In order to accurately describe the world to their audiences, journalists need to see it first. Yet with dwindling news budgets and break-neck deadlines, many journalists only catch glimpses on a computer monitor. For precisely that reason, travel is a key component of the Knight-Wallace Fellowship – and one of the major benefits that sets us apart from other programs.
We kick things off with a fall trip to stunning Northern Michigan. Under crisp autumn skies, we shuffle through leaves on long walks in the woods and gather apples for fresh cider.
Later in the year, we turn things up a notch with intensive and invigorating international news tours that are equal parts education and entertainment.
We visit two South American capitals, Buenos Aires and São Paulo. Our hosts from Clarín, Argentina’s largest newspaper, and Brazil’s biggest daily, Folha de São Paulo, organize seminars with influential politicians, historians, journalists and cultural experts. Fellows also have time to sample each country’s distinctive cuisine, go horseback riding on an Argentinean estancia and dance in an authentic escola de samba.
During the winter term, Fellows venture to Moscow for an immersion in the new Russia, hosted by the country’s independent opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta. There are seminars with politicians and dissidents, and cultural forays that might include a night at the ballet or the symphony. The highlights of the trip have been a meeting with the Soviet Union’s last leader and Nobel laureate Mikhail Gorbachev, newspaper owner Alexander Lebedev and Galina Vishnevskaya, opera legend and widow of Mstislav Rostropovich.
