Dart Center Announces 2008 Ochberg Fellows

The Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma has announced the recipients of the 2008 Ochberg Fellowships. This year’s fellows are:

• Dan Grech, APM, "Marketplace"
• Kelly Kennedy, Times News Service
• Christina Lamb, Sunday Times, U.K.
• Alysa Landry, Farmington Daily Times (Four Corners, N.M.)
• Jeff Kelly Lowenstein, The Chicago Reporter
• John Moore, Getty Images
• Devin Robins, NPR, "News & Notes"
• Hollman Morris, Channel One, “Contravía,” Colombia
• Karyn Spencer, Omaha World-Herald
• Jon Stephenson, TV3, New Zealand

 (Detailed biographies of this year's fellows follow this announcement.)

The Ochberg Fellowship was established in 1999 by the Dart Center for journalists seeking to deepen their coverage of violence and traumatic events.  Fellowships are awarded to mid-career journalists in all media who have covered issues ranging from street crime, family violence and natural disasters to war and genocide.

The weeklong fellowship program offers journalists a unique opportunity to learn from leading experts in the many dimensions of trauma, and to forge relationships with colleagues who share their interests. Fellows attend several days of seminars and participate in the annual conference of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.

The fellowship is named for Frank Ochberg, M.D., a psychiatrist and pioneer in the understanding of violence and trauma and the chair emeritus of the Dart Center’s Executive Committee.

This year’s group brings the total number of Dart Center Ochberg Fellows to 80.

The 2008 Dart Center Ochberg Fellows

Dan Grech is Americas reporter for "Marketplace," covering Latin American business and the Hispanic economy in the United States from WLRN Studios in downtown Miami. Grech started freelancing for various print publications while a student at Princeton University. He interned at the Boston Globe and the Washington Post before landing a job at The Miami Herald in 2000, where he helped report the Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the return of Elián González to Cuba. He also contributed to a staff-written book on the contested 2000 presidential election. In 2003, Grech traveled to Buenos Aires, Argentina, on a Fulbright fellowship and an Inter American Press Association scholarship. There he earned a master’s degree in Spanish-language journalism, covered Argentina for The Miami Herald and did his first radio piece on the tango. Since joining "Marketplace" in 2004, he has traveled to six countries, filed on more than a dozen presidential elections and led coverage of Hurricane Katrina. When Grech isn’t working for "Marketplace," he performs in an improv comedy troupe (Chasing Tales), teaches radio at the Florida Center for Literary Arts and writes fiction and essays.

Kelly Kennedy has, since February 2007, been a medical/health reporter for all of Gannett's military papers — Army Times, Air Force Times, Navy Times and Marine Times.  Before that, she was a reporter for Army Times. Kennedy has also written for the Chicago Tribune, the Associated Press, NASA, the (Boulder) Daily Camera, the Denver Post, the (Portland) Oregonian, the Salt Lake Tribune, the (Ogden) Standard-Examiner and Readers' Digest. Kennedy holds a graduate degree in journalism from the advanced professional program at the University of Colorado in 2007.  She also taught editing, page design and news writing at the University of Northern Colorado, as well as critical thinking and writing at the University of Colorado. She is at work on her first book: a fictionalized account of her time as a soldier in the first Persian Gulf War.

Christina Lamb has been a foreign correspondent for almost 20 years and is currently roving foreign affairs correspondent for the Sunday Times. She has won numerous awards: from Young Journalist of the Year in the British Press Awards for her coverage of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 1988 to being named this year’s Foreign Correspondent of the Year by the British Press Awards and the BBC What The Papers Say Awards. She also spent a year as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, where she met her husband. She is the author of the best-selling book “The Africa House” as well as “House of Stone: The True Story of a Family Divided in War-Torn Zimbabwe”; “Waiting For Allah?: Pakistan’s Struggle for Democracy”; and “The Sewing Circles of Heart: A Personal Voyage Through Afghanistan,” which was runner-up for Best Nonfiction book in the Barnes & Noble’s Discover Great New Writers Awards. “Small Wars Permitting: Dispatches from Foreign Lands,” a collection of her reportage, will be published in January. A fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, Lamb received a degree in politics, philosophy and economics from Oxford University. She is married with a young son and lives in London and Portugal.

Alysa Landry is a reporter at the Farmington Daily Times in Four Corners, N.M. She covers the Navajo Nation and has reported extensively on returning Iraq War veterans. The winner of an Associated Press Managing Editors award for beat reporting, she was previously a reporter for the Patriot-Ledger of Quincy, Mass.

Jeff Kelly Lowenstein has been a staff reporter for The Chicago Reporter since January 2006, before which he wrote for South Shore Community News on Chicago's South Side for more than a year. His work has been published in the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Herald, the Daily Herald and the Common Review, among many other publications. In 2006 Kelly Lowenstein won a Peter Lisagor Award for Exemplary Journalism for a six-part series he wrote about sex offenders in Chicago. He also was the 2007 Racial Justice Fellow at the Institute of Justice and Journalism at USC's Annnenberg School of Communication and was a 1995 participant in the Fulbright Teacher Exchange Program, during which time he spent a year teaching at the Uthongathi School in Tongaat, South Africa.

John Moore is a photojournalist for Getty Images. Moore won the 2007 Robert Capa Gold Medal Award from the Overseas Press Club of America for his photograph capturing the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and received this year’s Best of Photojournalism Award from the National Press Photographers Association. Before joining Getty, Moore was a staff photographer with the Associated Press and was on a team that won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News Photography for their coverage of the war in Iraq. Having lived in Nicaragua, India, South Africa, Mexico, Egypt and Pakistan, as well as the United States, Moore estimates that he's worked in over 80 countries throughout his career.

Hollman Morris is a reporter for “Contravía” on Channel One in Colombia.  This year the Foundation for New Journalism, established by Colombian Nobel Laureate Gabriel García Márquez, recognized Morris with the top award for TV reporting in Latin America.  Human Rights Watch also awarded Morris the 2007 Human Rights Defender Award for courageous reporting.

Devin Robins has worked as a producer and director for National Public Radio for more than a decade on shows including "Talk of the Nation," "The Tavis Smiley Show" and, currently, "News and Notes." Over the years, her work has included producing more than 50 hours of NPR's live news coverage of 9/11, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Hurricane Katrina and it's aftermath. Her global focus extends as the producer of "News and Notes" long-running weekly "Africa Update" segment, which includes stories about refugee crises, internal displacement of citizens, genocide, human rights violations and the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Karyn Spencer is an investigative reporter with the Omaha World-Herald. Her projects have included how Nebraska's antiquated death-investigation system lets people get away with murder; how a conman stole millions while sidestepping serious punishment; and how the state foster-care system failed a toddler who was shaken to death by her mother. Spencer was one of the paper's lead writers when a mentally ill young man killed eight people and himself at the Von Maur Westroads Mall in Omaha in December 2007. She currently is covering mental health issues in the wake of the mall slayings.

Jon Stephenson is a foreign affairs producer and correspondent for TV3, one of the two major news channels in New Zealand. A former print journalist, Jon has focused much of his reporting since September 11, 2001, on issues and events associated with the Bush Administration's so-called "War on Terrorism," including the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war. In addition to assignments in places such as Gaza, Zimbabwe and East Timor, Jon has reported on natural disasters like the 2004 Asian tsunami, the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan and the recent earthquake in China's Sichuan Province.