Jack R. Howard
International Fellowships

An endowment at Columbia University ’s Graduate School of Journalism honors the journalistic legacy of Jack R. Howard with fellowships to international journalists pursuing a master’s degree. In its ninth year, the program aims to prepare journalists for stewardship to a free press in their home countries. Back home, these journalists reach out to many others to spread the word about press freedoms.

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, can 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.

2007 Fellows

Indu Nepal   

Ms. Nepal grew up in an isolated village in western Nepal that was little more than a compound for her large extended family. Unlike the other girls, she escaped a life of housework and tending cattle when she won a scholarship to a boarding school in a nearby Nepali city. "I was the first girl in the village bound for a foreign country in pursuit of higher education," she wrote. Scholarships led to the London School of Economics and a degree in international relations. She "intends to return to Nepal and report on political and foreign affairs."

Ms. Nepal, 23, said she was inspired to become a journalist by photos of a Nepalese editor being jailed in 2001 for publishing an op-ed article by a Maoist leader. Journalism in Nepal is a difficult pursuit. Caught between Maoist rebels and a sometimes autocratic royal government, reporters undergo censorship and sometimes imprisonment. She spent a year working as a reporter at Nepal's largest English daily and found the experience both rewarding and frustrating.

"I would like to pursue a graduate degree in journalism because I want to return to the profession with a rigorous training, so I will be able to ask myself and others the right questions, learn new methodologies and act as the true medium between the powerless and the powerful."

Yaldaz Sadakova   

Ms. Sadakova dreamed as a young girl in Bulgaria of becoming a novelist. But the college she attended, the English-language American University in Bulgaria, didn't offer creative writing courses. So she studied journalism, fell in love with it and hasn't looked back. She became editor-in-chief of the school's Web newspaper, supervising 30 other students, and taking as many journalism courses as she could. Now she is trying to decide between print and broadcast but is determined to return home to improve journalism in Bulgaria. She says she wants to learn how to create more sophisticated journalism about majority-minority relations in Bulgaria.

Ms. Sadakova, 24, is a member of Bulgaria's ethnic Turkish minority. In the Balkans, memories of old grudges are long, and "my family had been ramming down my throat that I could never succeed in Bulgaria because I was Turkish." So she kept her dream of being a novelist secret from her parents but kept a journal in English from an early age -- encouraged in high school by a Peace Corps teacher from the United States.

By the time she was enrolled in college, she had decided "that with the right skills and connections I can succeed anywhere, even in Bulgaria."

For information about the fellowships, contact Josh Friedman, director, International Program, Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University, 1-212-854-9148 or jf125@columbia.edu.