Contributors

Issue: 2009

• Kate Branch
  Campaigning Monks
  Class of 2009 | kathryn.m.branch@gmail.com
  Professor: Jill Hamburg Coplan, Urban Religion
  

  Majors:Journalism and Dramatic Literature Hometown:Chicago, IL Currently:Finishing my last semester at NYU while interning at Teen Vogue magazine– and currently on the job hunt, of course. Biggest challenge on this story:The situation in Burma (Myanmar) and the monks’ stories at times were so overwhelming I felt almost paralyzed at the screen, unable to write a word. The need for their story to be heard was (and still is) so great that I found myself feeling unworthy of writing it. I’ll never forget my first meeting with the monks — they treated me with such respect and appreciation that I was there to hear their story, when really it should have been the other way around. I almost burst into tears when they told me their stories for the first time. I felt foolish and ignorant that I had no idea of the Burmese situation prior to meeting them. But that’s the thing about journalism — it leads you to places you would never think you would go.

• Andrea Craig
  A Family Cancer
  Class of 2009 | andrea.craig@nyu.edu
  Professor: Charles Seife, Weird Science, Bad Journalism
  

  Majors: Journalism, pre-med; minor in public health policy Hometown: Reading, Pennsylvania Currently: I hope to be joining the 2009 Teach For America corps. I am, however, also applying to other jobs with various publications, hospitals, and non-profit organizations. Biggest challenge on this story: Kerry’s life is full of great stories – stories that she willingly shared, often without my prompting. The biggest challenge was selecting which ones were best for the piece.

• Patty Delgado
  Cuban Rhapsody
  Class of 2010 | pad229@nyu.edu
  Professor: Vivien Orbach-Smith, Hyphenated New York
  

  Majors: Journalism and Sociology Hometown: San Antonio, Texas Currently: Exercising my geek-skills in programming and web design while enjoying my first Brooklyn summer. Biggest challenge on this story: Keeping my heart in hand and not letting it fall too much onto the page. Being the daughter of a Cuban immigrant and covering a Cuban-American beat had such a profound impact on me that it was difficult to restrain myself from putting my emotions into the lives and opinions of my subjects. Though, in the end it was probably a better story because I let a little part of me seep in.

• Christina Doka
  Warboss Zagdakka Takes on the World
  Class of 2010 | cmd401@nyu.edu
  Professor: Ted Conover, Journalism of Empathy
  

  Majors: Journalism and Politics Hometown: Bronx, New York Currently: Just living life Biggest challenge on this story: Trying to learn the intricate details of the Warhammer game, and having to do tons of research on how to play.

• William Marshall
  Life a la Rice Cart
  Class of 2010 | wam247@nyu.edu
  Professor: Ted Conover, Journalism of Empathy
  

  Majors: Journalism (Media Criticism concentration) and Comparative Literature. Hometown: Cambridge, MA. Currently: I’m leasing an apartment in New York for the summer, freelancing and trying desperately to acquire some multimedia skills Biggest challenge on this story: Sticking around and waiting for things to happen. Action is scarce during night shifts, so I needed to be on my toes, ready to take down any material I could.

• Emily Nonko
  Babushkas Just Don’t Understand
  Class of 2010 | ecn225@nyu.edu
  Professor: Frank Flaherty, New York Neighborhoods
  

  Majors:Journalism and History Hometown:Denver, CO Currently:Finishing up school. Biggest challenge on this story:Overcoming cultural and language boundaries to understand where the older Russian generation was coming from. I wanted to be as open-minded to their frustrations as their I was to those of their grandchildren.

• Marie-Helene Rousseau
  Rent Control in Cairo
  Class of 2009 | mhr246@nyu.edu
  Professor: James McBride, Point of View
  

  Majors: Journalism and Comparative Literature Hometown: Cairo, Egypt Currently: Getting ready to graduate Biggest challenge on this story:Digging into my own family history. Due to the lack of paperwork, it was difficult to devise a precise timeline in the story, something that required a lot of mining of my family’s memory to complete. I also ran into problems with pacing the story in a way that gave it momentum but didn’t give away too much in the beginning. In the process (which Professor McBride greatly helped me with) I found out a great deal about my family history, as well as about the enigmatic main character of the story.

• Herrie Son
  Your Next Tailor
  Class of 2009 | hs1007@nyu.edu
  Professor: Ted Conover, Journalism of Empathy
  

  Majors: Journalism and Cinema Studies Hometown: Davis, California Currently: with my laptop in the bathtub Biggest challenge on this story: I had to pee the whole time I was interviewing my subject.

• William Yakowicz
  My Chinatown: A New York Sketchbook
  Class of 2009 | wry203@nyu.edu
  Professor: Vivien Orbach-Smith, Hyphenated New York
  

  Majors: Journalism and English Literature Hometown: Ridgewood, New Jersey Currently: Freelance journalist Biggest challenge on this story: The biggest challenge was breaking the language barrier between me and my subjects, and bridging the distance between the cultural enclave as an outsider, along with becoming well enough adjusted and aware of the community to be worthy of writing about it.

Issue: Fall 2008

• Hamad Al-Tourah
  The Benks of Birlik Market
  Class of 2008 | hamadaltourah@gmail.com
  Professor: Ted Conover, Journalism of Empathy
  

  Majors:Hometown: Kuwait Currently: Doing post-production work in documentaries and developing his own about the lives of new immigrant workers in the Middle East. Biggest challenge on this story: “Taking the liberty of recording the lives of two people who, until recently, were unknown to the writer. How does anyone write about two very focused, hard-working people who just simply want to make a steady living, without feeling like you are practicing some sort of exploitation? The solution is always time and in the process, the writer needs to be prepared to share as much about themselves. You need to be as honest, willing and open to talk about your own life if you expect anything in return.”

• Lauren Betesh
  Bellevue Beckons
  Class of 2008 | lsb282@nyu.edu
  Professor: James McBride, Point of View
  

  Majors: Journalism and Sociology Hometown: Shrewsbury, NJ Currently: Working part-time for family real estate business while seeking broadcast work. Biggest challenge on this story: “I worked hard to maintain suspense throughout, especially when I enter the Bellevue for the first time. Although nothing as frightening as the diner scene occured once inside the hospital, the act of exploring and attempting to find something when nothing was found was difficult to communicate. I worried the reader would be disappointed when I did not find the scary man wandering the halls and would fail to see the deeper message in my piece. “This piece was written for Professor James McBride and the topic was “Exploration of the Unknown”. In class, we were each handed $20 and were told to do something in New York City we have never done before. With support and encouragement from Professor McBride, I created a piece that was challenging to write and that I am very happy to share.”

• Kevin Fallon
  Like Manhattan If the Sewers Didn't Work
  Class of 2009 | kpf215@nyu.edu
  Professor: Vivien Orbach Smith, New York Characters
  

  Majors: Journalism and Politics Hometown: Prince Frederick, Maryland Biggest challenge: “Capturing such a dynamic stage performance in words that were compelling enough to convey Hoyle’s tour de force.”

• Jenna Goudreau
  The Body Electric
  Class of 2008 | jdg344@nyu.edu
  Professor: Yvonne Latty, Honors Senior Seminar
  

  Majors: Journalism and Sociology Hometown: Jacksonville, Florida Currently: Editorial assistant at ForbesLife Executive Woman, a quarterly lifestyle magazine focused on senior-level businesswomen Biggest challenge: “Maneuvering past the spin of the Con Ed PR machine.”

• Joe Kemp
  Confessions of a Gambler
  Class of 2008 | jnk230@nyu.edu
  Professor: Jessica Seigel, Greenwich Village
  

  Majors:Hometown: Richmond, Virginia Currently: Working as a freelance theatre technician and advancing a writing career Biggest challenge: “Organization. I had a lot of notes and experience on poker and it was difficult assessing what to cut.”

• Gabriela Magda
  Purple Haze
  Class of 2008 | gabrielademagda@gmail.com
  Professor: Perri Klass, Reporting Families and Children
  

  Majors:Journalism and Neural Science Hometown: Queens, New York Currently: Clinical research assistant and organ procurement perfusionist at Columbia University Medical Center in the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery. She also collaborates with the Narrative Medicine program Biggest challenge: “Making sure my own bias didn’t interfere with delivering a sensitive and objective depiction of the families I interviewed. Coming from a science background, and given that our culture overwhelmingly supports biomedicine to “alternative medicine,” it was much easier for me to play skeptic and to find skeptical, and frequently derogatory, opinion. With the guidance of Professor Klass, a pediatrician as well as a journalist, I learned how to carefully prepare my interviews so to ask probing questions that respected the families’ choices and edit my writing to remain as neutral as possible and let the reader decide if the choices were appropriate.”

• Anam Mansuri
  A Shop of One’s Own
  Class of 2008 | anam.mansuri@gmail.com
  Professor: Jessica Seigel, Sex and Gender in NYC
  

  Majors: Journalism and History Hometown: Karachi, Pakistan Currently: Interning at Hippocrene Books Biggest challenge: “Staying detached. It was easy for me to relate to the women that I was writing about, having worked with many women starting their own careers back in Pakistan. I was consistently trying to make sure that my own biases would not get in the way given that I was representing my community. Things that were problematic for me to explain to an American audience I tried to explain by describing my characters and their interactions with others, as well as others’ reactions to them.”

• Eric Markowitz
  The Better Half of a Century
  Class of 2009 | eric.markowitz@gmail.com
  Professor: David Samuels, Storytellers
  

  Majors: Journalism and Creative Writing Hometown: Bergen County, New Jersey Biggest challenge: “Getting too close to the story. How I overcame it: Spent hours with my mouth closed sitting in their living room.”

• Jenna Marotta
  Ladies and the Tramp Stamp
  Class of 2008 | jenna.marotta@gmail.com
  Professor: Jessica Seigel, Sex and Gender in NYC
  

  Majors: Journalism and History Hometowns: Chicago, Illinois; Fairfax Station, Virginia; Charlotte and Raleigh, North Carolina; Ridgefield, Connecticut and Chesterfield, Missouri. Currently: Jenna’s last three years in New York have included interviewing Yankees and interning at Saturday Night Live. Today she lives in Alphabet City and works as a freelance journalist. And no, she does not have a “tramp stamp.” Biggest Challenge: “Choosing my topic. I wanted to write a piece that was brainy and ballsy, brimming with pop culture tidbits yet an undeniable work of journalism. In the end, I came up with a story that I couldn’t wait to write.”

• Christina Parrella
  Rone’s Wild Ride
  Class of 2008 | cmp381@nyu.edu
  Professor: Jessica Seigel, Reporting Greenwich Village
  

  Majors: Journalism and Politics Hometown: Brooklyn, New York Currently: An editorial intern at AOL Body, writing, editing and researching fitness, lifestyle and health articles. She aspires to be like Seymour Hersh Biggest challenge: “Perfecting the lede. After rewriting it four times, I trusted my instincts and went with my original draft. I also had to overcome the impulse to insert opinion into the story after getting close my her subject. I remained objective by remembering that every story has to tell itself.”

• Diana Rosenthal
  A Preserved Delicacy
  Class of 2008 | rosenthal.diana@gmail.com
  Professor: Yvonne Latty, Honors Senior Seminar
  

  Majors: Journalism and History Hometown: West Islip, New York Currently: Working at News 12 (Long Island) Interactive Biggest challenge: “Quite a few times during the reporting process, I had to step back from all the history I knew about the Lower East Side and the Jewish immigrants who once inhabited it. Though my background in the history and my personal connection to it were both inspirations for my topic, I had to make sure to focus on the present situation, not only what existed way back when. By finding my main character, Niki, who was too young to be grouped into the immigrant generation, it became possible for me to see the current side of the story.”

• Nicole Tung
  Independence Day
  Class of 2009 | nicoletung6@gmail.com
  Professor: Prof. Jill Hamburg Coplan, Foreign Correspondence
  

  Majors: Journalism & History Hometown: Hong Kong Biggest challenge: “Learning about the complex process of identifying missing persons from mass graves.”

• Elizabeth Webber
  Sun City
  Class of 2008 | erw234@nyu.edu
  Professor: Yvonne Latty, Honors Senior Seminar
  

  Majors: Journalism and History (Computer Applications minor) Hometown: New Fairfield, CT Currently: Interning for the web site of the International Herald Tribune in Paris. Biggest challenge: “Maintaining an unbiased tone in the story, since the subject is something I feel very strongly about. I tried to use quotes to give opinions as much as possible and made sure I included Con Ed’s point of view, though they didn’t really want to answer my questions.”

Issue: Fall 2007

• Kristen V. Brown
  The Message
  Class of 2008 | kvb208@nyu.edu
  Professor: Jill Hamburg-Coplan, Urban Religion
  

  Majors: Journalism & Middle Eastern Studies Hometown: Newport Beach, California Biggest challenge on this story: “Trying to boil down someone’s life into what the ‘important’ or ‘relevant’ information is. Isn’t everything important?”

• Antoinette Bueno
  Making it Home
  Class of 2007 | aeb287@nyu.edu
  Professor: Frank Flaherty, Neighborhood NYC
  

  Majors: Journalism & Cinema Studies Hometown: Carson, California Currently: Working as an editor in Los Angeles for Balita Media Inc., the largest Filipino newspaper in Southern California. Biggest challenge: “Actually getting a Filipino nurse to not only talk to me, but to really open up to me — in other words, gaining her trust. Christmas was very very shy at first, so it definitely took some effort to make her comfortable!”

• Carl Critz
  The New Wave
  Class of 2007 | carl.critz@gmail.com
  Professor: Frank Flaherty, Neighborhood NYC
  

  Major: Journalism (Anthropology minor) Hometown: Greenville, Rhode Island Currently: Moving to Hawaii “to work and surf” Biggest challenge: “Balancing my school and work obligations while commuting several times a week to Rockaway for often time-consuming interviews. In addition to my classes, I was working as a lifeguard at Palladium, interning at Blender magazine, and competing for NYU’s swim team.”

• Brian Dwyer
  Playing for Time
  Class of 2008 | btd220@nyu.edu
  Professor: Vivien Orbach-Smith, New York Characters
  

  Majors: Journalism and Music Hometown: Braintree, Massachusetts Biggest challenge: “Remaining unbiased, because this story was inspired by a sense of outrage and a desire to tell the side untold.”

• Stephanie Gordon
  Growing Up, With Help
  Class of 2008 | smg368@nyu.edu
  Professor: Joe Cutbirth, From City Hall to Capitol Hill
  

  Majors: Journalism and Politics Hometown: Denver, Colorado Biggest challenge: “Overcoming my own preconceived ideas of what people with developmental disabilities are capable of doing and overcoming in their lives. My idea of autism was isolated and disabled children who would grow to be socially non-functional and dependent adults.”

• Ben Jackson
  The Mark of TORGO
  Class of 2007 | bjj208@nyu.edu
  Professor: Joe Cutbirth, From City Hall to Capitol Hill
  

  Majors: Journalism and Theater Hometown: Rapid City, South Dakota Currently: Living in Spanish Harlem, working with Kenneth Cole Productions and going on auditions Biggest challenge: “I had no special knowledge of or insight into the world of graffiti; everything about it was foreign to me. Without any specific connections to the graffiti community, I had great difficulty in tracking down an artist that was willing to speak to me, let alone actually allow me to tag along (if you’ll pardon the pun).”

• Kira Peikoff
  A Cell's Journey
  Class of 2007 | writekiralily@gmail.com
  Professor: Craig Wolff, Advanced Reporting (Honors)
  

  Hometown: Irvine, California Currently: In New York City, writing a novel full time Biggest challenge: “Getting the women to open up about the emotional side of the egg donation procedure and the ways their decision affected them.”

• Beina Xu
  A Different Dialogue
  Class of 2007 | beina.xu@nyu.edu
  Professor: Vivien Orbach-Smith, New York Characters
  

  Majors: Journalism & Comparative Literature Hometown: Beijing, China Biggest challenge: “Being the only hearing individual amidst a deaf congregation. I was careful to ensure that my questions were understood (by everyone), and that their responses were accurately represented in my writing.”

• Photographer: Laura Sayer (except where otherwise noted)
  M.A. Journalism, 2007 | laura.sayer@gmail.com