2023-2024 Koeppel Fellow

• Rajaa Elidrissi

  Fall 2023

  CSPL268: Reporting on Global Issues: International Journalism in Action

  melidrissi@wesleyan.edu

  ABOUT THE FELLOW

  Rajaa Elidrissi is a Moroccan-American journalist based in Queens, New York. She currently works for Vox as a research producer that focuses on global issues and foreign affairs. At Vox, she’s worked on in-depth video explainers on topics like Cairo’s new capital, corruption in Lebanon and the civil war in Sudan. Before her current role, she started out as an associate producer on Vox’s international documentary series Vox Borders. 

  She holds an M.S. from Columbia Journalism School’s investigative program, where she focused on more domestic investigations. At Columbia, Elidrissi led a partnership between Columbia, THE CITY, and Vox to produce a video explainer on how an island in New York became a mass grave. She also holds a BA from Wesleyan University, where she majored in Anthropology and has previous work experiences at CNBC, MSNBC and CNN. 

  Elidrissi currently serves on the board of the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association, an organization dedicated to supporting a flourishing community of SWANA heritage journalists. 

2022-2023 Koeppel Fellow

• 

  Jacqueline Rabe Thomas

  Spring 2023

  CSPL299: The Rest of the Story: Techniques for Investigative Reporting

  jrabethomas@wesleyan.edu

  ABOUT THE FELLOW

  Jacqueline Rabe Thomas is an investigative reporter with Hearst Connecticut Media. She has also been an investigative reporter with Connecticut Public’s Accountability Project, a housing and education reporter with The Connecticut Mirror, and a reporter in ProPublica's Local Reporting Network. Her reporting has led to home health care workers getting reimbursed for wages illegally taken from them, undocumented immigrants being able to access outpatient dialysis treatment and no longer having to live in the hospital to receive care, and the top brass at the state's university system being fired. She has won three Education Writers Association awards, a Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Award, and a Theodore A. Driscoll Investigative Award from the Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists. She has a masters in public policy from Trinity College and a journalism degree from Bowling Green State University. She lives in Hartford with her husband, two children, and three dogs.

2021-2022 Koeppel Fellows

• 

  Stephen Busemeyer

  2019-Present

  QAC 250: An Introduction to Data Journalism

  ABOUT THE FELLOW

  Stephen Busemeyer is the managing editor of The Connecticut Mirror, an independent, non-profit news source covering public policy in Connecticut. He previously spent more than 20 years at The Hartford Courant, where he was a member of the editorial board, data editor, breaking news editor and more. During his time as breaking news editor, The Courant won the 2011 American Society of News Editors’ Jesse Laventhol Award for Deadline News Reporting for its coverage of the Hartford Distributors massacre and was a named finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news for the paper's coverage of the Sandy Hook shootings. In addition to Wesleyan, he has taught at the University of Hartford, the University of Connecticut, and the University of Colorado.

2021-2022 Koeppel Fellows

• 

  James Gorman

  Spring 2022

  ABOUT THE FELLOW

  James Gorman is a science reporter at large for The New York Times. He writes about animal behavior, evolution and conservation.He has been at The Times since 1993, as an editor on The New York Times Magazine, deputy science editor, editor of a personal technology section, outdoors columnist, science columnist and editor of Science Times. He wrote and narrated the ScienceTake video series for five years. He has written seven books, on subjects as varied as penguins, dinosaurs, the Southern Ocean and hypochondria.  He has taught science journalism at New York University, Fordham University, Princeton University and Wesleyan University.

Past fellows

• Graham Griffith '93

  Spring 2021

  WRCT250V: The Voice(s) of Expertise: How Podcasting Is Changing the Way We Listen and Learn

  ABOUT THE FELLOW

  Graham Griffith is a US-based media strategist and career audio producer with a track record of creating programming that responds to the changing media landscape. From launching Rhode Island’s first public radio program in 2000, to creating the award-winning, national talk show On Point after 9-11, launching The Takeaway, and helping develop the global curriculum for Spotify’s groundbreaking podcasting development program Sound Up, Graham has developed a unique perspective on the radio medium specifically, and audio journalism in general. He now works with independent media organizations on new media initiatives and in building stronger journalistic practices, including recent clients like the International Committee of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), On Being, KQED, KUOW, Fresh Air, and Spotify.

• Daniel de Visé '89

  Spring 2021

  WRCT250W: Topics in Journalism: The Art and Craft of Journalistic Nonfiction

  ABOUT THE FELLOW

  Writer and journalist Daniel de Visé '89 has worked at The Washington Post, the Miami Herald and three other newspapers throughout his career. He shared a 2001 team Pulitzer Prize and has garnered more than two dozen other national and regional journalism awards. His investigative reporting twice led to the release of wrongly convicted men from life terms in prison. He is the author of four books: I Forgot To Remember (with Su Meck, Simon & Schuster, 2014); An­­dy & Don: The Making of a Friendship and a Classic TV Show (Simon & Schuster, 2015); The Comeback: Greg LeMond, the True King of American Cycling and a Legendary Tour de France (Grove Atlantic, 2018); and the upcoming King of the Blues: The Rise and Reign of B.B. King (Grove Atlantic, 2021).

• Peter Godwin

  Fall 2019

  WRCT 250R: First Person Singular

  ABOUT THE FELLOW

  Peter Godwin was born and raised in Zimbabwe. He studied law at Cambridge University and international relations at Oxford. He is an award-winning foreign correspondent, author, documentary-maker and screenwriter. After practicing human rights law in Zimbabwe, he became a foreign correspondent, reporting from more than 60 countries. He served as East European correspondent and diplomatic correspondent for the London Sunday Times, and chief correspondent for BBC television’s flagship foreign affairs program, Assignment. His film about the sex trade in Thailand, The Industry of Death, won the gold medal for investigative film at the New York Film Festival. He wrote and co-presented a three-part series Africa Unmasked for Britain's Channel Four. He has written for a wide array of magazines and newspapers including Vanity Fair, National Geographic, The New York Times magazine and Men’s Journal. He is the author of six non-fiction books. His book The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe, was selected by the New Yorker as a best book of the year.

• David Daley

  Fall 2019

  WRCT250N: Writing Reality: Journalism in an Era of Polarization and “Fake News”

  ABOUT THE FELLOW

  David Daley is the author of Ratf**ked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America's Democracy (W.W. Norton/Liveright) and a frequent lecturer and media source about gerrymandering. He is the former editor-in-chief of Salon.com, and the former CEO and publisher of the Connecticut News Project. He is a digital media fellow at the Wilson Center for the Humanities and the Grady School of Journalism at the University of Georgia and a senior for FairVote. His work has appeared in New York magazine, the Atlantic the Boston Globe, the New Yorker, The Washington Post, USA Today, Rolling Stone, Details, and he has been a commentator on CNN and NPR. He earned a bachelor's degree in political science at Boston College and a master's degree in journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. When writing for the Hartford Courant, he helped identify Mark Felt as the “Deep Throat” source for Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

• Jane Eisner ’77, P’06, ’12

  Spring 2019

  WRCT250Q: The Journalist as Citizen

  ABOUT THE FELLOW

  Jane Eisner ’77, P’06, ’12 was a Spring 2019 Koeppel Fellow, marking her third time in this role. Eisner was the first woman to serve as editor of The Wesleyan Argus. A graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, she held executive editorial and news positions at the Philadelphia Inquirer for 25 years. She continued breaking ground, becoming the first woman to serve as editor-in-chief of the Forward, an independent Jewish national news organization. She was also the first woman to win Wesleyan’s McConaughy Award for contributions to journalism and public life and, fittingly, Eisner was Wesleyan’s inaugural Koeppel Fellow in 2010. In July 2019, she was named director of academic affairs at Columbia Journalism School.

  Eisner notes that even if students are not planning to pursue a career in journalism, they will always be consumers of news, and she wants them to be discerning. “I continue to believe that the key attributes of being a journalist map very closely with a liberal arts education: not taking things at face value, asking questions, learning all sides to an issue. The comment that I made most frequently on student papers was, ‘How do you know this?’  I want them to learn to source their material and verify their facts. To question, to verify, and to be skeptical to some degree—I think that this message is even more important today.”

  Eisner has garnered national and regional awards for her editorials, including the Sigma Delta Chi award for editorial writing from the Society of Professional Journalists in 2012 and 2010, along with the 2012 and 2011 awards for opinion writing from the Deadline Club, SPJ’s New York chapter. In 2014, she won the Front Page Award for editorial writing from the Newswomen’s Club of New York, and received the David Twersky Award in 2015. She was awarded first place in editorial writing in the Simon Rockower Awards of the American Jewish Press Association in 2018 and 2016.

• Lily Koe Herman '16

  Fall 2018 / Spring 2019

  CSPL250P: "It's a Mess," An Academic and Practical Look at Digital Media in the Late 2010s

  ABOUT THE FELLOW

  Lily Koe Herman '16 is a contributing editor at Refinery29, where she provides regular political and social commentary. Her writing has been published on Teen Vogue, Glamour, TIME, Allure, Cosmopolitan, Mashable and more, where she largely writes about the intersection of topics like feminism, wellness, education, workplace dynamics, and policy. Herman is the founder of Rogue Sunday, a digital strategy and marketing firm dedicated to helping people and brands that are making the world a better place. She is the editor of Chairman Mom's popular daily weekday newsletter The Mama Bear and the founder of Get Her Elected, a political network of over 3,400 volunteers offering their skills pro bono to more than 260+ progressive women candidates running for office.

  Herman was named one of Glamour Magazine’s “College Women of the Year” in 2015 for her work as the co-founder of a student-run, college access organization called The Prospect while she was a student at Wesleyan. She graduated in 2016 with a sociology and government double major. This past fall, she contributed an article to Wesleyan Magazine entitled, How I Wrote 1,000 Articles During My Four Years at Wesleyan.

  The course she developed for her Koeppel Fellowship—It’s a Mess: An Academic and Practical Look at Digital Media in the Late 2010s—introduced students to the larger issues spanning digital media, from a lack of diversity and inclusion to problems with monetization and "Fake News," while also giving them the chance to learn what it’s like to pitch, write, and edit for an internet publication.

• Stephen Friedman '91

  Spring 2018

  WRCT 250M: Topics in Journalism: Storytelling and Social Change

  ABOUT THE FELLOW

  Stephen Friedman ’91, an Emmy and Peabody award-winning creator of social impact campaigns, leads the Societal Impact Practice at SYPartners. Using the power of storytelling and SYPartners’ two decades of experience in large-scale transformation with global businesses and organizations, he and his team partner with CEOs and philanthropists to tackle some of the biggest social challenges we face.
  Previously, Stephen was the president of MTV for seven years. He spearheaded MTV’s transformation into the cultural home of the millennial generation, with more top-rated series for young viewers than any other network—including “Catfish,” “Teen Mom,” “Jersey Shore,” and “Awkward.” During his 18 years at the network, he created MTV’s social impact department, launched mtvU, and led MTV2, MTV.com, and LOGO to record highs.
  
  Friedman developed multiple Peabody and Emmy award-winning campaigns including “Choose or Lose” in partnership with Rock The Vote, “Fight For Your Rights” addressing youth violence, and campaigns that addressed the genocide in Darfur and stigma around mental health. Recent initiatives have included “Look Different,” which tackles bias across gender, race, and sexual orientation, and the “It’s Your (Sex) Life” campaign—which has been credited with helping to increase STD testing nationally. As part of the campaign, Friedman partnered with the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy to ensure that the shows “16 and Pregnant” and “Teen Mom” were cautionary tales. The National Bureau of Economic Research credited both series with driving one-third of the recent steep decline in the teen birth rate, which now stands at a record low.
  
  Before joining MTV, Friedman served as a director for the PEN American Center—the international writers’ human rights organization. Friedman recently joined the advisory board of Mic (mic.com), the fast-growing digital media company focused on millennials. He also serves on the Board of Directors for the Genocide Survivors Foundation. At Wesleyan, he was a College of Letters major and graduated with honors in 1991.

• Richard Conniff

  Spring 2017

  WRCT 250K: Topics in Journalism: Writing, Wit, and the Natural World

  ABOUT THE FELLOW

  Richard Conniff, a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, writes about behavior on two, four, six, and eight legs, plus the occasional slither. He has hunted for tarantulas in the Peruvian Amazon, tracked leopards with !Kung San hunters in the Namibian desert, and trekked the Himalayas of Bhutan in pursuit of tigers and the mythical migur. As a National Magazine Award-winning writer, he wrote the first account of the birth of poetry slams in a Chicago saloon, reported on social change in Ireland before the Celtic Tiger began to roar, and once drove in a demolition derby on his wedding anniversary. (He lost.) He is a past Guggenheim Fellow, has been a frequent commentator on NPR's Marketplace, and has written and presented television shows for National Geographic, the BBC, and other outlets. His latest book is House of Lost Worlds: Dinosaurs, Dynasties, and the Story of Life on Earth. His other books include The Species Seekers: Heroes, Fools, and the Mad Pursuit of Life on Earth; Swimming with Piranhas at Feeding Time: My Life Doing Dumb Stuff with Animals; The Natural History of the Rich: A Field Guide; and Spineless Wonders: Strange Tales from the Invertebrate World. He blogs at strangebehaviors.com and on twitter @RichardConniff.

• Andrew Tran

  Spring 2017

  WRCT 250L: Topics in Journalism: Introduction to Data Journalism

  ABOUT THE FELLOW

  Andrew Tran is the data reporter for the Washington Post's rapid response investigative team. He was the senior data editor at TrendCT.org, an arm of the Connecticut Mirror. Prior to that, he was a data producer at the Boston Globe, where he contributed to the newsroom's Pulitzer Prize–award-winning coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings and aftermath. He has worked in newsrooms in Virginia and Florida. He is a Metpro Fellow, a Chips Quinn Scholar, and a graduate of the University of Texas.

• Steve Almond ’88

  Fall 2016

  WRCT 250J: Topics in Journalism: Literary Journalism

  ABOUT THE FELLOW

  Steve Almond spent eight years working as a critic and investigative reporter in El Paso and Miami. He is the author of eight books of fiction and non-fiction, including the New York Times bestsellers Against Football and Candyfreak, which won the American Library Association Alex Award and was named the Booksense Adult Nonfiction Book of the Year. His books have been published in half a dozen foreign countries and translated into German, Dutch, Spanish, and Croatin. His short stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mysteries, and the Pushcart Prize anthologies. His journalism, essays, and reviews have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, the Wall Street Journal, GQ, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, and elsewhere. He is also the co-host of the New York Times podcast Dear Sugar Radio.

• John Stoehr

  Spring 2016

  WRCT 250H: Topics in Journalism: Writing Op-Ed Pieces and Political Essays

  ABOUT THE FELLOW

  John Stoehr was the managing editor of the Washington Spectator, a national bulletin of news, politics, and public affairs. He is now a lecturer in political science at Yale, where he teaches a course on the classics of campaign reporting. He is a Fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative and at Yale's Ezra Stiles College. He has written for the American Prospect, Al Jazeera America, Reuters, Columbia Journalism Review, New Statesman, the Guardian, and Los Angeles Review of Books, among many others. In 2016, he was the Koeppel Fellow at Wesleyan University, where he taught a course on political reporting. From 2009 to 2012, he was the editor of the New Haven Advocate, the alternative newsweekly of the Elm City. He has been selected three times for the NEA’s Arts Journalism Institutes. In 2009, he received one of the Lilly Scholarships in Religion for Journalists.

• Ariel Levy ’96

  Fall 2015

  WRCT 250G: Topics in Journalism: Literary Journalism

  ABOUT THE FELLOW

  Ariel Levy joined the New Yorker as a staff writer in 2008. Her subjects for the magazine have included the South African runner Caster Semenya, the former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the swimmer Diana Nyad, and Edith Windsor, the plaintiff in the Supreme Court case that brought down the Defense of Marriage Act. Levy received the National Magazine Award for Essays and Criticism for her piece, “Thanksgiving in Mongolia,” which appears in the 2014 Best American Essays anthology; she has expanded the essay into a book, forthcoming in 2017. Her previous book, Female Chauvinist Pigs, was published in 2005. Levy was a Visiting Critic at the American Academy in Rome in 2012, and the Koeppel Fellow at Wesleyan University in 2015. Before joining the New Yorker, she was a contributing editor at New York for twelve years.

• Vanessa Gezari

  Spring 2015

  WRCT 250E: Topics in Journalism: War Stories-Fact, Memory, & Imagination: Conflict Reporting & Literature of War

  ABOUT THE FELLOW

  Vanessa M. Gezari is the James Madison Visiting Professor on First Amendment Issues at Columbia University. Before coming to Columbia, she taught narrative nonfiction at the University of Michigan, and conflict reporting at Wesleyan University as a 2015 Koeppel Fellow. Since 2001, her reporting has taken her to four continents, nine countries, and many corners of the United States. On the eve of September 11, she left the U.S. to freelance in South Asia and spent the next three years reporting from Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Kashmir, and Sri Lanka, for the Chicago Tribune and elsewhere. Gezari went on to become a national writer for the St. Petersburg Times (now the Tampa Bay Times). She wrote a narrative account of a West Virginia mine collapse, explored the veracity of rape allegations against Duke lacrosse players long before the world had reason to doubt them, traveled the Gulf Coast to document the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and reported on terrorism, disaster, and resilience from Russia, England, Indonesia, and Liberia. 

• Steven Greenhouse ’73, P’08

  Fall 2014

  WRCT 250F: Topics in Journalism: Journalism, Nonfiction Writing, and the Search for Truth

  ABOUT THE FELLOW

  Steven Greenhouse was a reporter for the New York Times for 31 years. He retired in late 2014, after spending his last 19 years as the New York Times labor and workplace reporter. In that position, he has written about wage trends, labor unions, immigrant workers, child labor, and major corporations’ treatment—and mistreatment—of their workers. He is the author of The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker. In 2014, he taught non fiction writing as a Koeppel Fellow at Wesleyan University. He is working on a new book about the past, present, and future of workers, labor unions, and worker advocacy in the United States.

• Tracie McMillan

  Spring 2014

  WRCT 250D: Topics in Journalism: Writing (and Arguing) About Inequality: How to Make Your Case

  ABOUT THE FELLOW

  A working-class transplant from rural Michigan, Brooklyn-based writer Tracie McMillan has been covering America’s multiracial working class since the late 1990s. In 2012, she published her New York Times bestseller, The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee’s, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table. That work mixes immersive reporting, undercover investigative techniques and “moving first-person narrative” (Wall Street Journal), and argues for thinking of fresh, healthy food as a public and social good—a stance that inspired the New York Times to call her “a voice the food world needs” and Rush Limbaugh to single her out as “overeducated,” an “authorette,” and a threat to freedom. In 2012, Whole Living magazine named her a “Food Visionary,” recognizing her numerous appearances on radio and television programs, which range from the liberal Rachel Maddow Show to the “tea-party favorite” Peter Schiff Show. She has written about food and class for a variety of news outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, National Geographic, National Public Radio, Harper’s Magazine, Mother Jones, Saveur, and Slate. In 2016, she became a staff blogger at the Plate, National Geographic‘s blog covering food issues.

  In 2013, The American Way of Eating was awarded the prestigious Sidney Hillman Prize for Book Journalism in recognition of her work’s commitment to the public interest, and a Books for a Better Life Award, a publishing industry touchstone which recognizes excellence in books that carry uplifting messages. Her book was also a finalist for a Goodreads Reader’s Choice Award, an International Association of Culinary Professionals Food Matters award, an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award, and a James Beard Journalism Award (considered “the Oscars of the food world”). In the same year, McMillan won a James Beard Journalism Award for a feature on farm labor she wrote for the American Prospect.

  McMillan is also a sought-after lecturer, speaking across the country about her work and the topics it covers, from farm labor to cooking, America’s growing class divide to eating on a budget. She has spoken at the prestigious Chautauqua Institution, Seattle Town Hall, the UC Berkeley Sustainable Food Systems Institute Inaugural Symposium, the Monadnock Lyceum, and ExpoWest, one of the nation’s largest trade shows.  The American Way of Eating has also been chosen for numerous community- and campus-wide common reads, including those at Texas A&M University, the University of Northern Iowa, and the Kalamazoo Public Library, among others. The book is taught at universities across the country in a range of disciplines, (including a history course focused on neoliberalism).

  In 2013, she was named a Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellow at the University of Michigan, a year after she was named a Senior Fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism. She has taught journalism at Wesleyan University as a Koeppel Journalism Fellow and currently serves on the awards committee for the James Beard Journalism Awards.

• Barbara Roessner ’75, P’15

  Spring 2013

  WRCT 266: Topics in Journalism: Techniques in Narrative Journalism

  ABOUT THE FELLOW

  Barbara Roessner was named executive editor of the Hearst Connecticut Media Group in August 2012, overseeing the editorial operations and content of Hearst’s four daily and seven weekly newspapers and websites in Fairfield County. Roessner is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editor, and a former columnist, political reporter, and writing coach who spent the bulk of her career at the Hartford Courant. In 2004, she was a Knight Fellow at Stanford University, where she studied visual art and became a painter. She is a graduate of Wesleyan University, where she majored in ancient Greek and Latin. In 2005, Wesleyan honored her with a Distinguished Alumni Award for her journalistic leadership.

• Martha Raddatz

  Spring 2012

  WRCT 262: Topics in Journalism: Foreign Affairs

  ABOUT THE FELLOW

  Martha Raddatz is ABC News Chief Global Affairs Correspondent and co-anchor of This Week with George Stephanopoulos. She has covered national security, foreign policy and politics for decades—reporting from the Pentagon, the State Department, the White House, and conflict zones around the world.

  She began covering war during the crisis in Bosnia in the late 1990s, but it is Iraq and Afghanistan where she has spent most of her time overseas. Even during her stint as White House correspondent during President George W. Bush's administration, she continued to make regular trips into war-torn Iraq.

  Raddatz embedded with U.S. forces during dozens of trips abroad, from the sands of Al Anbar province to the mountains of the Hindu Kush. She is the only television reporter allowed to fly in an F-15 fighter jet on combat missions over Afghanistan, spending nearly 10 hours in the air on two separate missions. In 2011, she reported exclusive details on the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. That same year she was one of the few reporters on the last major convoy out of Iraq. She also had an exclusive interview on the USS Kearsarge off the coast of Libya with the Marines who helped rescue two American pilots who had gone down in Libya. In 2012, Raddatz was on a U.S. destroyer as it made its way through the Strait of Hormuz. Raddatz reported exclusively from the USS George H.W. Bush covering the airstrikes against ISIS in Syria and Iraq in 2014, and again in March 2016 from the USS Truman. In 2015, she was granted exclusive access to the anti-ISIS command center at an undisclosed location in the Middle East, and anchored This Week from an air base from which drone warfare is conducted.

  In addition, her reporting trips have taken her to Yemen, Iran, Pakistan, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, India, Turkey, Libya, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, and numerous countries in Africa and Asia.

  In October 2012, Raddatz moderated the only vice presidential debate between Congressman Paul Ryan and Vice President Joe Bidan, which covered both domestic and foreign topics. Post-debate Raddatz received an outpouring of praise for asking pointed questions on a range of issues while asserting control over the conversation. She received the Walter Cronkite Award for excellence in political journalism with a special commendation for debate moderation. During the 2016 election season, Raddatz co-moderated Democratic and Republican primary presidential debates on ABC, for which she once again received praise for her moderating skills.

  From 1993 to 1998 Raddatz was the Pentagon correspondent for National Public Radio (NPR). Prior to joining NPR in 1993, she was the Chief Correspondent at the ABC News Boston affiliate WCVB-TV. In addition to covering several Presidential campaigns, she reported from the former Soviet Union, Africa, the Middle East, the Philippines, and Europe. In 2012, Raddatz received the First Amendment Award from the Radio Television Digital News Foundation (RTDNF) for excellence in journalism, as well as the prestigious Fred Friendly First Amendment Award. She received five Emmy Awards, including an Emmy for being on the team covering the inauguration of Barack Obama, the attacks of September 11^th, and the killing of Osama Bin Laden. She was also the recipient of the 2007 International Urbino Press Award, the 2005 Daniel Pearl Award from the Chicago Journalists Association, and a 1996 Overseas Press Club Award for her live coverage of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. In 2007, the White House Correspondents' Association awarded her the Merriman Smith Memorial Award for excellence in Presidential news coverage under deadline pressure.

  Raddatz is the author of The Long Road Home—a Story of War and Family, a highly acclaimed book about a battle in Iraq that made both the New York Times and Washington Post bestseller lists. The Washington Post described the book as "a masterpiece of literary non-fiction that rivals any war-related classic that has preceded it."

• Lawrence Roberts P’11

  Spring 2012

  WRCT 261: Topics in Journalism: Disruption, Truth, and the Future of News

  ABOUT THE FELLOW

  Lawrence Roberts is a Washington, D.C. journalist who has worked in newspapers and online news for more than 30 years. Now a senior editor with the nonprofit newsroom ProPublica, he was formerly business editor and investigations editor of the Washington Post, executive editor of the Huffington Post Investigative Fund, editor-at-large at Bloomberg News and projects editor of the Hartford Courant.

  In print journalism, Roberts has been a leader on teams that have been honored with three Pulitzer Prizes. At the Courant, he directed an investigation into how the Hubble Space Telescope was launched with a flaw, which won that paper its first Pulitzer. At the Post, where he worked for 14 years, he was co-editor of a series on the vice presidency of Dick Cheney, which won the Pulitzer for national reporting; a series on the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, which won the Pulitzer for investigative reporting; and a probe of federal farm subsidies that was a finalist for the Pulitzer gold medal for public service. As Post business editor, he directed an investigation of AOL that led to a federal probe and $3 billion in fines and settlements. The project won the Gerald Loeb Award, the highest honor in business journalism.

  Roberts also has extensive experience in the transformation of news on the Internet. He originally joined the Post in 1995 as part of the group that launched the paper’s website. In 2009, he left the Post to become executive editor of a nonprofit online venture, the Huffington Post Investigative Fund, which was supported by philanthropy and produced watchdog journalism in words and video. During the 1980s, Roberts was a reporter and bureau chief for United Press International in Barcelona and Madrid during Spain’s return to democracy after the Franco years. He began his career as a reporter in Seattle, where he helped start an alternative weekly newspaper and, among other events, covered the eruption of Mount St. Helens.

  Roberts earned a B.A. in political science from Franconia College, an experimental school in New Hampshire. He and his family live in Maryland.

• Jane Eisner ’77, P’06, ’12

  Spring 2011

  WRCT 258: The Journalist as Citizen

  ABOUT THE FELLOW

  Jane Eisner ’77, P’06, ’12 was the first woman to serve as editor of The Wesleyan Argus. A graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, she held executive editorial and news positions at the Philadelphia Inquirer for 25 years. She continued breaking ground, becoming the first woman to serve as editor-in-chief of the Forward, an independent Jewish national news organization. She was also the first woman to win Wesleyan’s McConaughy Award for contributions to journalism and public life and, fittingly, Eisner was Wesleyan’s inaugural Koeppel Fellow in 2010. In July 2019, she was named director of academic affairs at Columbia Journalism School.

• Jane Eisner ’77, P’06, ’12

  Spring 2010

  GOV 190: The Journalist as Citizen

  ABOUT THE FELLOW

  Jane Eisner ’77, P’06, ’12 was the first woman to serve as editor of The Wesleyan Argus. A graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, she held executive editorial and news positions at the Philadelphia Inquirer for 25 years. She continued breaking ground, becoming the first woman to serve as editor-in-chief of the Forward, an independent Jewish national news organization. She was also the first woman to win Wesleyan’s McConaughy Award for contributions to journalism and public life and, fittingly, Eisner was Wesleyan’s inaugural Koeppel Fellow in 2010. In July 2019, she was named director of academic affairs at Columbia Journalism School.