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Ten Knight-Bagehot Fellows in economics and business journalism have been named by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism for the 2006-2007 academic year. They include journalists from The Financial Times, Houston Chronicle, The Washington Post, Forbes magazine, Reuters America and Dow Jones.
The mid-career fellowships provide full tuition and a living stipend of $45,000 for experienced journalists to take graduate courses at Columbia's Schools of Business, Law, and International and Public Affairs. Fellows also attend special seminars at the Journalism School led by scholars and business experts during the nine-month program, which begins in August. The program is open to journalists with at least four years' experience.
"These journalists, selected from a pool of highly qualified reporters and writers, represent the best and brightest in business journalism," said Terri Thompson, director of the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship program. "We look forward to welcoming the incoming class of Knight-Bagehot Fellows for a rigorous program of study here at Columbia."
This year's fellows are: Lynn J. Cook of the Houston Chronicle, Bryan Corliss of The Daily Herald of Everett, Wash., Howard Green of Report on Business TV in Toronto, Jennifer Hughes of The Financial Times, Neil Irwin of The Washington Post, Susan Kitchens of Forbes, Julie MacIntosh of Reuters America, Dwight Oestricher of Dow Jones Newswires, Pang Ruifeng of Southern Weekend and Lauren Weber of Newsday.
Founded in 1975, the fellowships are named for John S. and James L. Knight, brothers who established the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and Walter Bagehot, the 19th-century British economist and editor of The Economist. They are administered by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and directed by Terri Thompson, a former associate editor of U.S. News & World Report and former reporter for Business Week. Thompson also is a graduate of the program.
Funds are provided by an endowment from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and by grants from foundations and corporations, which have included The New York Times, McGraw-Hill Companies, Merrill Lynch & Co. Foundation, Inc., Citigroup and Dow Jones & Co.
The 2006-2007 Knight-Bagehot Fellows in Economics and Business Journalism are:
Lynn J. Cook, 31, joined the Houston Chronicle as its oil and natural gas reporter in the summer of 2004. After graduating from Texas A&M University with a B.A. in journalism in 1997, she did a stint at the Houston Business Journal covering real estate and city hall, and moved in 2000 to Forbes magazine's Houston bureau where she reported on diverse subjects, including energy, for nearly five years. She spent her spare time in 2002 helping to research a book on Enron's collapse written by Mimi Swartz in collaboration with whistle-blower Sherron Watkins.
Bryan Corliss, 42, is a business writer for The Daily Herald of Everett, Wash., covering the aerospace industry. Named one of Pacific Northwest's top business columnists by Society of Professional Journalists for past two years, he has also received a national Best in Business award for breaking news from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. Before moving to Everett in 2000, he worked for the Standard-Examiner in Ogden, Utah; the Union-Bulletin in Walla Walla, Wash.; and The Idahonian in Moscow, Idaho. He graduated with honors from Washington State University in 1986.
Howard Green, 47, is in his fifth year as anchor of Canada's flagship business program on a cable channel (ROBTv) he helped launch in 1999. His daily show, "The Business News," is a one-hour treatment of the biggest business stories of the day and is seen across Canada and on the Web. A graduate of Carleton University and now based in Toronto, he has been a journalist for 25 years and has covered business since 1988 when he began contributing to CBC's national business program, "Venture." He has produced segments for programs on other networks, including PBS, and has made nearly a dozen documentaries, for which he has won several awards.
Jennifer Hughes, 30, joined The Financial Times at the age of 23, working initially in Web production from London. She swiftly moved to a coveted foreign posting in New York where she has written extensively on global capital markets, including foreign exchange, government bonds and credit derivatives. Well versed in the interplay between economic data and market movements, she was recently promoted to deputy markets editor. A British citizen, she received a B.A. in history from University of Exeter, U.K.
Neil Irwin, 27, is a staff writer at The Washington Post, where he started as a summer intern after graduating from St. Mary's College of Maryland in 2000. Quickly climbing the ladder to ever-more challenging assignments, he is now a key member of the newspaper's economics reporting team, focusing on the human impact of macroeconomic realities. While earning his degree in economics and political science, he spent two summers interning at The Christian Science Monitor. In 2005, he won a Best in Business award from Society of American Business Editors and Writers for a story on unemployment in Washington, D.C.
Susan Kitchens, 31, is a staff writer at Forbes magazine. Upon graduating with a M.S. in journalism from Columbia in 2000, she joined Forbes Global, where she helped create the first list of its kind detailing executive compensation at the world's largest non-U.S. companies. She has since contributed to the magazine's popular investment guides, corporate profiles and annual Billionaires List, and her stories run the gamut from an investigation of global trade in human trafficking to an expose of Fidel Castro's use of medical doctors as mercenaries. A magna cum laude graduate of Samford University in Birmingham, Ala., she worked as an editor at a small-town Alabama daily before moving to New York for graduate school. She spent much of her childhood with her family in South Korea.
Julie MacIntosh, 28, was tapped by Reuters America in 2000, two months before her graduation from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, and she has worked for Reuters ever since. Initially hired to cover futures at the Chicago Board of Trade, she also has covered the U.S. capital goods, automotive and airline industries. She currently works from Philadelphia as Reuters' mergers correspondent, focusing on media and technology deals. She also co-authors Reuters' "Merger Talk" column, which highlights deal-related issues and trends.
Dwight Oestricher, 46, has been a reporter and editor for Dow Jones Newswires for nearly 13 years, most recently focusing on entertainment companies. He was part of the team that won a Best in Business Award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers for coverage of the AOL-Time Warner merger in 2001. His career in journalism began at Brooklyn College where he pursued a dual major in psychology and journalism and interned for the Associated Press. He graduated with a B.A. in 1983.
Pang Ruifeng, 32, was promoted in 2005 to senior business reporter for Southern Weekend, the largest circulation weekly newspaper in China, where he has been employed since 2001. On temporary leave to study English at New York University, he has degrees from China School of Journalism and Anhui University of Technology. In 1997, he took his first job at China Construction News covering real estate, and two years later became business reporter for China Business Post, a leading business newspaper owned by the Stock Exchange Executive Council of China.
Lauren Weber, 35, is a reporter for Newsday in Melville, N.Y., where she has written about retail, entrepreneurship, travel and small business since 2003. Upon graduating with a M.A. in business journalism from Baruch College in 2001, she became a news assistant at Reuters and within a year was promoted to a reporting position. In addition to her journalism experience, she has worked as a program officer at a charitable foundation in Seattle and volunteered as a grant writer for nonprofit organizations in Seattle and New York. She earned a B.A. in history and women's studies from Wesleyan University in 1994.
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