family Supporting Foundation, the Gruber Family Foundation, Scott and Jennifer Fearon and David Einhorn. The competition was open to all working journalists, but preference was given to graduates of UC Berkeley's master's program in journalism.

"The Graduate" on The J-School
The latest issue of The Graduate, the magazine for the UC Berkeley graduate community (published by the Graduate Division), has as its central feature a six-page piece titled "Dateline: Berkeley --- A look inside the Graduate School of Journalism" (PDF link). The piece covers the history and aspirations of the J-School, from its undergraduate beginnings as four "journalistic studies" courses in the English department to its present high profile status. The coverage is also available as separate chapters.

Remembering David Halberstam
The Journalism School community extends our condolences to the family of writer David Halberstam, who gave our 2007 Alumni Weekend keynote lecture April 21 and was killed in an auto accident during his Bay Area visit. One of the nation’s leading authors and an extraordinary journalist, Halberstam wrote 15 bestselling books. While at The New York Times, he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for his pioneering coverage of the Vietnam War. His classic, "The Best and The Brightest," is the definitive book on how and why we went to war in Vietnam. His other books include: "The Powers That Be," about the rise of modern media; "The Reckoning," about the challenge of Japan to the American automotive industry; and "The Fifties," about a decade he regards as seminal in determining what our nation is today. During his career, the 73-year-old author also covered the civil rights movement, Washington politics, and sports. He had just finished his latest book, "The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War" and had started on a new one, called "The Game," about the NFL championship game between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants. MP3 audio and a text transcript of Halberstam's truly inspired recent talk at Berkeley is now available.

Climate Change Class
Receives Polk Award
The George Polk Award for radio reporting will honor the producers of "Early Signs: Reports from a Warming Planet." From the snowy slopes on Mount Kilimanjaro, the crowded delta of Bangladesh, the outskirts of Auckland, New Zealand, and elsewhere, 11 journalism students conducted interviews and reported on real-life perils already caused by global warming. Distributed in various formats nationwide, the seven-month project was edited and produced by the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California-Berkeley, American Public Media and Living on Earth . Print stories also appeared on Salon.com and in California Monthly. UC Berkeley NewsCenter covers the award here.

J-School Event Podcasts
Use iTunes? Berkeley on iTunes U has launched, and includes audio podcasts from some of the J-School's most prominent events. Most J-School podcasts can be found in the Journalism & Media section, but you'll find additional content sprinkled throughout other categories as well, including Politics & Public Policy and Explore Cal.

Isolated by Language
At a time when immigration is again front and center in the national debate, and the former INS (now Immigration and Customs Enforcement) deported scores of immigrants working in Midwestern and Mountain State meat-packing plants, students from Kathy Corcoran's introductory reporting class traveled to Greenfield in the Salinas Valley to report on a population of immigrants twice removed.

Aerial Photos
Aerial images of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, taken with a camera attached to a large kite flown by Professor of Architecture Charles C. Benton, to whom we extend our sincere appreciation.

FRONTLINE Examines
Troubled State of Journalism
FRONTLINE aired "News War" on February 13, 20 and 27, 2007. Reported by Professor Lowell Bergman, the series traces the history of American journalism since the Nixon administration. An episode of FRONTLINE/World will air March 27 that examines international forces that influence U.S. journalism. The series was co-produced with the Graduate School of Journalism.

Distinguished Professor
Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Lowell Bergman has been named the Reva and David Logan Distinguished Professor at the J-School. The Reva and David Logan Foundation is a private, independent grant-making institution focusing on education, the arts, religion, civil society, social change and aid to the disadvantaged.

Digital TV
And The World
Between Two Cultures: A Pakistani Muslim Enclave in America Targeted by the FBI Nicole Hill, Jeff Kearns, Nagomi Onda, Kim Perry (all class of 2006) and Clayton Worfolk (class of 2007) reported about Muslims of Pakistani descent in the central valley town of Lodi. The washingtonpost.com published the works as part of the Digital TV and the World special project's experiment in multimedia, multi-platform global reporting. Todd Carrel and Christopher Beaver direct the program.

Summer New Media Lecture Series
The J-School presented a series of lectures and panel discussions on topics in online publishing and digital storytelling May 21 - 24. The series is now available as archived webcasts.

Revitalizing Journalism Education
Journalism schools at Berkeley, Columbia, Northwestern and USC, and the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard are part of the The Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education. The initiative responds to a McKinsey & Co. study on the economic and technological challenges facing the news industry in the 21st century. Read the press release here.

Course Schedules
J-School course schedules for Spring 2007 are now available online. A detailed view including course descriptions is also available. You can also view current or previously offered courses sorted by program.

Election 2006 Coverage
Democrats gained firm control of the House in midterm elections covered Tuesday by J-School students. The online publication features multimedia pieces on the Independent battle against Richard Pombo and water bonds and fragile levees, as well as Special Projects on Propositions and the changing look of California's voters.

Webcast: The Omnivore's Dilemma
What should we have for dinner? According to Professor Michael Pollan, the answer may determine our survival as a species. Should we eat a fast-food hamburger? Something organic? Or perhaps something we hunt, gather, or grow ourselves? An archived webcast of this April 17 event is now available.