Classroom Innovators Awarded 2012 Dart Academic Fellowships

Fourteen journalism educators from six countries will gather at Columbia University for seminars and discussions on understanding emotional trauma and incorporating responsible coverage of tragedy into the curriculum.

The Dart Center has awarded 14 journalism educators from six countries 2012 Dart Academic Fellowships.

The Fellows, all college and university educators and student media advisers, will gather at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism from June 27-30 for seminars and discussions on understanding emotional trauma and incorporating responsible coverage of tragedy into the journalism curriculum.

The 2012 Dart Center Academic Fellows are (detailed biographies follow):

Marilyn (Lyn) Barnes
Lecturer, AUT University, Auckland, New Zealand

Virginia (Ginna) Breen
Associate Professor of Journalism, Purchase College, State University of New York (SUNY), Purchase, NY

Alexa Capeloto
Assistant Professor, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, English Dept., City University of New York (CUNY), New York, NY

Mónica Codina
Vice Head of Department, Professor of Media Ethics, University of Navarra, Public Communication Department, School of Communication, Pamplona, Spain

Anne Donahue
Associate Professor of Journalism, Boston University, Boston, MA

Elsebeth Frey
Associate Professor, Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences
Dept. of Journalism and Media Studies, Oslo, Norway

Michael Gormley
Associate Professor, Interim Director of Journalism Program, Central State University, Wilberforce, Ohio

Kenna Griffin
Associate Professor of Communications / Director of Student Publications, Oklahoma City University, Oklahoma City, OK

Chiung-wen (Julia) Hsu
Associate Professor, Department of Radio and TV, National Cheng Chi University, Taiwan

Susan M. Knight
Associate Professor of Practice, School of Journalism, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ

Christian Moeller
Lecturer, Fachhochschule Kiel / University of Applied Sciences Kiel, Germany

Steven Raymer
Professor of Journalism, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN

Lewis Smith
Lecturer, Prairie View A&M University, Languages and Communication, Prairie View, Texas

Ginny Whitehouse
Associate Professor of Journalism, Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond, Kentucky

 ABOUT THE 2012 DART ACADEMIC FELLOWS

Lyn Barnes began her career as a news journalist in Australia and New Zealand before moving into current affairs and medical writing. She has also worked in magazines, editing
the country’s biggest-selling glossy, Cuisine, with food and wine writing as her specialty. With a master’s degree in education, she began teaching journalism part-time in 2008. While watching several of her graduates cover the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake, which claimed the lives of 185 people, Barnes realized how ill-prepared most journalism students are when it comes to covering disasters and violence. Since then, she has made it her mission to see trauma training become part of journalism courses in New Zealand.

Ginna Breen began teaching journalism at Purchase College, SUNY, after covering education, courts and breaking news as a staff writer for New York’s Daily News. She also has written for Gannett newspapers in Westchester County and New York Newsday. During a leave from Purchase, she worked as a coordinating producer for ABC News On Campus, a partnership between the network's news division and several of the nation's leading journalism schools. Among her course offerings at Purchase, she introduced a workshop called Voices of September 11, which gave students hands-on experience researching and interviewing those affected by the 2001 terrorist attacks. Their work was incorporated into the digital archive of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.

Alexa Capeloto teaches journalism, co-coordinates the journalism minor and serves as faculty adviser for the student newspaper, The John Jay Sentinel. After earning her master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University in 2000, she spent five years as a reporter and editor at the Detroit Free Press. In 2005 she joined the San Diego Union-Tribune as East County bureau chief. Two years later she was named the paper’s enterprise editor, overseeing investigative, explanatory, trend and enterprise stories. In 2007, she began teaching as an adjunct instructor of journalism at National University, a San Diego-based college aimed at mid-career students. She has been on faculty at John Jay since 2009.

Mónica Codina has been a professor and researcher at the School of Communication of the University of Navarra, Spain since 1999. The School was founded in 1958 as the oldest in Spain. Codina is senior lecturer in media ethics to both the journalism and audiovisual communication degree programs. Between 2006 and 2010 she co-organized an annual Trauma and Journalism Seminar at the University of Navarra. Since 2000 she has served as a member of the advisory board of Media Ethics and is an editorial board member of the Journal of Applied Journalism and Media Studies, Journalism Research & Education Section. She co-authored “Journalism for Integration. The Muhammad Cartoons,” Javnost-The Public, vol. 14, nº2, Eslovenia, 2007.

Anne Donahue is an award-winning public radio producer and editor. She was the special projects editor at Monitor for five years, and has also been a contributor to NPR, the BBC, WGBH, WBUR and other public radio programs, winning the duPont-Columbia Award for The DNA Files on NPR. She has a special interest in international news, politics, and health and has reported from China, Egypt, Japan, Indonesia and throughout the United States. She has won numerous journalism awards for productions on women and AIDS, population and women’s reproductive health, and treatment of women and girls in the developing world. Prior to her work in public radio, Donahue was a writer and producer in commercial television news at ABC News in Washington and the CBS affiliate in Boston. In 2008, Donahue was a Fulbright Scholar in Beijing, teaching journalism at Renmin (People’s) University.

Elsebeth Frey has taught crisis journalism, news gathering, interviewing, ethical decision making, and self-care for journalists at Oslo University College since 2007. She also leads the college’s effort to strengthen training and education in trauma reporting. Her interest in journalism and trauma began when, as a journalist at Norsk ukeblad, she interviewed people who had experienced accidents, violence, loss of children, or incest. After the July 22, 2011 bombing in Oslo and massacre at Utoya, she used her professional and teaching experience to help plan the college’s journalism curriculum.

Mike Gormley spent 12 years working as a reporter in television markets throughout the United States before accepting a job in 2002 teaching journalism at Central State University. An associate professor, Gormley teaches a variety of courses including reporting, writing for electronic media, and senior capstone. He advises students working on the student newspaper and administers the students’ internship program. As interim director of the journalism and mass communications program, Gormley has worked to strengthen the curriculum and facilities of the program. He has received fellowships from the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the Knight Digital Media Center, the Radio and Television News Directors Association, and the National Endowment of Humanities, among other groups.

Kenna Griffin joined Oklahoma City University’s Mass Communications department in 2003. Her major areas of teaching are journalism and public relations. She also serves as the university’s director of student publications, advising the student newspaper, The Campus; the student media website, www.mediaocu.com; and the student yearbook, The Constellation. Griffin’s professional experience includes work as a staff writer at The Oklahoman and managing editor for the Guthrie News Leader. She is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists, Public Relations Society of America, College Media Advisers, Oklahoma Press Association, Women in Communications, and Oklahoma Collegiate Media Association. Griffin is a Ph.D. candidate in Mass Communications at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. Her research focuses on the tension between ideals of journalistic professionalism and work-related trauma exposure. Her most recently presented research is a study of journalists who witnessed executions in 2010 and how they prepared for and responded to that coverage.

Julia Hsu earned her master’s degree in communication at National Chao Tung University in 1999 and her doctorate in communication at SUNY-Buffalo in 2003. She has focused on media coverage of victims and effects on journalists when covering trauma stories since 2004. As a former TV journalist with the China Television Company, one of the five network stations in Taiwan, Hsu covered earthquakes, typhoons, and traumatic accidents. Following Typhoon Morakot which hit the southern and eastern parts of Taiwan in Aug. 2009, she started a blog as an informative resource and discussion platform for reporters on the ethical treatment of victims, peer support and handling emotions caused by interviewing and reporting. Hsu’s research interests include broadcasting journalism, mass communication, trauma and journalism, disaster communication, media ethics, new communication technology and Internet communication.

Susan M. Knight serves as the faculty mentor and director of undergraduate studies and teaches feature writing, reporting public affairs, principles of journalism, and honors research methods. Working with a former student who became an assistant city editor, Knight designed an apprenticeship program, often called “the internship on steroids.” As part of that program Knight developed a curriculum module on grief, loss, and trauma. Knight has nearly 20 years experience as a reporter and editor, earning more than two dozen writing awards from state and national press groups and education associations. Her work has appeared in the Arizona Daily Star, the Arizona Republic, Education Week and the Chronicle of Higher Education. She has also worked on two alternative weeklies, The Willamette Valley Observer and the Tucson Weekly. Her editing work has included a variety of publications, including “Shelter,” a book for the University of Arizona Press on a man’s journey out of homelessness.

Christian Moeller teaches journalism and social media at the University of Applied Sciences in Kiel/Germany and is a consultant to the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media. He is also organizing the EU-funded Danish-German Journalism Summer Academy, a joint project of the University of Applied Sciences in Kiel/Germany and the Syddansk Universitet in Odense/Danmark. Before his current appointment, Moeller worked for the Northern German federal media regulatory authority from 1999-2001, as a project officer at the Office of the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media in Vienna, Austria, from 2002-2008, and as spokesperson for the U.S. Consulate General in Hamburg, Germany, from 2008-2010. His main areas of work include the future of journalism in the digital age, regional and local journalism, social media, European media regulation and Internet governance. He holds a master’s degree in media studies, public law, and German literature from Christian Albrechts University in Kiel/Germany.

Steve Raymer teaches visual journalism, media ethics, international news gathering, and war correspondence at Indiana University. After service as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army, he joined the staff of National Geographic in 1972. From famines in Bangladesh and Ethiopia to the collapse of the Soviet Union, Raymer’s photographs have illustrated 29 bylined articles and numerous other articles, books, and multimedia presentations for National Geographic. From 1989 to 1995, Raymer served as director of the National Geographic Society News Service, while continuing to report for the magazine and the society’s news service from Russia, the first Persian Gulf War (1990-1991), and Vietnam as it opened to Western trade and tourism. A writer as well as image-maker, Raymer is author and photographer of “Images of a Journey: India in Diaspora,” published by Indiana University Press in 2007; “Living Faith: Inside the Muslim World of Southeast Asia (2001), and St. Petersburg, a 1994 illustrated book about the imperial Russian capital. He also is photographer of “Land of the Ascending Dragon: Rediscovering Vietnam” (1997). Raymer is currently completing “Redeeming Calcutta,” a new photographic book to be published in September 2012 by Oxford University Press.

Lewis Smith is a faculty member, coordinator of the communication program and adviser for the student newspaper, The Panther. Prior to his teaching career, Smith worked as a journalist, communication consultant and public relations practitioner. In addition to serving as editor-in-chief of Footprints Today newspaper and communication consultant for UNICEF in Monrovia, Liberia, he has had experience with TIME magazine in Washington, D.C., and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Smith has won fellowships from the American Press Institute, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the Dow Jones News Fund, the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, and the National Center for Business Journalism. Smith was a recipient of the Texas A&M University System Chancellor’s Teaching Excellence Award for 2009 and 2011.


Ginny Whitehouse
teaches courses in multi media reporting, media ethics and media law. She co-coordinates the annual AEJMC Workshop on Teaching Media Ethics in Journalism, and researches media ethics, social media, and media diversity. She is the Cases & Commentaries editor for the Journal of Mass Media Ethics and serves on the journal’s editorial board. Her recent publications include the ethics and diversity chapter of the Mass Media Ethics Handbook and an article advocating clearer ethical standards for journalists using social media in the Journal of Mass Media Ethics. Before coming to EKU, Whitehouse taught for 15 years at Whitworth University in Spokane, Wash., where she also served as department chair. She earned both her master’s and doctorate from the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism, and served a journalist for newspapers in Tennessee and Alabama, as well as for a news service in Southeast Asia.