Where They Go, Nobody Knows
By Charles R. Eisendrath ’75
Charles R. Eisendrath ’75
In a time of serious, serial, perhaps suicidal, cutbacks across “old media” journalism, 10 alumni write about the Beijing games for this Olympics issue of The Journal. That’s more people on the ground than many of the big boys of journalism. Their number and the stories of how they got there say as much about the expansion of KWF as the contraction of parts of the business. I’d like to introduce them by saying something about who they were when they walked in the Fellowship’s door, what they studied, and what happened afterwards.
I’ll begin, however, with non-alum Richard Pound because he represents a revolving group of outrageously talented people – including Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Patrick Oliphant, ragtimer Bob Milne, and novelist Richard Ford – who return for periods ranging from several to many years just because they like what goes on at Wallace house. Pound belongs among them as leader of the anti-doping movement in Olympic sports – as well as being a former Olympian himself, a member of the International Olympic Committee, and chancellor of McGill University. Nobody who has heard him speak thinks about sportsmanship the same way.
Second, the “team” shows that the Friedman Fellowship in Sports Reporting, the first and only endowed position of its kind, is attracting committed people who are remaining in “old” journalism and getting top assignments.
Most of all, the roster shows the glory of people getting where they want via career pathways ranging from the linear to the tangled, reflecting the breadth of interests KWF encourages, including growth some could not imagine. When he invented journalism fellowships (with other people’s money) in 1938, Walter Lippmann intended that journalists would think, study and then go back where they came from and do the same thing better.
KWF honors this constituency. If you didn’t know Linda Robertson ’07 by the time she walked up to shake hands you’d say “sports type” by that lope of hers. She studied “the emerging overweening culture of sports” and took that back to her column at the Miami Herald, one of the most closely watched in the business. Vahe Gregorian ’04 of the St. Louis Post- Dispatch did much the same with his study of “the history and demise of sportsmanship.” So did Dong Seok Kim ’07, who returned to the Chosun Daily aftfter a year’s examination of the crisis in Korean professional sports.
For others, following their dream wasn’t that simple and I like to think time spent at Wallace House gave them a broader approach to pursuing it, anyway. James Miles ’95 arrived as BBC’s Hong Kong Correspondent, studied “American Intellectual History” and returned after his Fellowship. His dream was becoming a leading journalistic commentator on China, which, as Beijing correspondent for The Economist, he assuredly is.
Something similar befell Matthias Schepp ’05. As Beijing bureau chief for Der Stern, he studied the perception of Communists decay in Western Media, intending to return to reporting it. But then management beckoned…until he fled back to reporting as Moscow bureau chief for Der Spiegel.
The Baltimore Sun shot the Beijing bureau out from under Gady Epstein ’07 while he was running it. He took a Fellowship, studied “authoritarian and formerly authoritarian states,” tried the Sun again and when foreign work did not materialize there, found it running the Beijing bureau for Forbes.
Those are the easy ones. Now consider Mark McDonald ’97. When he applied for KWF he had already covered the Olympic Games and other major sports assignments for the Dallas Morning News. I told him his chances for admission were better as a business Fellow, which is what he studied, along with Islamic politics. But by April he had decided none of the above, and decamped for Vietnam for the San Jose Mercury News. Permutations later, he is Hong Kong editor of the International Herald Tribune.
Terril Jones ’96 has a Chinese mother and spoke the language at home. He took a Fellowship as an AP Paris correspondent, studied the emerging Chinese Auto industry and reported for the Los Angeles Times before landing the Kiplinger Fellowship at Ohio State University.
Janet Kolodzy ’91 came from CNN while it was still the old CNN – full of kids, full of beans and with the stock price posted in the newsroom. A writer/editor, she studied the culture and history of Eastern Europe but within a few years of her return, CNN changed. So Kolodzy transformed her passion for producing journalism into teaching it. When Olympic organizers chose U.S. student volunteers to be pool reporters and media liaisons during the Games, she led the Emerson College crew.
Can’t tell you about Richard Deitsch ’09 of Sports Illustrated. He just got here.
