Category: 2000s

John Eligon was named Johannesburg Bureau Chief for the New York Times. Eligon had been working as a national correspondent covering race and inequality in the United States.

Eligon joined The Times in 2005 and spent his first two years on Sports before going to Metro, where he helped cover the trial of Brooke Astor’s son and the sexual assault investigation into Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

In 2012, he went to Kansas City to cover the Midwest and arrived in the middle of a drought. When Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014 and the Black Lives Matter movement thrust issues of race and inequity to the front of the national conversation, his beat transitioned from covering the region to covering race in America.

“John is a brilliant and generous colleague who spots good stories everywhere,” said Jia Lynn Yang, the NYT National editor. “He has practically moved to Minneapolis to produce one powerful story after another on the reverberations of George Floyd’s killing. John’s stories are special, and readers of International are in for a real treat.”

Source: NYT announcement

Jennifer Trammell has been named the first Managing Director of the NextGen Speaker Series, based in Naples, Fla. The NextGen Speaker Series was created to foster leadership, mentorship, empowerment, and philanthropy. Trammell will expand the platform with an online learning portal where members can access key insights from world renowned entrepreneurs and business leaders.

Evan Hill, a member of the New York Times Visual Investigations team, was lead reporter on an investigation into the Russian bombing of Syrian civilians that won a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting on May 4 and a George Polk Award for international reporting on February 19. The Pulitzer jury recognized the Visual Investigations team for two stories that proved, for the first time, that the Russian Air Force was responsible for a series of attacks on hospitals and other civilian sites in opposition-held Syria. The investigation has been cited during a United Nations Security Council meeting on Syria and during a congressional hearing on protecting civilians during armed conflict. Hill and his team relied on traditional reporting, contacting dozens of sources, and new open source techniques, such as geolocation and metadata, to carry out their investigation.

Bill Healy (MSJ09) and Alison Flowers (MSJ09) met while studying at Medill. They recently co-produced a 7-part investigative podcast called “Somebody” for the Invisible Institute, The Intercept, Topic Studios and iHeartMedia. The podcast follows the story of Courtney Copeland, who was shot and killed in Chicago in 2016. “Somebody” is narrated by Copeland’s mother, who believes police are hiding something about his death. The series explores questions of police accountability and public trust.

Dani Friedland is the new Director of Marketing Communications for The American Institute of Steel Construction.

She and her team are responsible for telling the story of America’s remarkable structural steel industry and the passionate people who work in the fields of architecture, engineering, steel fabrication, and construction. Although their expertise varies, these people have one thing in common: They will leave a legacy in steel.

AISC is a nonpartisan not-for-profit trade institute and industry association, founded in 1921, that strives to increase the market share of domestically fabricated structural steel.

Friedland joined AISC last year after nine years in B2B magazine publishing, where she held editorial, new media, and editorial tech roles. She briefly returned to Medill as an adjunct lecturer in 2018 and had an absolute blast working with the next generation of dedicated journalists.

Todd Johnson has been hired as Chief Content Officer of The Grio, a leading news and entertainment site dedicated to providing African-American audiences with compelling stories and perspectives. Johnson first joined theGrio.com shortly after it launched in August, 2009, as a video journalist and reporter. Johnson was eventually promoted to Managing Editor, helping guide the news site through multiple transitions before it was acquired by Byron Allen’s Entertainment Studios in 2016. Prior to his return to The Grio as Chief Content Officer, Johnson served as Editorial Director of NBCBLK, a division of NBC News Digital. Johnson will be responsible for elevating The Grio’s voice and branding, its overall editorial strategy and growing its audience.