Burns Newsletter - International Center for Journalists

Arthur F. Burns Fellowship Program Alumni Newsletter
December 2012 | Volume 21, No. 4
Feature Story
Frankly Speaking
In the Footsteps of My Grandfather’s Lost Love:
A story of memory and the Holocaust
By Sarah Wildman (Burns 2008)
T
here is nothing remarkable to see at Wangenheimstrasse 36, in the Grunewald section of Berlin. It’s
green, quiet and on a Sunday afternoon, the streets
are nearly empty. There’s nothing to indicate who might
have lived here once 75 years ago. I took two S-Bahn trains
across the city and wandered Grunewald, eventually sitting
for a piece of topfentorte at the only café nearby. I asked,
hopefully, how old the café is or how old the owners are. The
waitress looked at me curiously. “Old,” she said, but then I
Sarah Wildman
saw that “old” to her is about as old as my parents—post-war
babies, not really old at all. Later that afternoon, I found there’s nothing at Rombergstrasse 2, now Mendelsohnstrasse, in Prenzlauer Berg. In fact, the whole
block is new. There are several shiny apartment towers with Mondrian-style blue
blocks and crisp stainless steel balconies, construction that surely came well
after the Wall came down. It would be another day before I caught up to history
and found a bit of what I’m looking for.
In the spring of 2007, I discovered a collection of letters written to my grandfather after he fled Austria in 1938. Postmarked from Sydney, Lyon, Budapest,
Bucharest, Berlin, Tel Aviv, Brooklyn and Shanghai, the sheer geographic spread of his correspondence was evidence of the atomic impact on
refugees of the Third Reich. Among them were
dozens of letters from a woman named Valerie,
or Valy, Scheftel. She was my grandfather’s lover
and she wrote mostly from Berlin. The letters began in 1938 and ended, abruptly, when the United
States entered the war in December 1941.
A year after my discovery, I spent several months
in Berlin supported by an Arthur F. Burns Fellowship putting together a series of articles for the online magazine Slate. I was in pursuit of becoming
one of the first journalists allowed inside the International Tracing Service (ITS), the last unopened
Holocaust Archives, in Bad Arolsen, Germany. But
it wasn’t just a news story that propelled me. I also
wanted to investigate the story of the woman from
those letters.
Trebic, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a perfectly preserved
Jewish ghetto
Continued on page 6
Dear Alumni,
The class of 2012
has returned
home—with many
new impressions
and hopefully
fond memories.
The bitter election
campaign is finally
over in the United States, and
both Europe and the United States
prepare for a harsh financial winter.
But we are looking ahead to the
new year and the many occasions
to make sure that alumni stay
involved in our work.
The next Burns dinner will take
place in downtown New York
most likely on February 25 or
26, followed by a possible San
Francisco dinner in the late spring.
The Berlin dinner will take place
in early June and the Washington
reception in late July.
2012 marked the 25th class of
the Burns Fellowship and we are
still celebrating this milestone!
As ambassadors of transatlantic
media relations, we hope you
will remain active members
of the Burns alumni network.
Your attendance at the special
Washington dinner this past July
was a start and I hope you will
make a special effort to attend
the next New York dinner in that
anniversary spirit.
In 2013, for the first time we will
allocate one of the ten fellowships
Continued on page 7
The Arthur F. Burns Board
German Trustees (2010-13)
U.S. Trustees (2010-13)
Patron: The Honorable Philip D. Murphy, U.S. Ambassador to Germany
Patron: The Honorable Dr. Peter Ammon, German Ambassador to the United States
Dr. Thomas Bellut, Director-General, ZDF
Erik Bettermann, Director-General, Deutsche Welle
Prof. Dr. Reinhard Bettzuege, Former German Ambassador to
Brussels
Dr. Martin Blessing, CEO, Commerzbank AG
Prof. Maria Böhmer, State Minister, Member of Parliament, CDU/CSU
Tom Buhrow, Anchorman, ARD
Sabine Christiansen, Journalist, TV21 Media
Dr. Mathias Döpfner, CEO, Axel Springer AG
Thomas Ellerbeck, Chairman, Vodafone Foundation
Leonhard F. Fischer, Partner, RHJI Swiss Management
Dr. Rüdiger Frohn, Chairman, Stiftung Mercator
Emilio Galli-Zugaro, Head Group Communications, Allianz Group
Dr. Tessen von Heydebreck, Former Member of the Board, Deutsche Bank AG (Honorary Chairman)
Dr. Luc Jochimsen, Member of Parliament, Die Linke
Dr. Torsten-Jörn Klein, Board Member, Gruner + Jahr AG
Michael Georg Link, State Minister, Foreign Office, Member of
Parliament, FDP
Rob Meines, Meines & Partners, The Hague
Kerstin Müller, Former State Minister, Member of Parliament,
Buendnis 90/Die Grünen
Mathias Müller von Blumencron, Editor-in-Chief, Der Spiegel
Rainer Neske, Board Member, Deutsche Bank (Chairman)
Dagmar Reim, Director General, Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg
Helmut Schäfer, Former State Minister, Foreign Office
(Honorary Chairman)
Monika Schaller, Senior Vice President, Goldman, Sachs & Co. Steffen Seibert, Government Spokesman
Dr. Frank Walter Steinmeier, Former Foreign Minister,
Chair of the SPD Parliamentary Group
Tobias Trevisan, CEO, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Lord George Weidenfeld, Former CEO, Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Joyce Barnathan, President, International Center for Journalists Elizabeth Becker, Journalist and Author
Albert Behler, President and CEO, Paramount Group, Inc.
Amb. J.D. Bindenagel, Vice President, Community, Government and International Affairs, DePaul University
Rebecca Blumenstein, Deputy Managing Editor and
International Editor, The Wall Street Journal
Marcus W. Brauchli, Vice President, The Washington Post Co.
Amb. Richard Burt, Senior Advisor, McLarty Associates
(Honorary Chairman)
Dr. Martin Bussmann, Mannheim LLC
Nikhil Deogun, Managing Editor, CNBC
David W. Detjen, Partner, Alston & Bird LLP
Dr. Hans-Ulrich Engel, CFO, BASF SE; Chairman and CEO,
BASF Corporation
Dr. Frank-Dieter Freiling, Director, Internationale Journalisten Programme, e.V. (IJP)
Prof. Dr. Ronald Frohne, President and CEO, GWFF USA, Inc.
James F. Hoge, Jr., Director, Human Rights Watch
(Honorary Chairman)
Robert M. Kimmitt, Senior International Counsel, WilmerHale
The Honorable Henry A. Kissinger, Chairman,
Kissinger Associates
Christian Lange, CEO, President and Co-Founder, European Investors Inc.
The Honorable Frank E. Loy, Former Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs (Chairman) Sen. Richard G. Lugar, United States Senator
Kati Marton, Author and Journalist
Wolfgang Pordzik, Executive Vice President, Corporate Public Policy, DHL North America
John F. W. Rogers, Managing Director, Goldman, Sachs & Co.
Garrick Utley, President, Levin Institute, SUNY Stanford S. Warshawsky, Chairman, Bismarck Capital, LLC
(Vice Chairman)
Legal Advisor: Phillip C. Zane, Attorney at Law, Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz
Arthur F. Burns Newsletter | December 2012 | Page 2
Alumni News
1990
Ines Alicea recently moved to Ottawa where she will be
working at the U.S. embassy as a community liaison officer.
1992
As of January 2012, Claudia Bill officially retired from the
broadcasting industry after nearly 18 years with CBS 2
News and 25 years in journalism. She is now a full-time
mother to her seven-year-old twin boys and the Mayor ProTem of Thousand Oaks. She is in her third four-year-term
on the city council and busier than ever.
works for ZDFneo, the channel for young audiences at ZDF
German TV. Inga Michler, a reporter at the daily Die Welt,
took her mother and son on a long trip through China and
wrote all about it for her paper.
1995
Kim Frick lives in Zurich with her husband and two boys—
Loic (7) and Leo (3).
2000
Oliver Becker is currently working on a book, provisionally
titled 50 years of International Support for Young Athletes
by Germany. Michael Kolz was nominated for the national
German television award for his show “Der Tag” on the TV
channel Phoenix.
2002
Markus Feldenkirchen, a reporter in the capital bureau of
the weekly Der Spiegel, presented his first major television
documentary on Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s minister of
finance, on the occasion of his 70th birthday in September.
The documentary was aired on the Phoenix channel.
2003
Stefanie Bolzen, after nearly four years as the Brussels
correspondent for the daily Die Welt, will transfer to a new
posting in Europe in early 2013.
2005
Benno-Falk Fuchs produced an investigative documentary
about the predatory customer service policies of German
cell phone carriers. It will be broadcast on ZDFzoom on
Wednesday, December 19. Christian Meier became the
proud father of Carla Emilia on April 19. He also co-wrote
the book Medien—Basiswissen für die Medienpraxis, which
was published in October by Herbert von Halem Verlag.
2006
Christa Case
Bryant became
Jerusalem
bureau chief for
The Christian
Science Monitor in August
2012. Holger
Fritsche now
Christa Case Bryant in Cairo (photo credit: Ann Hermes)
Sabine Muscat at Chicago’s McCormick Place on election
night (photo credit:John Zich)
2007
Sabine Muscat has spent the past five years as a correspondent in the United States and it all started with her
Burns Fellowship in San Francisco. In early November,
she published a personal essay in the Financial Times
Deutschland about her experiences during the Obama
years in the United States. Please read it here: http://www.
ftd.de/politik/international/:us-wahl-2012-das-land-der-zweiherzen/70112972.html
2009
Björn Winter took time off over the summer and spent a
few months in Florida, working for Sat1 and the Austrian
television channel ATV, before returning to his job at Sat1’s
Hamburg bureau.
2010
Steffi Dobmeier was awarded a Kellen Fellowship from
the American Council on Germany. She will be travelling
and conducting research in the United States for several
weeks next spring. Christian Salewski was awarded the
2012 Ernst Schneider Prize, a highly competitive award for
business journalism, in the newcomer category (Förderpreis). He submitted three pieces for the award, including
“Der China-Kracher” (Capital 1/2011), which he researched
during his Burns Fellowship at ProPublica and which
received an honorary mention from the Burns Awards last
year. That article seemed to be decisive for the Schneider
Prize. He plans to use the 2500 Euro prize money to attend
the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Rio de
Janeiro in 2013. Chelsea Wald recently co-authored an
e-guidebook for Kindle called A Traveler’s Guide to Astronomy and Space in the Southwest. The book announcement
Continued on page 8
Arthur F. Burns Newsletter | December 2012 | Page 3
FELLOWSHIP
“Going on the Burns Fellowship was perhaps the best decision of my career… I’m only 27, so I’m drawing just on
three years of work, but the two months gave me boatloads of confidence in my reporting, my writing and—perhaps
most valuably—in navigating the treacherous media landscape in America… The German Fellows were an impressive
bunch—outgoing, well-established in their careers, with a wealth of experience… They had a confidence—even a
swagger—in the sustainability and inherent worth of our profession, which I found reassuring and inspiring at a time of
cutbacks, layoffs and wage stagnation here.”
­—Tim Loh, Reporter, The Connecticut Post, Bridgeport, CT; Hosted by: Süddeutsche Zeitung, Munich
“I’d come to Germany with several tenuous assignments from American
magazines, all of which ultimately came to naught for different reasons. But
once on the ground, I discovered new subjects and pursued them aggressively
for the remainder of the fellowship. Two pieces in particular—one about
gentrification in Berlin and its effect on the arts scene, the other about the
legacy of the Stasi prison at Hohenschönhausen—claimed most of my working
time, involving interviews with dozens of people, many hours of background
reading, and some travel.”
­—Bruce Falconer, Senior Editor, The American Scholar, Washington, D.C.; Hosted by:
Der Tagesspiegel, Berlin
Falconer with a former Stasi prisoner
“During my fellowship, I drove out of San Francisco a lot, to check if the rest of the country is similarly great. I met a
Siemens manager, illegals from Bangladesh, a prison warden who had four men executed through lethal injection,
and a man who ratted out his criminal brother to the police. I spent one whole weekend with Johannes Gernert ringing
doorbells in Reno, Nevada, to tell residents with our heavy German accents why
they should vote for Obama. This story became a movie: http://bit.ly/Q93eQ0
­ Jochen Brenner, Reporter, Der Spiegel, Hamburg; Hosted by: Mother Jones, San
—
Francisco, CA
“While it was difficult to turn stories for this German language station, one thing I
was able to do a lot of was shoot video and edit. For me this was great. I came to
the fellowship with a background in shooting and editing, but I rarely shot breaking
news, which I got to do a lot of at TV.Berlin. They also use a different camera than
I am used to, so I was able learn new technical aspects.”
—Tetiana Anderson, Freelance Reporter/Producer, CNN, NY-1, Yonkers, NY;
Hosted by: tv.berlin, Berlin
Anderson at work for
tv.berlin
“Much more important than improving my journalistic skills was that I was able to get to know a part of the United
States which is unknown to many Germans. I know today that there is a liberal oasis in Texas with the name Austin.
And I also know that this oasis is surrounded by many small and large conservative areas that might be different,
but equally appealing. I was able to experience American hospitality and developed a lust for conversations,
especially those about war, patriotism and meat.”
­—Takis Würger, Reporter, Der Spiegel, Hamburg; Hosted by: The Austin Chronicle, Austin, TX
Arthur F. Burns Newsletter | December 2012 | Page 4
IMPRESSIONS
Küpper with Meymo Lyons, WAMU’s
Managing Editor for News
“I decided to choose the capital city [for my host placement], but with a
firm determination to also see the ‘other’ America. I lived in an apartment
near Dupont Circle, as well as in Trump Tower in Las Vegas. I met cowboys at the Albrecht Ranch in Texas, as well as fellows at the Brookings
Institute. I watched young Mormons prepare to depart on their overseas
mission, and I was able to take a look behind the scenes at POLITICO’s
newsroom. I drove through hurricane Isaac’s high waters in New Orleans,
and jogged past the Lincoln Memorial. I visited the Naval Academy in
Annapolis, Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy Center and the trading
floor of New York City’s stock exchange. But I was always happy when I
arrived back ‘home’ in D.C.—either by rental car, bus or airplane.”
­ Moritz Küpper, Reporter, Deutschlandfunk (Radio), Köln;
—
Hosted by: WAMU 88.5, Washington, D.C.
“The Burns Fellowship gave me the chance to live in and examine a country that is constantly
and rapidly evolving—particularly at a time when the Eurozone is in such a parlous state. I’m
grateful for being granted the opportunity to explore one of the world’s great cities—and write
about it.”
­ Andrew Coombes, News Producer, Al Jazeera English, Washington, D.C.; Hosted by: Rheinische Post,
—
Berlin
“Arthur Luco was close to the perfect interviewee. I was hoping that he
would say the things that he ended up telling me, and he expressed his
thoughts so well, just as I could have wished for. He spoke of the loneliness on the back of his horse and the incomparable experience of riding
across the open range. ‘I don’t think about anything else, I fly,’ he told me.
Arthur Luco, 33, foreman at the Albrecht Ranch in Goliad, Texas, said all
those things that cowboys say in movies. Only Arthur Luco was real. I flew
from Chicago to Houston and then drove to Austin, where I started my trip
in the early morning to meet with Luco and a few of his fellow cowboys. The
children’s editor of the Süddeutsche Zeitung had sent me. They were planning an edition on the topic of America and they wanted an interview with a
Hickman interviewing a “real cowboy”
cowboy, ‘a real cowboy.’ It became one of the best interviews that I have ever done.”
—Christoph Hickmann, Correspondent, Der Spiegel, Berlin; Hosted by: Chicago Tribune
“I was able to help out in a number of ways at Figaro. I put together several vox
pop montages, of man-on-the street interviews about various topics. Approaching
strangers on the street was an exciting challenge and a useful trial-by-fire of my
German skills. I also put together an essay for a special program devoted to the
German city—its evolution and its future. Since my essay was an American’s
impression of a German city, the accent requirement was waived, and (after many
takes!) I was able to voice the piece for air.”
ling
Donevan with ‘wandernde Gesellen,’ trave
zig
Leip
near
at
retre
a
apprentices, during
­ Connor Donevan, Production Assistant, NPR, Washington, D.C.;
—
Hosted by: MDR Radio, Halle
Continued on page 7
Arthur F. Burns Newsletter | December 2012 | Page 5
Feature Story, continued from p. 1
So this year I came back. Funded by a Holbrooke Grant
for Burns alumni, I spent more than two weeks in October
retracing the steps of a woman I have been following for
several years now, and talking to those who are working on
this history today. My search, and Valy’s story, will now be a
book for Riverhead/Penguin Press.
At the Judische Krankenhaus, I picked up Valy’s trail once
again. The hospital, tucked deep in the Wedding district,
still ostensibly works to keep the rump Jewish community
healthy; there’s even a tiny synagogue and a small exhibit
to 250 years of service to the city. During the war, doctors like Valy passed through here, and Jews who were
forced out of other professions worked in the labs. On the
other side of the city, there was something for me as well:
Brandenburgischstrasse 43 has two small stolpersteine, or
stumbling blocks, paying homage to two people who once
lived there. One of them was Valy. But the stolpersteine are
unsatisfying: 55 were deported from these doors.
In Berlin, I crossed the city for hours, traveling to each of
the addresses Valy wrote from between 1939 and 1941,
and where she lived after her letters end. I met with academics and memorial builders in
between my geography lesson.
The following day, I hopped a train
to Prague. The next day, I boarded
another, traveling hours and hours
further to the tiny town of Opava,
once the capital of Czech Silesia,
on the Polish-Czech border. When
it was German speaking, the town
was called Troppau, and it was here
that Valerie was born.
Judische Krankenhaus (above)
and Stolpersteine (right)
will teach this history going forward, and about how we use
that history today.
Though (with great excitement) I have learned that there is
much more to discover about Valy and the people she knew
and lived with, my research has not only looked backward.
I have begun conversations with dozens of members of my
generation across Europe. In part, this is a project about
how we will think of memory going forward, as we lose the
eyewitnesses to the major events of the 20 century. It is
also about how government decisions continue to be influenced
by that genocide. And it is about
how we will convey these stories
to the next generation. It is about
our own identities.
This trip was also about places
of memory. I wanted to walk
where she walked, go where she
went, and see if there are traces
of what existed before. In some
cases there was literally nothValerie Scheftel was a student
ing, as in Prenzlauer Berg, but
alongside my grandfather in
The old rabbi’s house of Opava/Troppau
in others there were glimpses.
Vienna’s medical school in the
The Jewish Hospital in Berlin
1930s. Her letters are plentiful.
They are love letters, and they plead and cry and give hints had two doctors on staff—one Jewish, the other not—who
took an interest in my project, chatting to me about the hisas to what is happening around her, as the life she knows
tory of the building they work in every day saving people’s
disintegrates.
lives, and the peculiarity of working in an institution that
When my original stories ran, I received dozens of letters
became one of the few—if not the only—places that Jews
and queries from readers. Some 1.2 million individuals read
could survive in the open under the Reich. At the Stiftung
the series, and it was awarded the Peter R. Weitz Prize
Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas, I met with Dr.
for European Reporting from the German Marshall Fund.
Uli Baumann who was putting the finishing touches on the
Readers’ questions propelled me to continue my search.
memorial to the murdered Roma, which opened just after
The unopened archive (as well as other, smaller ones like
I left Berlin. We talked about the things that can still be
it) and the story of this one woman became part of a bigger
found, the ways in which memorializing can work, and why
question—one of personsometimes drawing the picture of a single person—despite
al identity and the interthe enormity of the tragedy or, perhaps, because of it—is
play of mythmaking and
one of the best ways to discuss the murder of millions.
remembrance on both a
In the Czech Republic, the work was harder. Without the
familial, and ultimately
ability to speak Czech, I was forced to rely entirely on a
on a national and transguide for translation and guidance. The experience was
Atlantic scale. My search
doubly filtered: all of the German speakers in Opava were
became a window into a
expelled when the Sudeten German population was forced
much larger story—one
Opava Opera House
about how my generation
Continued on next page
Arthur F. Burns Newsletter | December 2012 | Page 6
Feature Story, continued from p. 6
Frankly Speaking, continued from p. 1
out at the end of the war. Eyewitnesses are hard to find.
But here and there you could see a glimpse of what had
been there once before, when this was a great regional
town with Beaux-Arts architecture and eclecticism. Many
of the grand old buildings still stand, including the former
Silesian parliament (now the archives) and the old opera
house, directly opposite the apartment where Valy once
lived. The night I visited, the opera season was opening
with Nabucco, appropriately, Verdi’s paean to the expulsion
of the Babylonian Jews. Closing my eyes, I could see Valy
and my grandfather there, just as they visited the opera in
Vienna, and I could imagine the bourgeois German and
German Jewish population that coexisted, ever so briefly, in
the interwar period.
each for a journalist from Germany to go to Canada and
one from Canada to go to Germany. You can find more
details on the application sheets for 2013.
Sarah Wildman is a visiting scholar at the International
Reporting Project at Johns Hopkins SAIS. She is currently
working on a book for Riverhead/Penguin Press.
www.sarahwildman.com
Wishing you all a peaceful holiday season and strength,
health and happiness for a new year—again full of
challenges and rewarding experiences!
Best,
Frank
Burns
25
Years
Transatlantic Dialogue:
A Quarter Century of
Journalism Exchange
FELLOWSHIP IMPRESSIONS, continued from p. 5
American fellows enjoying Octoberfest in Munich
“After countless media crises and a halving of the editorial team within the last ten years, the 1903-founded
Herald decided to find its luck by covering local issues.
For German fellows that’s wonderful because…there are
more stories than there are reporters to cover them. For
example, every day someone is shot fatally, which from a
sociological point of view is of course a terrible thing, but
from a journalistic perspective, it offers many advantages… Because the Herald journalists have gone through
all of this so many times, they convert the fellow into a
police reporter, who goes out to research during the day
and delivers a story by the end of the day. One quickly
ends up in less pleasant neighborhoods like Liberty City
or Hialeah, where you meet creepy figures, where you
are made fun of by the officers when you miss the street
lingo. But the chance of getting your story published is
100 percent.”
—Veit Medick, Reporter, Spiegel Online, Berlin; Hosted by: The
Miami Herald
“ProPublica offers—aside from America’s largest arsenal
of searchable data banks—as much time and money
as its employees desire. This makes for a newsroom
unique in the United States, and maybe also in the
world. They pay special attention to new ways that
reporters can present their important, but mostly dry, political or economic stories (so-called ‘hard-sell stories’).
Very well done are video animations in the ‘Southpark’style. One example is “Water’s on Fire Tonight (The
Fracking Song),” which every journalist should consider
as a teaching tool for how it’s possible to make a topic
such as gas extraction into an entertaining and simultaneously informative 2.5 minute story.”
­ Jonathan Stock, Freelance Reporter & Correspondent, —
Berlin; Hosted by: ProPublica, New York, NY
Bettina Meier interviewed German Ulli Johnston
(pictured) in her Texas shop, which sells handmade, used cowboy boots.
Arthur F. Burns Newsletter | December 2012 | Page 7
Sponsors
The Arthur F. Burns Board of Trustees in the United
States and Germany acknowledges with gratitude the
support of the following organizations and individuals who
have made the 2012 Arthur F. Burns Fellowship program
possible.
Sponsors in the U.S.
Alston & Bird, LLP
BASF
BMW Group USA
The Capital Group Companies Charitable Foundation
Comcast NBCUniversal
Deutsche Post DHL Americas
European Investors, Inc.
The Ford Foundation
The Ford Foundation/International Institute for Education
The German Marshall Fund of the United States
Goldman, Sachs & Co.
GWFF USA, Inc.
The Ladenburg Foundation
Mars Incorporated
Paramount Group, Inc.
Individual Contributions
Elizabeth Becker
The Hon. J.D. Bindenagel
John and Gina Despres
David Detjen
Thomas Eisenmann-Schubert
The Hon. Frank E. Loy
Hermann-Hinrich Reemtsma
Dr. Guenter and Elsbeth Roesner
Stanford S. Warshawsky
Sponsors in Germany
Allianz SE
Auswärtiges Amt.
Robert Bosch Stiftung
Bundesministerium für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und
Jugend
Deutsche Bank AG
European Recovery Program (ERP), Federal Ministry of
Economics and Technology
Goldman, Sachs & Co.
Siemens AG
2013 Fellowships
Application Deadlines:
German Applicants: February 1, 2013
U.S. Applicants: March 1, 2013
Arthur F. Burns Newsletter | December 2012 | Page 8
Alumni News, continued from p. 3
declares: “When it comes to astronomy and space exploration, the American Southwest is a star. Get a front-row seat
with this unique and comprehensive guidebook.” Chelsea
would be pleased to offer a free copy of the book to any
Burns Fellow (past, present, or future) who is considering
a placement in or trip to the region (Arizona, New Mexico,
southern Colorado, southern Utah, western Texas, and Nevada). Review copies are also available. Please email her
at cwald@nasw.org. The e-guidebook is available for $8.99
on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00A16E5GI.
Aaron Wiener started as a reporter and columnist at the
Washington City Paper in October. It’s quite a change from
the foreign correspondent work he was doing for the Los
Angeles Times in Berlin, but he says it’s more fun than any
job he’s had. He is enjoying the opportunity to develop personal relationships with his subjects and to see the effects
of his reporting on the community.
The Arthur F. Burns Fellowship Newsletter is published
four times a year by the International Center for
Journalists.
Burns Program Staff:
Frank-Dieter Freiling, Director, IJP
Emily Schult, Program Manager, ICFJ
Maia Curtis, Consultant, ICFJ
Jill Gallagher, Layout/Design
Named in honor of the late former U.S. ambassador to the
Federal Republic of Germany and former Federal Reserve
Board chairman, the Arthur F. Burns Fellowship Program fosters greater understanding of German–U.S. relations among
future leaders of the news media.
The Burns program was established in 1988 in Germany by
the Internationale Journalisten-Programme (formerly the Initiative Jugendpresse) and was originally designed for young
German journalists. In 1990, the fellowship expanded to
include American journalists, making it a true exchange.
The program offers 10 young print and broadcast journalists from Germany and the United States the opportunity to
share professional expertise with their colleagues across the
Atlantic while working as “foreign correspondents” for their
hometown news organizations.
The Burns Fellowship program
is administered jointly by: