Shorenstein Center names ‘rich brew’ of spring fellows

A foreign correspondent, an opinion editor, and a political communications scholar are among those recently named fellows at the Kennedy School of Government’s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy for the spring 2005 semester.

“The range of Shorenstein Fellows this semester goes from a celebrated war correspondent and distinguished political columnists to experts in emerging media technology, voting behavior, and telecommunications policy,” said Alex S. Jones, the center’s director. “It is, as usual, a very rich brew,” Jones added.

The 2005 spring fellows

Doug Ahlers is the co-founder of Modem Media, an interactive advertising and marketing agency. He has been involved in the development and deployment of online services from the first experiments with interactive technology through the explosion of the Internet as a mass medium. Ahlers built the first commercial Web site and created the first banner ad to appear on the Internet. Through his work at Modem Media, Ahlers created comprehensive Internet strategies for Fortune 500 companies. He is currently working on a book that examines the societal and political impact of new technologies.

Julia Baird is the opinion editor at the Sydney Morning Herald. She writes a weekly column on a range of topics including politics, religion, celebrity, pop culture, and feminism. She earned her Ph.D. in history from the University of Sydney in 2001. The subject of her research was “Housewife Superstars: Female politicians and the Australian Print Media 1970-1990.” Her book on this subject was published in 2004. Her research at the Shorenstein Center will focus on the globalization of American opinion in the lead-up to the Iraq war, particularly in the major cities of allies such as Britain and Australia.

Hans Mathias Kepplinger is professor in communications at the University of Mainz. He earned his Ph.D. in political science in 1970. His most recent book, “Farewell to the Rational Voter,” looks at the effects of television on the images of politicians and their impact on voting behavior. In “Mechanisms Steering Scandals,” he analyzes the role of the media in political and environmental scandals. He is author or co-author of 26 books and numerous articles that have appeared in Public Opinion Quarterly, Communication Research, and the Journal of Communication, among others. Kepplinger’s research will focus on the reciprocal effect of mass media on politicians.

David Rohde is a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. For the past two and a half years, he has covered Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, and Bangladesh as the newspaper’s South Asia bureau co-chief. He has also reported on war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kosovo, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, and fraud in the 2000 Florida presidential election. In 1994 and 1995, Rohde covered the war in Bosnia for The Christian Science Monitor and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his stories on the massacre of 7,000 Bosnian Muslims. At Harvard, Rohde will examine American efforts to introduce free media in Muslim countries to help counter the spread of Islamic fundamentalism.

Richard Schultz is the James McGill Professor of Political Science and former director of the Center for the Study of Regulated Industries at McGill University. He received his B.A. and Ph.D. at York University, Toronto, and his M.A. at the University of Manchester, England. He is the author or co-editor of eight books and more than 50 articles and book chapters. He is currently writing a book titled “Contested Networks: The Politics of Canadian Telecommunications 1976-1993.” His work at the Shorenstein Center will focus on the policy issues arising from the linkages between media concentration and cross-ownership, and possible public policy responses.

Walter Shapiro has covered the last seven presidential campaigns as a newspaper columnist and magazine writer. He is the author of “One-Car Caravan: On the Road with the 2004 Democrats Before America Tunes In.” He recently completed a nine-year stint as the twice-weekly political columnist for USA Today. From 1993 to 1996, he wrote a monthly column on the Clinton administration for Esquire magazine, and covered the 1988 and 1992 elections as a senior writer for Time. During the Carter administration, Shapiro was a White House speechwriter and a special assistant to the secretary of labor. At the Shorenstein Center, Shapiro will examine the changing role of the newspaper column in the public debate.