Joanne C. Gerstner was elected to the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame, for its 2021 class. She joins the two other female sports media already elected to the Hall, and she is the first female sports writer. She is being honored for her award-winning career and leadership to advocate and promote women in sports media.
Michael Sean Comerford (MSJ83)
American OZ is a rollicking, gritty, adventurous story of life in the secretive subculture of traveling carnivals. You’ll never see your state fair or street fest the same way again.
Michael Sean Comerford writes a bold, inspiring true story of a year working behind the scenes with the colorful characters and legends of carnivals.
It’s a new classic American road story as he hitchhikes to shows in California, New Jersey, New York, Chicago, Alaska, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Texas, Georgia, and Florida where he works in a freak show. He travels to the lawless foothills of Mexico to see the new face of the American carny.Learn about their hidden world among us. The deeper you read the more you’ll see. A #1 Amazon bestseller, it’s available everywhere books are sold, including audiobooks.
Medill, in partnership with The Garage, Northwestern’s entrepreneurial incubator, has awarded the 2021 Medill and The Garage Media Entrepreneur Fellowship to Katherine Lewis and Chandra Thomas Whitfield.
Lewis and Whitfield are long-time journalists, having written for and worked with organizations such as Atlanta Magazine, In These Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post and The New York Times. They plan to use the fellowship to launch The Center for Independent Journalists (CIJ), an education, professional development, support and advocacy organization for independent journalists of color.
“BIPOC freelance journalists produce outstanding work and often struggle to make a living, with few resources centering on our needs,” said Lewis. “Journalists of color and women are more likely to build careers independently, and are frequently exploited and underpaid. The pandemic exacerbated this trend. CIJ will provide education in business development, cash flow, contracts, negotiation, prioritization and time management, as well as community support and mentorship.”
“We need to continually innovate to overcome the obstacles facing contemporary media, particularly on issues of diversity, equity and inclusion” said Medill Dean Charles Whitaker. “That is why talented entrepreneurs like Katherine and Chandra are so important and why Medill is proud to support them in their efforts.”
The one-year fellowship supports entrepreneurs from underrepresented groups—with an emphasis on women and people of color—who are working on innovation in the media industry. As part of the fellowship, Lewis and Whitfield will receive an $80,000 stipend for the year, and access to a variety of resources across Northwestern at Medill, The Garage, the Farley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and the University at-large to help them to continue to expand their work.
“I know it sounds cliché but words cannot adequately express what it means to me as a veteran journalist to not only be acknowledged by — but to also be affiliated with — the Medill School and The Garage at Northwestern University,” said Whitfield. “It is an honor, a privilege and definitely a highlight of my career. This is more than just a professional development opportunity for Katherine and me; it is also an opportunity for us to channel our passion, concerns and many years of journalism experience into creating an organization that we firmly believe can fill a huge void and address a long unaddressed need in our industry.”
Throughout its journalism and integrated marketing communications programs, Medill emphasizes the importance of technological innovation and telling the stories of diverse audiences.
The Garage at Northwestern is a community and physical space for every Northwestern student interested in entrepreneurship to learn, iterate and grow. The 11,000 square foot space, carved out of the North Campus parking structure, is currently home to more than 60 student-founded startups and projects.
“Katherine and Chandra are accomplished, seasoned journalists and promising entrepreneurs,” said Melissa Kaufman, founding executive director of The Garage. “We look forward to helping them launch their venture and welcoming them as a resource to our student-founders.”
“Out of an impressive field of candidates, Katherine and Chandra stood out not only for their accomplishments, but for their focus on supporting journalists in the evolving media ecosystem through The Center for Independent Journalists,” said Mike Raab, associate director at The Garage, who helped to select Lewis and Whitfield.
Katherine Lewis
Katherine Reynolds Lewis is an award-winning journalist and author based in the Washington, D.C. area who writes about education, equity, mental health, parenting, science and social justice for publications including The Atlantic, The New York Times, Parents and The Washington Post. Her 2015 story on the school-to-prison pipeline became Mother Jones’ most-read article ever, and led to her bestselling 2018 book, “The Good News About Bad Behavior: Why Kids Are Less Disciplined Than Ever — And What to Do About It.” Her current long-form narrative project on racial justice in education is supported by the O’Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism and the MIT Knight Science Journalism fellowship. As a biracial journalist (Asian American and White), she’s been active in the Asian American Journalists Association for more than 20 years. Before becoming a freelancer in 2008, she worked as a national correspondent for Newhouse News Service and Bloomberg News.
Chandra Thomas Whitfield
Chandra Thomas Whitfield is a multiple award-winning multimedia journalist whose work has appeared in a wide variety of media outlets, including NBCNews.com, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, The Undefeated, Essence, Ebony, People, Newsweek, The Root, The Grio, TIME.com, NPR.org and the Atlanta affiliate of NPR. As a 2019-2020 Leonard C. Goodman Institute for Investigative Journalism Fellow, she served as host and producer of “In The Gap,” a podcast for In These Times magazine about how the gender pay gap affects the lives — and livelihoods — of Black women in America. Whitfield has also been named “Journalist of the Year” by both the Atlanta Press Club and the Atlanta Association of Black Journalists and received honors from the Association for Women in Communications, the Colorado Association of Black Journalists and Mental Health America. A proud New Orleans native and Clark Atlanta University graduate, she is also an alum of a diverse mix of other journalism fellowship programs, including with the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University, the Education Writers Association, Ted Scripps Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder, Soros Justice Media, Kiplinger Public Affairs at the Ohio State University, the Poynter Institute for Media Studies and Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism programs, respectively. A feature story that she penned for Atlanta Magazine made the Atlanta Press Club’s “Atlanta’s Top 10 Favorite Stories of the Past 50 Years” list and it is also widely credited with contributing to a change in Georgia law and a teen’s early release from a 10-year prison sentence.
After starting her career (post-IMC) as the Director of Strategy for Canada’s most awarded technology agency, Parisa Durrani is now the President of BASMA Beauty. BASMA Beauty launched this spring and their first product – The Foundation Stick – has been dubbed a “game-changer” by Beyonce’s makeup artist. It has also been featured in NYLON Magazine, Byrdie, Refiner29 and Bustle.
Susan L. Pedigo passed away Tuesday, June 8, 2021 at Central Dupage Hospital. She was born on October 13, 1948 in Berkeley, California.
Sue began her work career with Sears Roebuck and held communications and management positions with Watson Wyatt, The Segal Company, UBS Global Asset Management, 52 Communications and others.
She was very active in professional associations, including the Association for Women in Communications and the Professional Women’s Club of Chicago, and served as President of both.
Sue loved spending time each Fall in the Wisconsin Northwoods with husband and friends. She was a fabulous cook and devoted “cat lady”.
She is survived by her beloved husband of 46 years, Robin Holt of Glen Ellyn, brother-in-law Courtney Brian Holt of Grafton New Hampshire and sister-in-law Christine Holt Winnell of Vienna, West Virginia.
https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/chicagotribune/name/susan-pedigo-obituary?id=5785987
Alumnus Dick Stolley Dies at 92
Stolley is remembered as a magazine industry legend and founder of PEOPLE magazine
Watch a video of Dick Stolley talking about his Medill experience.
Richard “Dick” Stolley (BSJ52, MSJ53) died peacefully in Evanston, Illinois, on June 16 with his family at his side. He was 92. Stolley was a member of the inaugural class of the Medill Hall of Achievement of 1997 and a member of Medill’s Board of Advisers since its first meeting in 1984.
Stolley is remembered for his many historic career endeavors in magazine publishing and editing. At Medill, he is revered as a true friend and dedicated alumnus who was always willing to talk to and mentor students and alumni.
“Dick was not only a towering figure in 20th century journalism, he was a tremendous friend and supporter of Medill,” said Medill Dean Charles Whitaker. “The talks he gave to students about his legendary career were riveting. He generously lent his time and talent to every Medill dean who called upon him. He will be sorely missed.”
Stolley was the founding editor of PEOPLE magazine and a longtime writer and editor for Time Inc.
In a statement provided by Dan Wakeford, editor in chief of People, Wakeford said:
“Dick Stolley was a legendary editor whose vision and execution established the most successful magazine of all time that America fell in love with. He was an amazing journalist whose work and magazine craft we still refer to every day at PEOPLE as it’s still so relevant. He wrote in his first editor’s letter in 1974, ‘PEOPLE will focus entirely on the active personalities of our time-in all fields. On the headliners, the stars, the important doers, the comers, and on plenty of ordinary men and women caught up in extraordinary situations.’ And that is what we still do nearly 50 years later — we tell stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things and extraordinary people doing ordinary things. I’m indebted to Dick for creating a magazine with heart that is a force for good and continues to change millions of lives.”
Stolley is also remembered for his work for Life magazine, where he pushed boundaries in his coverage of the fight for Civil Rights in the South and, most historically, for his success in obtaining the Abraham Zapruder footage of the assassination of JFK in Dallas in 1963.
Stolley described his first interaction with Zapruder in an article in Time magazine in 2013. Stolley explained that he located Zapruder by finding his listed number in the Dallas phone book.
“He politely explained that he was exhausted and overcome by what he had witnessed,” Stolley wrote. “The decision I made next turned out to be quite possibly the most important of my career. In the news business, sometimes you push people hard, unsympathetically, without obvious remorse (even while you may be squirming inside). Sometimes, you don’t. This, I felt intuitively, was one of those times you don’t push. I reminded myself: This man had watched a murder. I said I understood. Clearly relieved, Zapruder asked me to come to his office at 9 the next morning.”
Eventually, he was able to secure Zapruder’s footage for Life magazine for $50,000. That amount was bumped to $150,000 a week later to add additional rights for the magazine’s use of the film.
Stolley helped create PEOPLE magazine in 1973. A test issue with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton gracing the cover “flew off the newsstands,” Stolley said in a 2015 interview, and the magazine launched in March 1974 with Stolley as editor.
“The one thing that I’ve always wanted to say, when we started, I said, this is not a celebrity magazine. This is personality journalism,” he said. “And we will be doing stories all over the world, which we did and still do, and it will be on all people in all walks of life. Some will be well known, some will not. Our motto was, ‘extraordinary people doing ordinary things, and ordinary people doing extraordinary things.’ And the formula worked then and still does.”
“Richard Stolley was a giant among journalists, one of the Medill School’s most accomplished alumni of all time,” said Roger Boye, associate professor emeritus-in-service. “His coverage of the John F. Kennedy assassination in 1963 for Life magazine, as well as of the civil rights movement in the South during the 1960s, will serve as models of initiative and professionalism for generations of journalists to come. His entrepreneurial vision helped to bring about the founding of People magazine in 1974, with Dick as the magazine’s first managing editor. He championed great story telling in journalism but only with meticulous attention to detail and total factual accuracy. That is perhaps his greatest legacy.”
In addition to his roles at People magazine, Stolley was assistant managing editor and managing editor of Life magazine, as well as director of special projects for Time Inc.
Source: Medill and PEOPLE.com 6/17/2021
https://people.com/human-interest/richard-stolley-peoples-first-managing-editor-dies-at-92/
The family requests that gifts in memory of Dick Stolley be directed to the Medill School. Gifts may be made online or mailed to:
Northwestern University
Alumni Relations and Development, Gift Services
1201 Davis Street – Suite 1-400
Evanston, IL 60208-4410
Michael Chacko Daniels (MSJ68)
In this coming of age novel set in 1950s Bombay, Michael Chacko Daniels explores both an India that was cosmopolitan, and the slow rise in exclusionary politics in the country, through the life of a Malayali Syrian Christian boy growing up at that time.
Jug Suraiya, author and former associate editor of the Times of India, writes in the Foreword: “Michael Chacko Daniels has been compared favorably with transcultural writers . . . In narrating the stories of Paul Paulose, his two sisters, and their parents in flashback and flash-forward sequences, he not only vividly evokes the sights, sounds, and smells of a long-ago Bombay, but does so in an idiom which owes as much to the Maximum City of the past as to his Kerala heritage and his American influences.
The result is a compelling amalgam of humor, social satire, nostalgia, and verbal legerdemain of no little virtuosity, with many passages lending themselves to being read aloud in the best oral tradition of storytelling. The illustrations, by Rukmini Chakravarty, imbue the work with the visual immediacy of a graphic novel. In all, the book in its nimble elegance resembles the gazelles of its title. You’ll enjoy reading it as much as the author has obviously enjoyed writing it.”
Michael Paul Williams (MSJ81), a veteran journalist and longtime columnist for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, has won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Commentary.
The Pulitzer board honored Williams for his “penetrating and historically insightful columns that led Richmond, a former capital of the Confederacy, through the painful and complicated process of dismantling the city’s monuments to white supremacy.”
Williams has been at the Richmond Times-Dispatch for nearly 39 years and has been a columnist for the paper since 1992.
Read more: https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/michael-paul-williams-richmond-va-times-dispatch
Three Medill graduates, Abbie VanSickle (BSJ04) and Katie Park (BSJ12) from the Marshall Project and Dana Brozost-Kelleher (MSJ19) from the Invisible Institute, Chicago, were on the winning teams for National Reporting, along with the staff of AL.com, Birmingham and the IndyStar, Indianapolis. The National Reporting Pulitzer was awarded for a year-long series: “Mauled: When Police Dogs Are Weapons.” The investigation focused on K-9 units and the damage that police dogs inflict on Americans, including innocent citizens and police officers, prompted numerous statewide reforms.
“I’m so grateful to everyone who shared their experiences with us,” VanSickle said. “This work wouldn’t be possible without our sources. I’m so fortunate to be part of such a great collaboration across newsrooms. It gives me a lot of hope in the future of our profession.”
“The injuries and terror faced by victims of police dog attacks are truly horrifying — it was crucial to us to convey the seriousness of these attacks while being sensitive to the trauma people have undergone,” Park said. “I’m so proud to work at an organization that not only prioritizes in-depth reporting but also recognizes the immense value of visual and data-driven storytelling. It’s an honor to work alongside such talented and thoughtful journalists.”
Read more about the series. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2021/06/11/the-marshall-project-wins-the-pulitzer-prize
Finally, numerous Medill MSJ 2020 alumni were on the winning team for Public Service at the New York Times (Maura Turcotte, Alison Saldanha, Sarah Cahalan and Brandon Dupre, Matt Craig, Alison Saldanha, Brandon Dupré, Sarah Cahalan and Maura Turcotte continue to work with us on the data project. Maddie Burakoff, Jake Holland, Alex Schwartz, Andrea Michelson and Samone Blair, Mitch Smith).
The public service Pulitzer was awarded for courageous, prescient and sweeping coverage of the coronavirus pandemic that exposed racial and economic inequities, government failures in the U.S. and beyond, and filled a data vacuum that helped local governments, healthcare providers, businesses and individuals to be better prepared and protected.
Read more: https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/new-york-times-6
Judy Lyn Holland, 61, of Washington, D.C. passed away on April 19, 2021.
She was born Aug. 7, 1959, in Orange Heights, VT, the daughter of Harry and Barbara Holland of Hanover, NH and Vero Beach, FL. Judy was born in the family station wagon en route to the hospital, portending a life in constant motion. From a very young age, Judy adored books and kept a flashlight under the bed covers to read at night. She also displayed an early aptitude for performance and enlisted neighborhood children to put on shows in the family garage with a blanket as stage curtains. She later became an accomplished figure skater and continued to perform in college and as an adult.
She attended Hanover High School and graduated in 1977. Her first summer job was as a cashier at Dan & Whit’s General Store on the same block in Norwich, VT where she grew up. She continued her education at Middlebury College, where she graduated with a BA in 1981. From there, Judy taught English at a boarding school in Germany and studied Italian in Florence, becoming fluent in both languages. She worked as a paralegal in a New York City law firm before earning her master’s degree in Journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL.
During her 30-year journalism career, Judy was a newspaper reporter at the Valley News Dispatch in Tarentum, Pa. and the Tampa Tribune in Florida before moving to Washington, DC to become a Capitol Hill correspondent for States News Service. She spent 13 years covering the US Senate and as national bureau editor at Hearst Newspapers, the storied newspaper chain that includes the Houston and San Francisco Chronicles and the Boston Globe. She won the Hearst Eagle Award, the chain’s highest honor. Judy was elected president of the National Press Club Foundation and was a member of the Capitol Speakers Club. She also appeared as a political commentator on cable TV news. Her stories appeared in dozens of publications.
She also was the founder and editor of parentinsider.com, an online magazine about parenting teens and wrote the book and podcast series HappiNest: Finding Fulfillment When Your Kids Leave Home.
Judy met her husband John K. Starr, an orthopedic surgeon, in 1982, when he was a medical student. They were together for nearly 40 years, married since 1990. Her true pride and joy were her beloved children, whom she taught determination, poise and empathy.
Judy is survived by her husband John, children Lindsay, 27, Maddie, 24, and Jack, 22, her parents; sister Mary Anne Holland, brothers Michael (Heidi); Joe (Becky); and Jim (Analea); sister-in-law Patricia Starr; nieces Jeannie, Greta, Hazel, Lizzie and Juniper; nephews Michael, Timothy, Hunter, Jake and Anders; maternal uncle, Don Johnston (Mary Margaret) and paternal uncle, Clark Holland.
Published in Valley News on May 2, 2021.
https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/vnews/obituary.aspx?n=judy-lyn-holland&pid=198511455&fhid=2167
Cate was recently promoted to Director of Integrated Marketing overseeing all Beauty, Wellness and Luxury partnerships at Vice Media Group (which includes VICE, ViceTV, Refinery29, i-D, Garage, Pulse Films and Virtue Worldwide). Her experiences also includes being a Lead Strategist at Byte New York, a digital innovation agency, where she worked on accounts such as UGG, Johnson & Johnson and Ariana Grande.