While the issue of climate change rises in importance to the U.S. electorate, players in energy, banking and business are cashing in on the environmental crisis. McKenzie Funk, 2012 Knight-Wallace Fellow, is the author of “Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming.” Join him for a critical discussion of drought, rising seas, profiteering, and the hardest truth about climate change: It’s not equally bad for everyone.
Funk writes for Harper’s, National Geographic, Rolling Stone, Outside, The New York Times Magazine and the London Review of Books. His 2014 book “Windfall” won a PEN Literary Award and was named a book of the year by The New Yorker, Mother Jones, Salon and Amazon.com. A National Magazine Award and Livingston Award finalist, Funk won the Oakes Prize for Environmental Journalism for his reporting on the melting Arctic and has received fellowships at the Open Society Foundations and MacDowell Colony for his forthcoming work on data and privacy.
Funk studied philosophy and comparative literature at Swarthmore College and capitalism and the paradigm of endless growth as a 2012 Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellow at the University of Michigan. He speaks five languages and is a native of the Pacific Northwest, where he lives with his wife and sons.
The annual Graham Hovey Lecture recognizes a Knight-Wallace journalist whose career exemplifies the benefits of a fellowship at the University of Michigan and whose ensuing work is at the forefront of national conversation. The event is named for the late Graham Hovey, director of the fellowship program from 1980 to 1986 and a distinguished journalist for The New York Times.
After 19 years of working with journalists eager to define the next bold steps in their careers, Birgit Rieck, our beloved Associate Director of the Knight-Wallace Fellowships, has decided to embark on a bold new journey for herself. She’s leaving Wallace House to reconnect with her life back in Germany and to pursue new possibilities for her abundant skills. Her last day with us will be Friday, August 23.
It’s difficult to imagine Wallace House without Birgit. For hundreds of people who have walked through our doors, myself included, she has been an essential part of the Wallace House experience, a vital point of contact who made everything possible. Far beyond the planning of seminars, workshops and international travel, Birgit – with her infectious laugh and infallible German efficiency – created much of the warmth and welcome of the special atmosphere here.
Her fingerprints and sensibility dot every facet of our Wallace House programs, from the aesthetic beauty of the Hovey Lecture in the back garden, to the renovation of the Wallace House library and creation of our editing suite, to the hands-on fellowship workshops on writing, editing and audio/visual storytelling. She has been a friend, mentor, travel companion and confidant to countless journalists who have entrusted us with a year of their lives.
Birgit joined the Wallace House staff in 2000 to manage the Livingston Awards for Young Journalists and in 2004 changed positions to manage the Knight-Wallace Fellowships.
Before coming to Michigan, Birgit studied anthropology (Latin American studies) and English literature at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-University in Bonn. She was awarded a Master’s degree in cultural anthropology (African studies) and education from Johannes-Gutenberg-University in Mainz after completing fieldwork in Uganda and Rome. This fall, she will complete the Media Transformation Challenge, a one-year executive leadership program at Harvard’s Kennedy School.
As the associate director of the program, she managed daily activities and herded unruly groups of fellows on outings from Flint to Istanbul. She enlivened our intellectual pursuits with pop-up tango lessons, wine tastings and horseback riding. She made the hard work and small details of the fellowship look effortless. She could be laughing at a Thursday night dinner, quietly slip away to arrange group flights for 25 (with multiple return dates!), then be back downstairs for a toast and dessert, without breaking a sweat.
Anyone who has been part of the Knight-Wallace Fellowship knows the transformative power of stepping back to evaluate your career, your dreams and your aspirations. In life there are sometimes moments of clarity when you know it is time for something new, even if you’re not quite certain yet what it is. It is part of our driving philosophy at Wallace House to honor those moments and to respond seriously to the possibilities they present. Those leaps take guts, belief and heart – all traits Birgit possesses in abundance. Though we truly cannot fathom the place without her, we know that wonderful surprises await.
To state the obvious, Birgit is irreplaceable. We will not be filling her position any time soon. Instead I will use the next year to evaluate the best structure for Wallace House moving forward. We have a Knight-Wallace Reunion coming up in September 2020. Birgit has agreed to come back then, so we can have a spectacular party and aptly celebrate all she has meant to us.
Lynette Clemetson is Director of Wallace House. She was a 2010 Knight-Wallace Fellow. You can reach her at clemetly@umich.edu or wallacehouse@umich.edu. Follow her on Twitter @lclemetson
Livingston Awards winners Lindsey Smith and Kate Wells speak at 2019 IRE Houston
June 14 | 3:45 p.m.
Texas F
2019 IRE Houston
Meet the 2019 winners of the Livingston Awards for Young Journalists. Michigan Radio and NPR’s podcast “Believed” moved beyond the headlines for an intimate look at how a detective, prosecutor and army of survivors brought down former U.S.A. Gymnastics doctor and serial sex offender, Larry Nassar. Learn how Kate Wells and Lindsey Smith investigated Nassar’s assaults through the voices and experiences of his victims and their families to capture listeners and hit the number one spot on the iTunes chart.
Panelists:
Lindsey Smith, 2019 Livingston Award winner for local reporting. Michigan Radio’s Investigative Reporter. Mom of two girls. Lover of The Great Lakes. Lindsey Smith teamed up with Kate Wells on “Believed,” a podcast exploring how former sports doctor Larry Nassar got away with child sexual abuse for decades. The podcast was awarded a Livingston Award and Peabody, two firsts for the station. Smith’s 2015 documentary, “Not Safe to Drink,” led Michigan Radio’s award-winning coverage of the Flint water crisis.
Kate Wells, 2019 Livingston Award winner for local reporting. Kate’s a reporter at Michigan Radio and the co-host of the Livingston Award-winning NPR podcast, Believed. @KateLouiseWells
2019 Livingston Award winners (counter-clockwise from top right): Kate Wells, Lindsey Smith, Chris Outcalt, Davey Alba and Rob Hiaasen, recipient of the Richard M. Clurman Award
Stories about the women who brought down U.S.A. Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, the murder of a gang leader at the highest security prison in the U.S., and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s Facebook-fueled rise to power won the Livingston Awards today. The $10,000 prizes honor outstanding achievement in local, national and international reporting and recognize the best journalism by professionals under age 35 across of all platforms, including text, visual and audio storytelling.
The Livingston Awards also honored the late Rob Hiaasen of the Capital Gazette with the Richard M. Clurman Award for mentoring. The $5,000 prize is given each year to an experienced journalist who has played an active role in guiding and nurturing the careers of young reporters. The prize is named for the late Richard M. Clurman, former chief of correspondents for Time-Life News Service and architect of the Livingston Awards.
Funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the University of Michigan to support the vital role of a free and independent press, the awards bolster the work of young reporters, create the next generation of journalism leaders and mentors, and advance civic engagement around powerful storytelling. Other sponsors include the Indian Trial Charitable Foundation, the Mollie Parnis Livingston Foundation, Christiane Amanpour, and Dr. Gil Omenn and Martha Darling.
Livingston Awards national judges Anna Quindlen, author, Ken Auletta of The New Yorker and Bret Stephens of The New York Times, and Livingston Awards regional judge, Stephen Henderson of WDET (Detroit) introduced the winners today at a luncheon in New York City.
“This year’s winners represent exceptional reporting and storytelling, illuminating both personal journeys and systemic failings,” says Livingston Awards Director Lynette Clemetson. “Whether through ubiquitous social platforms, elite athletics or prison gangs, these stories expand public understanding of how powerful networks are manipulated and exploited.”
The 2019 winners for work published in 2018 are:
Local Reporting
Lindsey Smith and Kate Wells of Michigan Radio and NPR for the podcast series “Believed,” a haunting and multifaceted account of U.S.A. Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar’s belated arrest and an intimate look at how an army of women – a detective, a prosecutor and survivors – brought down the serial sex offender.
“Big stories wind up told in broad strokes. Instead of amplifying their power, that sometimes makes them less accessible as human drama. Lindsey Smith and Kate Wells of Michigan Radio decided to go the other way, which is why their pieces on Larry Nassar grabbed me by the throat,” says Anna Quindlen. “They illuminate, not the judicial process, but the people: the uber-mom who won’t back down from a fight, the father who never suspected and whose torment suffuses his voice, the investigators and, of course, the survivors. These reporters use the small details of a big story to give it a human scale.”
National Reporting
Chris Outcalt of The Atavist Magazine for “Murder at the Alcatraz of the Rockies,” a riveting narrative of a prison murder committed under the gaze of security cameras, a rookie FBI agent and the inner workings of the Mexican Mafia, a criminal prison organization spawned in California juvenile facilities in the 1950s.
“The best journalism doesn’t always cover the best-known stories. Chris Outcalt’s extraordinary reporting introduces readers to sides of American life few people will ever see: life within the country’s most secure prison, an infamous gang’s rules of violence and honor, and the decade-long investigation and trial of a killing that is nothing like the open-and-shut case it first appears to be,” says Bret Stephens. “Outcalt’s writing grips the reader’s attention from the first sentence to the last and doesn’t waste a word. It reminds us at every turn of the humanity of our most dangerous felons, the complexity of their motives, and the difficulty of ascertaining truth and doing justice.”
International Reporting
Davey Alba of Buzzfeed News for “How Duterte Used Facebook to Fuel the Philippine Drug War,” a sweeping investigation of Facebook’s breakneck proliferation in the Philippines and how President Rodrigo Duterte’s regime weaponized the social media platform to spread fake news, imprison dissenters and murder innocent Filipinos.
“Davey Alba’s reporting brings home the immense power of digital platforms. We see how Facebook created the ultimate walled garden in the Philippines by subsidizing the Internet, thus making Facebook synonymous not just with getting online but as the primary source of news,” says Ken Auletta. “By relying on algorithms rather than humans to police news and content, Facebook ignored how fake news went viral and was used by a corrupt government to punish opponents, sometimes with death. Rather than hire editors to police false news, Facebook engineers hubristically believed their algorithms would do the job, thus saving money. This is what they’ve done around the world, with sometimes bloody consequences.”
Mentoring Award
The late Rob Hiaasen was honored with the Richard M. Clurman Award for his newsroom commitment to counseling, nurturing and inspiring young journalists. Hiaasen was the assistant editor and columnist at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland and a lecturer at the University of Maryland Philip Merrill College of Journalism. In June 2018, he was killed in a mass shooting at the Capital Gazette offices, along with Gerald Fischman, John McNamara, Rebecca Smith and Wendi Winters, in the deadliest attack on journalists in the United States on record. In a video tribute at the luncheon, former colleagues spoke about Hiaasen’s influence on their writing, approach to storytelling and his encouragement of young journalists.
In addition to Quindlen, Stephens and Auletta, the Livingston national judging panel includes Christiane Amanpour of CNNi and PBS; Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune; Dean Baquet of The New York Times; John Harris of Politico; María Elena Salinas, independent journalist and producer; and Kara Swisher of Recode.
About the Livingston Awards:
The Livingston Awards for Young Journalists are the most prestigious honor for professional journalists under the age of 35 and are the largest all-media, general reporting prizes in American journalism. Entries from print, online, visual and audio storytelling are judged against one another, as technology blurs distinctions between traditional platforms. The $10,000 prizes are awarded annually for local, national and international reporting. The Livingston Awards are a program of Wallace House at the University of Michigan, home to the Knight-Wallace Fellowships for Journalists and the Wallace House Presents event series. Learn more at wallacehouse.umich.edu/Livingston-awards.
About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
The Knight Foundation supports transformational ideas that promote quality journalism, advance media innovation, engage communities and foster the arts. The foundation believes that democracy thrives when people and communities are informed and engaged. For more, visit: knightfoundation.org.
The 34th Graham Hovey Lecture
