Shorenstein announces fellows

The Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government has selected five distinguished journalists and scholars as the 2000 Fall Fellows. Among the fellows are a chief researcher for the Science Office of Sun Microsystems, and a correspondent from The New York Times. The fellows will spend the fall researching and writing on topics as varied as televised election debates, media and race, and the “journalistic tribe.”

“Our fellows this semester come with widely disparate interests, from Internet policy to welfare reform, from Russian media to the ideal televised debate, from how race is covered in America to the press in Portugal. It will be a wonderful smorgasbord,” said, Alex S. Jones, director of the Shorenstein Center.

The five fellows are Jason Deparle, welfare correspondent for The New York Times. Since joining The New York Times in 1989, Deparle has regularly covered anti-poverty policy. Reporting from Washington, he wrote about the debate leading to the 1996 law that abolished entitlement to cash assistance and created time limits and work requirements. Since then he has written extensively about state efforts to implement the law. DeParle served as a staff writer for The New York Times from 1995-97. Before joining the Times, he was an editor at The Washington Monthly, a reporter at The Times-Picayune, and as a staff writer at The New Republic magazine. In 1986-87, he was a Henry Luce Scholar in the Philippines, working with a community development group in a squatter camp. While at the Shorenstein Center, DeParle will be writing a book on welfare reform.

John Gage is chief researcher and director of the Science Office for Sun Microsystems. Gage is responsible for Sun’s relationships with world scientific and technical organizations, for international public policy and governmental relations in the areas of scientific and technical policy, and for alliances with the world’s leading research institutions and laboratories. In 1995, Gage created NetDay, the first Internet-based mass organizing project to enable communities to organize themselves to act locally. He is the host of SunEnergy, a worldwide satellite television program that explores the frontiers of computing, networking, science, and mathematics. Gage attended the University of California, Berkeley, the Kennedy School of Government, and Harvard Business School. He did doctoral work in mathematics and economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and left Berkeley in 1982 with Bill Joy to found Sun Microsystems. He serves on numerous boards. Gage will teach a module called Technology, Media and Governance.

Julie Hall is a former senior media advisor of the Active Community Unit, initiated by Prime Minister Tony Blair, which developed new partnerships with the media to help ensure government policies promoting community involvement in the diverse communities in the United Kingdom. A former political correspondent for ITN and Granada Television, Hall has presented and produced a range of network and regional current affairs series for the BBC, Granada, Channel 4, and Channel 5 in the United Kingdom. From May 1989 to June 1992, Julie was press secretary to Neil Kinnock, the Labour Party leader. She was a Robert McKenzie Fellow at the London School of Economics and regularly writes and lectures on the media, politics, and citizenship. Hall will evaluate and analyze different formats for televised election debates.

Nelson Traquina is a professor of communication science at New University of Lisbon and president of the Center for Research in Media and Journalism, Lisbon. After obtaining degrees in international studies in the United States, Traquina worked for United Press International before completing his Ph.D. at the University of Paris V. He is the author of “Big Show Media: Voyage to the Portuguese Audiovisual World;” “Journalism: Questions, Theories and Stories”; and “The Frustrated Fourth Estate: Portugal’s Post-Revolutionary Media System.” Traquina has also written articles in journals such as Media, Culture & Society. Traquina will examine the “journalistic tribe,” the idea that journalists across national frontiers share a common news culture.

In the Washington, D.C., office of the Shorenstein Center, Deborah Mathis will examine a case study in which race played a major role and study the press coverage of that story. Mathis is the national correspondent for Gannett News Service. A veteran political reporter, she is responsible for reporting on all national news stories dealing with the White House and the administration. Previously a columnist for The Clarion-Ledger, Mathis wrote a twice-weekly column on subjects ranging from national politics to racial injustice to the perils and payoffs of motherhood. She began her career as a general assignment reporter for the Arkansas-Democrat. She worked in various positions as an on-air reporter and anchor for KTHV-TV and KATV-TV in Little Rock, Ark., and WTTG-TV in Washington, D.C. Between 1976 and 1981, she worked for KARK-TV, Little Rock, moving from reporter to assistant news director. In 1988, Mathis joined the Arkansas Gazette as an editorial columnist and staff writer, and in 1990 became associate editor. She is a regular commentator on “America’s Black Forum,” a weekly talk show that deals with issues of importance to African Americans.

The Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy was established in 1986 to promote greater understanding of the media by public officials, to improve coverage by media professionals, to better anticipate the consequences of public policies that affect the media and the First Amendment, and to increase knowledge about how the media affect our political processes.

The Center introduced the 2000 Fall Fellows on Sept. 18, in the Taubman Building at the Kennedy School of Government.