Our Great Geniuses
Jerry Morton ’77 heard his photographs set to music at a chamber music concert in Miami in September. Morton taught at the University of Timisoara, Romania, as a Fulbright Journalism professor in 1993–94, and, two years later, published Romania, featuring pictures and stories about the people and places he encountered. The musical project was through Miami Chamber Music, which used his black-and-white photos to accompany the selection “Perpetual Tales: Romania,” written by Cristian Macelaru.
Elizabeth Pond ’77 was awarded the Bundesverdienstkreuz (the Federal German Service Medal) last October, for her work in promoting good transatlantic relations, both in writing books and in editing the English-language foreign-policy journal Transatlantic Internationale Politik.
Patrick Malone ’78 is the 2005–2006 president of the Trial Lawyers Association of Metropolitan Washington, D.C. He was also just selected by his peers for the publication, “The Best Lawyers in America.”
Dan Wascoe ’77 has joined the education team at The Star Tribune in Minneapolis-St. Paul, covering issues that cut across district boundaries in the metro area. As a “new” education reporter he attended a Hechinger Institute seminar at Columbia University last summer.
Kitty Caparella ’83 won a fellowship to a five-day seminar, “Covering Islam and Muslims in America,” at the Western Knight Center at the University of Southern California in November. The fellowship followed two years of reporting for the Philadelphia Daily News on a corrupt, politically connected imam. This year, her lithographs, etchings and monotypes were exhibited in five art shows in the Philadelphia area, including one national competition.
Eleanor McGrath ’85 continues to publish books at her “little company,” McWitty Press. The third book, Just Gus: A Rescued Dog and the Woman He Loved, by Laurie Williams, will be published in February 2006.
Gary M. Pomerantz ’88 published his third non-fiction book, Wilt, 1962: The Night of 100 Points and the Dawn of a New Era, a period-piece narrative about race, small towns, and the legendary night Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in a basketball game against the New York Knicks. The New York Times Book Review named it an Editor’s Choice book, while Entertainment Weekly placed it on its “Must List” and called it “a slam dunk of a read.”
Jack Kresnak ’89, reporter at the Detroit Free Press, is the 2005 winner of the Toni House Journalism Award, honoring outstanding reporting that improves the administration of justice and enhances the public’s understanding of the courts. Kresnak won for his cumulative efforts in 16 years of covering juvenile justice issues. He is currently working on finishing a book on the Rev. William Cunningham, founder of Focus: HOPE.
Nadine Epstein ’90 is editor and executive publisher of Moment magazine, an independent national magazine about Jewish politics, culture and religion based in Washington, D.C. Co-founded by Elie Wiesel in 1975, it has 120,000 readers and a website at www.momentmag.com.
Susan Manuel ’92 is the chief of the Peace and Security Section, Department of Public Information, United Nations, New York.
Mike Brennan ’93, continues to build his specialized publishing company, MItechnews.com. The portal site covers the technology industry in Michigan and the Great Lakes area, as well as provides news and information by and for entrepreneurs and small business. MItechnews.com also publishes six newsletters, including Weekly Summary, Security and Entrepreneur’s Corner, plus co-branded e-zines with the Ann Arbor IT Zone, MichBio and GLIMA Connections, a statewide technology networking group.
Deborah Caldwell ’94 is the new managing editor at Beliefnet, the online magazine about spirituality with a daily audience of five million. She was one of the founding members of the website.
Barry Yeoman ’95 won a 2005 Mature Media Award for writing about involuntary guardianships that rob the elderly of their independence and life savings. The article ran in AARP: The Magazine. Yeoman also writes regularly for Discover, Mother Jones, and Attaché.
Robert McClure ’97 is serving on the board of directors of the Society of Environmental Journalists. As liaison to SEJ’s First Amendment Task Force, he recently oversaw and edited a September 2005 report entitled, “A Flawed Tool—Environmental Reporters’ Experiences with the Freedom of Information Act.” Coincidentally released around the time of the Katrina coverage, it “ended up helping make our point that FOIA is in trouble,” he says. McClure covers the environment at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. This year he wrote “A License to Kill,” a project examining how the federal government has essentially given up on enforcing the Endangered Species Act on private land.
Mark McDonald ’97 ended his three-year posting as Knight Ridder’s Moscow bureau chief in May. He is currently the Howard R. Marsh Professor of Journalism at the University of Michigan, teaching two senior seminars on the future of the news and the coverage of war, conflict and terrorism. Mark will return to Knight Ridder’s Washington bureau in the spring.
Tom Grant ’98 left his position as news director and anchor at KTWO-TV in Casper, Wyo., to become editor of Metro Spirit, an alternative weekly in Augusta, Ga.
Jim Bruggers ’99 was a science journalism fellow at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass. for ten days in June, and as part of that program was sent to a national long-term ecological research station operated by MBL at Toolik Lake, Alaska. A reporter for The (Louisville) Courier-Journal, he stayed there for ten days learning about arctic research into climate change, and witnessing firsthand the melting of Alaska.
Susan Hooper ’01 joined the administration of Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell last year as deputy director of communications. She also serves as press secretary for the secretary of the budget, Michael J. Masch.
Jiri Nadoba ’03 now runs the Business and Economics desk at MF DNES in Prague, Czech Republic. He oversees a team of nine people, and, he writes from “a nice cubicle room with a view over an ugly office-construction area in the booming capital of new Europe.”
Vince Patton ’04 has been elected to the board of directors of the Society of Environmental Journalists. He is environmental reporter for KGW-TV (NBC) in Portland, Ore., and has served as co-chair of the SEJ Awards for excellence in environmental reporting for the last two years.
Cynthia Barnett ’05 signed a contract with the University of Michigan Press (UMP) to publish her first book. Mirage: Florida and the Disappearing Water of the American East will be published by UMP’s trade division in spring 2007.
Bill Duryea ’05 became the St. Petersburg Times national editor in August. He oversees a staff of five senior writers—the Latin America correspondent, the foreign correspondent, the national affairs reporter, the Florida state reporter and the national media critic.
Christine Tanaka ’05 is the new news director of KIMT-TV, the CBS affiliate in Mason City, Iowa.
