Jack R.
Howard International Fellowships
Columbia
University
An endowment
at
The fellowships provide full room, board, tuition, and travel for the 10-month program, and fellows participate in special lecture and discussion programs on journalistic norms, cultural values, and the challenges they will face in their professional futures. There is a strong press freedom component built into the program, and fellows are introduced to a broad variety of institutions in New York, ranging from the Committee to Protect Journalists to U.N. and foundation officials with interests in their regions.
For information about the fellowships,
contact Sree Sreenivasan, dean of student affairs,
Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University,
at ss221@columbia.edu.
Sandro Mairata has worked with some of the top names in Peruvian print media and Latin American magazines and has worked as an editor at various publications. In July 2009, he became a full time reporter for one of Peru's most well-known Sunday news TV shows, “Panorama.” His work has been recognized with major scholarships as well as a nomination for the Latin American New Journalism Prize in 2006. In his spare time, he has worked as the communications officer for an NGO called Ankay, which helps to give a college education to talented youths coming from areas of extreme poverty in Lima. After finishing his Columbia degree, he intends to work in the implementation of new technologies for mainstream media in Peru. He also wants to start a company to produce online content and broadcasting projects focused on promoting democratic values.
Maria Pautassi's commitment to storytelling has evolved from the realm of fiction to nonfiction. She started a novel when she was twelve, took up poetry when she was 15, was a finalist in a couple of short story contests and, by the time she was 18, she was a literature major. Soon, however, she realized that the perspective of having an academic career didn´t fulfill her expectations. During her third year in the university, she became culture editor for her college newspaper, where she finally got to write non-academic texts for a wide audience. And, even though she graduated with an Academic Excellence Scholarship, she decided she wanted to be a journalist. For almost three years, she has been a cultural reporter in Semana, one of the few national weekly magazines in Colombia. She have also freelanced articles for other magazines in the same publishing house: SoHo (a men´s magazine) and Arcadia (the cultural supplement). She says she is coming to Columbia because she wants to enhance her reporting skills, deepen her knowledge of the various journalism genres, learn to make the most of the digital tools available today and further her understanding of journalism issues in the Internet era. Upon her return to Colombia, she plans to produce sustainable, in-depth reporting pieces that get the most out of the new technologies: pieces that explain Colombia's more complex issues within the Latin American context, and eventually become an expert in the region.
Elliot Ross grew up in Malawi, but completed secondary school in Edinburgh, Scotland. He went back to Malawi to spend a year volunteering as a primary school teacher before going on to study English Literature at Cambridge University, where he won the Larmor Award for his outstanding academic work. He edited the school newspaper, The Varsity, and in 2008, was a finalist in The Guardian’s International Development Journalism Competition for his report on female education in rural Tanzania. Last summer, he worked as a reporter at both The Guardian and Independent. He is interested in working as a foreign correspondent in the developing world, and in sharing his knowledge with journalists there, an educative role he is especially passionate about.