The 37th Graham Hovey Lecture: Sorting Immigration Facts from Fiction and the Power of Local Reporting Amid National Politics

Q&A with Mazin Sidahmed of Documented

Mazin Sidahmed is co-executive director of Documented, an independent, non-profit newsroom dedicated to reporting with and for immigrant communities in New York City. He was a 2021 Knight-Wallace Reporting Fellow during the Covid-19 pandemic. Sidahmed returned to Wallace House in September to deliver the 37th annual Graham Hovey Lecture. Before the event, he spoke with Lynette Clemetson, director of Wallace House, about starting Documented.

Clemetson: You describe Documented as a community-driven news organization. What’s the difference between community-driven news and local news?

Sidahmed: When you’re community-driven, you’re
thinking about what kind of news and information will serve your local community best. How can we be good neighbors and actually make this a better place for all of us to live? To accomplish that, we have to listen and ask the community what they need from us and let those needs drive our decision-making, as opposed to business incentives driving our decisions.

In a city like New York, how did you determine which communities to serve and how to reach them?

We were super naive at the start. We thought the only reason the publications we’d worked at previously weren’t reaching low-wage immigrants, or the immigrants who were at the center of the stories, was that those publications weren’t translating their stories. We thought that if we just translated, published and tweeted out our stories, everyone would find them.

And when you realized that wasn’t going to work, what did you do?

We actually went to Spanish-speaking communities in New York City — predominantly immigrant Spanish- speaking communities — and asked them: “Where do you get your news? What kind of news and information do you want? What kind of news and information would be useful to you?” That’s what led us to build our first news product, our WhatsApp news service.

And now you publish in Spanish on WhatsApp. And you also publish in Chinese on WeChat, and in Haitian Creole on Nextdoor. That’s very tailored news delivery to specific communities. How has that changed your editorial structure?

In order to get the model to where we needed it to be, we created a newsroom role called community
correspondent. It’s part reporter, part product manager, part community engagement. Our Spanish-speaking community correspondent spends about a third of his day on WhatsApp replying to people’s messages, hearing from people, trying to understand their interests, replying to their questions and
bringing those insights into editorial meetings. So if a bunch of people say they had issues with their utility bills, he’ll report a story on that.

I imagine it’s not the kind of journalism you thought you’d be doing when you started.

It took a lot of soul-searching to get to where we let the communities lead on what they wanted us to do. The things that I’ve been trained to reach for or valorize were not necessarily aligned with what the community wanted. But when we actually listened to the community, the readership went up. People read those stories. They were shared and had traction in the communities we wanted to reach.

You’ve also done some deeply meaningful investigative work, including an investigation with ProPublica that uncovered more than 13,000 wage theft cases, totaling more than $203 million in stolen wages, from more than 127,000 New York workers.

We did a listening tour, and every community group that we went to speak to wanted to talk about wage theft. That was the problem that was at the top of people’s minds. So [my co-founder] Max Siegelbaum thought, “How can we put our investigative muscle toward creating something useful to the community?”

He decided to create a database of all the companies in New York state that had been convicted of stealing wages. He thought it would be straightforward for the state to give him the names of the companies. It ended up being a four-year lawsuit against the New York State Department of Labor. Our stories led to legislation introduced in the New York State Legislature that uses our database to set guidelines for how wage theft should be prosecuted. So that’s an example of how you go from listening to a community to powerful investigative journalism.

You applied for and received the fellowship during the Covid-19 pandemic. How did the fellowship help you move forward with your work?

I was at that stage that most founders get to when they realize they really need to focus on the business and operation side. There’s this dream, you know, that you’ll hire a person so you can do the fun stuff you always dreamed of doing. You’ll hire someone to be the adult in the room and take care of the business and the operations. But you quickly realize that no one can speak as authentically to your work as you can, and you can’t give up those decisions to an outside party. It became clear to me — maybe even a year before I started the fellowship — that I should take on that role. But I was in denial because it felt like the end of my journalism career, and I wasn’t ready to do that yet.

A September tradition at Wallace House: More than 200 guests gathered in the Wallace House gardens to hear Mazin Sidahmed deliver the 37th Hovey Lecture.

Did the need to focus on the business side of Documented lead to an identity crisis?

Yeah. I was having an identity crisis that year going into the fellowship. Having that space and time and the community of other Fellows to talk through what this might mean for me, to reflect on it and hear from other people who have gone through similar journeys and transformations helped me. And a lot of my long conversations with you. It made me come to terms with the fact that it’s what Documented needed. And it’s something I’m good at, and that’s okay.

What advice would you give to someone thinking about starting a community-focused news organization in Ohio, Indiana, or somewhere very removed from the networks and resources in New York?

Start by fully understanding the problem that you’re trying to solve. If you have an inherent feeling of what your community needs, go out, make a case and try to prove it. Find somebody who has a skill set different from yours, someone who complements you in some way, and build together. Then, find a community of other folks who are doing a similar thing. Building community with other leaders around the country will help you get through the hard times. Always keep your North Star, and keep in touch with the people who will be impacted by your work.

Mazin Sidahmed is a 2020 Knight-Wallace Fellow.


This interview appeared in the Fall 2024 issue of the Wallace House Journal.

Dieu-Nalio Chery, Photojournalist, Finds Renewed Purpose in Documenting the Haitian Diaspora


A Knight-Wallace Press Freedom Fellow in Action

When Donald Trump used the national debate stage to amplify false claims that Haitian immigrants were eating the pets of residents in Springfield, Ohio, Haitian photojournalist Dieu-Nalio Chery felt a mix of sadness and purpose.

“It’s painful for me to do a project on Haitians here [in the U.S.],” says Chery. “Haitians [in the U.S.] are suffering a lot. They are victims of racism. They are exploited. … Sometimes, when a community is underrepresented, the media will not spend money for a journalist to dig deeper. I feel that I can help with that.”

Chery grew up in the Haitian countryside and began working in his uncle’s photo studio in Port-au-Prince in his 20s. The powerful and heroic images that Chery captured throughout his ensuing two decades as a photojournalist — including 11 years working for The Associated Press — have become iconic records of 21st-century Haiti.

Much of Chery’s photography has focused on human rights issues — struggles of civilians living in slums, grassroots protest movements, government-perpetrated massacres of political opponents, the devastating aftermath of the 2010 earthquake and other natural disasters, the cholera epidemic, United Nations relief efforts and gang violence.

Chery’s most personally meaningful photography experience occurred in 2008, in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike. He accompanied a team of United Nations soldiers to save the lives of 35 children and teachers trapped in an orphanage surrounded by floodwaters. Despite not knowing how to swim, Chery waded in water up to his chin and carried children on his shoulders, one by one, to safety. He took moving photos throughout the successful rescue.

“We didn’t know if we would get out of that water,” Chery recalls. “It was crazy that day. I felt proud to be a part of that.”

Dieu-Nalio Chery standing infornt of a building displaying his photography
City of Asylum/Detroit projected Dieu-Nalio Chery’s photography onto the walls of its office building in Hamtramck, Michigan, as part of a September 2024 celebration of the Haitian community. Photo Credit: Joseph Sywenkyj

In 2019, while photographing the ratification ceremony of a newly appointed prime minister, Chery suffered an accidental gunshot wound to his jaw yet still managed to take an award-winning photograph that showed both the shooter — a Haitian senator — and the spent cartridges flying through the air.

In 2020, Chery was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in breaking news photography for a series of searing photos taken during protests across Haiti that called for the resignation of then-President Jovenel Moïse. Two years later, Chery was targeted for assassination by a powerful Haitian gang and narrowly escaped, fleeing Haiti. He and his family are now cobbling together a new life in the United States and seeking asylum. Chery has earned multiple prestigious fellowships while freelancing for major outlets, including The New York Times, Reuters and The Washington Post.

One of Chery’s ongoing goals is to write the articles that accompany his photography. In 2022, he wrote a feature story and created a photo essay for The Washington Post titled “Vodou in Photos: How Followers of an Ancient Faith Are Battling Stereotypes.” In 2023, he co-authored and photographed a piece for The New York Times about gentrification in Miami’s “Little Haiti” neighborhood.

Chery’s Knight-Wallace Fellowship project is aimed at capturing the Haitian diaspora’s diversity and resilience — highlighting how the community has “endured, grown, struggled and thrived
across generations.”

He will supplement his photography with crowd-sourced family photos, as well as images found in attics, basements, churches and university libraries.

Community engagement is central to Chery’s approach. He gave a powerful guest lecture at a recent University of Michigan symposium on Haiti. He also shared his Haitian diaspora photography at a public exhibition organized by City of Asylum/ Detroit. The event was held outdoors in a public space to ensure inclusivity and community spirit. Chery’s photography was projected onto the walls of City of Asylum’s future office building while guests enjoyed a spread of Haitian food.

Chery hopes that his next exhibition will be in Springfield, Ohio — the sudden epicenter of a vitriolic national immigration debate and the home of more than 12,000 Haitian immigrants. Chery would love to present his work to Springfield residents, as well as create a photo essay of portraits alongside quotes and text that illuminate residents’ diverse stories.

He says: “I want to make something [in Springfield] that can help unite the community.”

Some of Dieu-Nalio Chery’s photography can be viewed at visura.co/dieunalio.


This article appeared in the Fall 2024 issue of the Wallace House Journal.

Ashley Bates is the Associate Director of the Knight-Wallace Fellowships.

Zahra Nader, Afghan Journalist, Seeks Sustainability for Zan Times

A Knight-Wallace Press Freedom Fellow in Action

Zahra Nader vividly recalls the day her youngest sister was born in Kabul, Afghanistan. There was no running water in her family’s home, so Nader, then age 15, ran to get water to clean the baby — the sixth daughter in a family with only one son. She knew that the arrival of yet another girl in their male-dominated culture signaled more financial hardship for her parents. As she retrieved the water, she decided “I am going to become the boy that my family needs.”

Her loving and hardworking parents, neither of whom had the opportunity to learn to read and write, never imagined that their ambitious young daughter would become a talented writer, a New York Times reporter and a social justice-focused media entrepreneur.

Zahra Nader brainstorms with her classmates during her weekly Impact Studio workshop at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business. Photo Credit: Josh Jarmanning

Nader started publishing her poetry in high school and wrote articles for a local Afghan paper. At a private university in Kabul, she majored in law and continued to work in local journalism while studying English at a private center. She also attended a training program on how to work for international media outlets, after which she published her first English-language article in The Huffington Post about divorced women in Afghanistan.

She earned a meeting with The New York Times bureau chief in Kabul and ultimately landed a full-time job there. She reported primarily on women’s issues and gained access where male reporters could not — covering honor killings, “virginity test” facilities, households headed by single women and the social stigma of being a divorcee or a widow.

As the security situation deteriorated, Nader, her husband and her then-3-year-old son were forced to flee Afghanistan. They made a new home in Canada, where Nader struggled to chart a new path. A friend advised her that she now lives by: “You have finished one marathon in Afghanistan. You are starting another one in Canada. You always start from the beginning.” Buoyed by this encouragement, Nader applied for and was admitted to a master’s degree program and later a doctoral program in women’s studies at York University.

Shortly after that, the Taliban seized control of her homeland. Feeling compelled to act, Nader launched Zan Times, a non-profit Farsi and English online news site covering human and women’s rights in Afghanistan. (“Zan” means “woman” in Farsi.) She subsequently raised more than $30,000 through a fundraising campaign and earned some foundation grants. As the site’s editor-in-chief, Nader manages a team of mostly female journalists and editors, both in Afghanistan and in exile. She also leads the organization’s fundraising efforts and training programs for young reporters. All of her reporters are paid for their work.

As a 2025 Knight-Wallace Fellow, Nader is studying business models and management strategies that will create a roadmap for sustainability for Zan Times.

Zan Times highlights grassroots stories of suffering, courage and hope. One recent article, written by an anonymous reporter, chronicles strikes and protests organized by female public school teachers that partially succeeded in compelling the Taliban to reverse its decision to slash their salaries. Other articles cover ongoing brutality and executions by the Taliban, the struggles of Afghan female workers in Iran, novels and short stories written by Afghan authors and the life-threatening conditions faced by LGBTQ+ individuals in Afghanistan.

As a 2025 Knight-Wallace Fellow, Nader is studying business models and management strategies that will create a roadmap for sustainability for Zan Times. She was among 11 entrepreneurs selected for the esteemed Impact Studio program at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business. There, she participates in an intensive, two-semester incubator that helps innovators and entrepreneurs “bring impactful ideas to life.”

Nader is thrilled to have the opportunity for formal business coaching and loves the program’s interactive nature and the peer-to-peer learning it inspires. She is particularly eager to learn more about fundraising and marketing, with the goal of expanding the reach of the Zan Times weekly email newsletter and finding new institutional and individual donors.

After her Knight-Wallace Fellowship, Nader plans to continue leading Zan Times while concurrently finishing her Ph.D. and writing a dissertation focused on the stories of Afghan women’s rights activists from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. She will keep tackling new challenges and running new marathons. “It’s very important to me,” Nader says. “A lot of my relatives — especially the girls and my nieces — everybody’s looking up to me.”

The Zan Times English-language website can be viewed at zantimes.com.


Ashley Bates is associate director of Wallace House Center for Journalists.

This article appeared in the Fall 2024 issue of the Wallace House Journal.

The 37th Graham Hovey Lecture with Mazin Sidahmed of Documented

“Sorting Immigration Facts from Fiction: The Power of Local Reporting Amid National Politics”

September 10, 2024 | 5 p.m.
Reception following the lecture

Wallace House Gardens
620 Oxford Road, Ann Arbor

Welcome remarks by Valeria Bertacco,
Vice Provost for Engaged Learning, University of Michigan

Watch the video recording.

In a deeply polarizing election year, immigration remains one of the most contentious, sensationalized issues in American politics. Beyond the partisan rallying cries influencing the presidential race, immigration plays out in individual communities where needs, resources and actions often transcend party lines and knee-jerk responses. How journalists cover immigration – and who their coverage ultimately serves – can shape how Americans understand and debate this issue for generations.

Join Mazin Sidahmed, 2021 Knight-Wallace Reporting Fellow and co-founder of the non-profit newsroom Documented, for a discussion on how shifting our journalism focus from national coverage to local news outlets and from “reporting about” to “reporting for and with” immigrant communities can help us discern immigration fact from fiction and improve outcomes for everyone.

This is an in-person event and will not be live-streamed. However, a recording of the lecture will be available on our website following the event.

About the Speaker

Mazin Sidahmed is the co-founder and co-executive editor of Documented, an independent, non-profit newsroom dedicated to reporting with and for immigrant communities in New York City. He previously worked for the Guardian US in New York during the 2016 US elections, covering various issues, including surveillance and criminal justice, and the rise of hate crimes following the election. Sidahmed left the news desk to join the award-winning Guardian Mobile Innovation Lab, where he helped develop new mobile-specific story formats. He started his career writing for The Daily Star in Beirut, where he reported on the Syrian refugee crisis, weapons transfers to Lebanon and the plight of migrant domestic workers.

As a 2021 Knight-Wallace Reporting Fellow, Sidahmed reported for Documented on the role of local police in federal immigration enforcement.

About the Graham Hovey Lecture

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 our national conversations. 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.

Michigan Public is a co-sponsor of this event.

Announcing the 2024 Livingston Award Winners

2024 Livingston Award winners (clockwise from top-left) Samantha Hogan of The Maine Monitor, Renata Brito of The Associated Press, Kevin Merida, the Richard M. Clurman Award recipient, Allison Behringer and Lila Hassan of KCRW Public Radio (Southern California).

Today the Livingston Awards honor stories that represent the best in local, national and international reporting by journalists under the age of 35. The winning stories include a local news investigation exposing the systematic failures of Maine’s illusive probate courts, a documentary podcast probing timely gender-specific health challenges, and a visually-driven investigation retracing the tragic voyages of West African migrants lost in the Atlantic Ocean on their quest to reach Europe. The $10,000 prizes are for work released in 2023.

The Livingston Awards also honored Kevin Merida, former executive editor of the Los Angeles Times, with the Richard M. Clurman Award for mentoring. The prize is given each year to an experienced journalist who has played a pivotal role in guiding and nurturing the careers of young reporters. The award is named for the late Richard M. Clurman, former chief of correspondents for Time-Life News Service and architect of the Livingston Awards.

Livingston Awards national judges Kara Swisher of New York Magazine, Lydia Polgreen of The New York Times, Raney Aronson-Rath of Frontline and Lynette Clemetson, director of Wallace House, introduced the winners at a ceremony hosted by Livingston Awards emeritus judge Ken Auletta.

“We are honored to recognize this exceptional reporting that uses text, audio and visual storytelling to full effect,” said Lynette Clemetson. “It is especially inspiring to honor the doggedness of these journalists during a period of painful retrenchment in many news organizations. The persistence of young reporters to pursue challenging work with such ambition and creativity pushes our entire industry forward.” 

Celebrating its 43rd year, the awards bolster the work of young reporters, cultivate the next generation of journalism leaders and mentors and advance civic engagement around powerful storytelling. Major sponsors include the University of Michigan, Knight Foundation, the Indian Trail Charitable Foundation, the Mollie Parnis Livingston Foundation, Christiane Amanpour, the Judy and Fred Wilpon Family Foundation, Dr. Gil Omenn and Martha Darling and The Joyce Foundation.

The 2024 winners for work released in 2023 are listed below.

Local Reporting

Samantha Hogan, 30, of The Maine Monitor for “Maine’s Part-Time Court,” a year-long investigation into the state’s illusive probate courts. Her reporting exposed stories of individuals whose life savings may have been pocketed by their conservators and revealed eight unexplained deaths of people who were under Maine’s state guardianship.

“Samantha Hogan’s multi-year investigation into an alarming lack of oversight within Maine’s probate courts is a shining example of local journalism at its finest. Her efforts were creative and meticulous: She conducted in-depth interviews with those in the probate system. She crafted and sent surveys to the probate courts. She dove into the research on alternative probate systems. And she submitted public records requests that ultimately revealed the suspicious deaths of eight people under the court’s guardianship. Samantha’s reporting catalyzed grassroots change and strengthened civic engagement and democracy.”
Kara Swisher, Livingston Awards national judge

National Reporting

Allison Behringer, 33 and Lila Hassan, 28, KCRW Public Radio, for three episodes from Season Four of the podcast “Bodies.” Their stories explored early-onset puberty, postpartum psychosis and the fight for abortion training in a Post-Roe America through the lens of feminism, systemic discrimination and marginalization.

“I have done a lot of tough and dangerous reporting — interviewing warlords, trekking across deserts, dodging bullets in urban warfare. But years of experience have taught me that one of the hardest things to do is to get children to talk — openly, authentically and enthusiastically talk. Allison Behringer and Lila Hassan got kids to open up about some of the most intimate and private parts of their lives — their changing bodies. The “Bodies” episodes honored here are stories of huge social and political importance told in the most intimate and human ways. Innovative and first-rate journalism from start to finish.”
Lydia Polgreen, Livingston Awards national judge

International Reporting

Renata Brito, 31, The Associated Press for “Adrift/36 Days,” a visually-driven investigation that seamlessly weaves together graphic illustrations, evocative imagery and powerful storytelling. Through meticulous detail, Brito reconstructs the journey of a boat discovered on Tobago’s coast, identifies its deceased passengers and humanizes the plight of migrants.

“Renata Brito’s investigation into a ‘ghost boat’ found in Trinidad and Tobago turned into a two-year cinematic investigation tracking the fatal journey for 43 Mauritanian immigrants trying to make their way to the Canary Islands and ultimately Europe. Despite challenges in accessing information from different governments and not knowing who might have been on this boat, she persisted. The results brought closure to families who had previously been unable to declare their sons dead. Her investigation also spurred a wider look into the ‘ghost boat’ phenomenon and resulted in Renata documenting another horrific journey of a boat at sea for 36 days and the deaths of 63 of the 101 migrants onboard.”
Raney Aronson-Rath, Livingston Awards national judge

Mentoring Award

Kevin Merida, former executive editor of the Los Angeles Times, former editor-in-chief of The Undefeated and former managing editor of The Washington Post, was honored with the Richard M. Clurman Award for his commitment to counseling, nurturing and inspiring young journalists. In a video tribute, journalists from the Los Angeles Times, ESPN and The Washington Post talked about Merida’s encouragement of young reporters and his influence on their careers.

“Nearly every piece of journalism that changed me, challenged me and upped my game as a reporter had Kevin’s imprint and genius behind it. He is the kind of leader I now strive to be – empowering, innovative, accessible, no B.S. He showed so many of us that we could lead in newsrooms as ourselves.”
— Krissah Thompson, The Washington Post

In addition to Swisher, Polgreen and Aronson-Rath, the Livingston national judges panel includes Sally Buzbee, Sewell Chan, Audie Cornish, Matt Murray, María Elena Salinas and Bret Stephens.

More on the winners here.

Announcing the 2024 Livingston Awards Finalists

Wallace House Center for Journalists and the University of Michigan announced today the 2024 Livingston Awards finalists in local, national, and international reporting. The awards support young journalists and honor the best reporting and storytelling by journalists under the age of 35 across all forms of journalism. The finalist selections were chosen from more than 400 entries for work released in 2023.

This year’s winners will be announced on June 11, 2024, at an in-person awards ceremony hosted by Ken Auletta, media writer for The New Yorker and author.

“In a particularly difficult period of journalism downsizing, it’s an honor to recognize the ambitious work of young reporters,” said Lynette Clemetson, director of the awards and the Wallace House Center for Journalists. “This year’s finalists share a commitment to truth, accountability, nuance and empathy at a moment in which these qualities can often feel in short supply.” 

Celebrating its 43rd year, the awards bolster the work of young reporters, create the next generation of journalism leaders and mentors, and advance civic engagement around powerful storytelling. The sponsors include the University of Michigan, the Knight Foundation, the Indian Trail Charitable Foundation, the Mollie Parnis Livingston Foundation, Christiane Amanpour, Dr. Gil Omenn and Martha Darling, the Judy and Fred Wilpon Foundation and The Joyce Foundation.

The Livingston Awards regional judges read all qualifying entries to select the finalists in local, national and international reporting. The regional judging panel includes Molly Ball, senior political correspondent, The Wall Street Journal; Meghna Chakrabarti, host and editor, “On Point” WBUR; Stella Chávez, immigration and demographics reporter, KERA Public Radio (Dallas); Adam Ganucheau, editor in chief, Mississippi Today; David Greene, co-founder, Fearless Media and Host, “Left, Right & Center,” KCRW (Los Angeles); Stephen Henderson, executive editor, BridgeDetroit and host, WDET, public radio Detroit and Detroit Public Television; and Amna Nawaz, co-anchor, PBS “NewsHour.”

The Livingston Awards national judges review all finalist entries and select the winners. The national judges are Raney Aronson-Rath, executive producer, “FRONTLINE”; Sally Buzbee, executive editor, The Washington Post; Sewell Chan, editor in chief, The Texas Tribune; Audie Cornish, anchor and correspondent, CNN; Matt Murray, former editor in chief, The Wall Street Journal; Lydia Polgreen, opinion columnist, The New York Times; María Elena Salinas, contributor, ABC News; Bret Stephens, opinion columnist, The New York Times; and Kara Swisher, podcast host, New York Magazine.

We present the 2024 Livingston Awards finalists and invite you to review their work here.

Local Reporting

  • Clare Amari, Houston Landing
  • Antonia Cereijido and Meg Cramer, LAist Studios
  • Rebecca Ellis, Los Angeles Times
  • Shayla Escudero, Albany Democrat-Herald
  • Andrea Gallo, The Times-Picayune and The Advocate
  • Michael Korsh and Neena Hagen, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
  • Jake Bittle and Anita Hofschneider, Grist
  • Samantha Hogan, The Maine Monitor
  • Daniel Huang, New York Magazine
  • Stephanie Kuzydym, The Courier-Journal
  • Chris Marquette, CQ Roll Call 
  • Mariam Elba and Paige Pfleger, WPLN Nashville Public Radio and ProPublica
  • Nell Salzman, Chicago Tribune
  • Ivy Scott, The Boston Globe
  • Brenna Smith, The Baltimore Banner 
  • Salina Arredondo, Jana Cholakovska, David Leffler and Savanna Strott, Public Health Watch
  • Agnel Philip, Mollie Simon and Isabelle Taft, Mississippi Today and ProPublica
  • Makenzie Huber and Annie Todd, South Dakota Searchlight and Sioux Falls Argus Leader

 National Reporting

  • Akbar Shahid Ahmed, HuffPost
  • Ethan Bauer, Deseret Magazine
  • Hannah Beckler, Business Insider
  • Matt Drange, Business Insider
  • Brittany Gibson, Politico
  • Allison Behringer and Lila Hassan, KCRW Public Radio (Southern California)
  • Astead W. Herndon, The New York Times
  • Vivian Ho, The Guardian US
  • Kenny Jacoby, USA Today
  • Ava Kofman, The New Yorker co-published with ProPublica
  • Julia Lurie, Mother Jones
  • Kirsten Berg, Alex Mierjeski and Brett Murphy, ProPublica
  • Aneri Pattani, KFF Health News
  • Brianna Sacks, The Washington Post
  • Lauren Caruba and Ari Sen, The Dallas Morning News in partnership with the San Antonio Express-News
  • Richard Sima, The Washington Post
  • Talmon Joseph Smith, The New York Times
  • Margo Snipe, Capital B

 International Reporting

  • Lynzy Billing, Inside Climate News and New Lines Magazine
  • Nick Bowlin, The Drift
  • Ali Breland, The New Republic
  • Renata Brito, The Associated Press
  • Shirsho Dasgupta, Miami Herald
  • Rachel Fobar, The Guardian US in partnership with The Fuller Project
  • Julia Love, Bloomberg Businessweek
  • Pete McKenzie, The New York Times
  • Kunle Adebajo and Mansir Muhammed, New Lines Magazine and HumAngle
  • Zahra Nader, The Fuller Project and The Guardian US in collaboration with Zan Times
  • Nicolas Niarchos, The Nation
  • Anastacia Galouchka and Siobhan O’Grady, The Washington Post
  • Andrei Popoviciu, In These Times
  • Cape Diamond and Rebecca Tan, The Washington Post
  • Chris Walker, 5280 Magazine
  • Jessie Williams, TIME Magazine in partnership with The Fuller Project 

More on the finalists’ work and links to watch, listen and read here.

Wallace House Presents An Evening with Kara Swisher and Mary Barra

6 PM | Monday, Mar. 18, 2024

Rackham Auditorium
915 E Washington St

Free and open to the public.

Register for this event.
Registrations are not required but allow us to send you event
updates and reminders.

This is an in-person event. The event will also be livestreamed here.
Seating is on a first-come basis.

Watch the video recording here.

Join us for a special evening with journalist Kara Swisher and CEO of GM, Mary Barra, as part of the continuing series “Democracy in Crisis: Views from the Press.”

Award-winning journalist Kara Swisher has interviewed nearly every consequential innovator and tech entrepreneur working today. Her new memoir, “Burn Book: A Tech Love Story,” is an insider’s tale of success, failure, hubris and optimism. As Detroit gains influence in technology and the EV revolution, Swisher sits down with Mary Barra, chair and CEO of General Motors, to discuss her new book and explore the dynamic interplay of legacy companies, innovation, strategic bets on the future, and tech’s potential to solve problems and not just create them.

Book signing following the event
Swisher’s newly released book, “Burn Book,” will be available for purchase at the event. The author will stay for a short book signing after the program.

About Kara Swisher

Kara Swisher is the host of the podcast “On with Kara Swisher” and cohost of the “Pivot” podcast with Scott Galloway, both distributed by New York Magazine. She was also the co-founder and editor-at-large of Recode, host of the “Recode Decode” podcast, and co-executive producer of the Code Conference. She was a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and host of its “Sway” podcast and has also worked for The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. Swisher has served as Livingston Awards judge for Wallace House since 2014. “Burn Book: A Tech Love Story” is her third book.

About Mary Barra

Mary Barra is Chair and Chief Executive Officer of General Motors. Prior to becoming CEO, Barra served as GM executive vice president, Global Product Development, Purchasing and Supply Chain, and as senior vice president, Global Product Development. In these roles, Barra and her teams were responsible for the design, engineering and quality of GM vehicle launches worldwide.

Co-Sponsors

Gerald R. Ford School
U-M Democracy & Debate
U-M School of Information

EXPLORE MORE WALLACE HOUSE EVENTS

The Clemetson Years

Not long after Lynette Clemetson was named director of the Knight-Wallace Fellowship in 2016, I sat at a long wooden table, facing her and members of the selection committee, trying to convince them I had a great idea for a fellowship.

The truth is all I had were questions. Since bluffing my way into my first reporting job at the Queens Tribune back in 2003, I’d been trying to figure out how to keep my head above water in the journalism world. Half the newsrooms on my résumé had collapsed or closed. But I stayed employed, jumping from job to job, in part by getting clicks and traffic with whatever was the new way to communicate: blogging, listicles, slide shows, newsletters, tweeting.

For a while, I carried a camcorder and tripod and uploaded entire press conferences onto a new website called YouTube.

But by the time I was sitting at that wooden table in Ann Arbor, none of it made sense anymore. The news cycle I had helped accelerate was too fast. Way too fast. Every time I started reporting on one story—figuring out what was true and what wasn’t—I’d get distracted with a breaking news alert. And another. Colin Kaepernick was kneeling. Donald Trump was tweeting “covfefe.” Somehow, doing what I had always done didn’t seem like enough.

In typical Eisendrath fashion, Charles passes not a torch, but a hat, to his successor Lynette Clemetson in 2016.

So, I applied to the fellowship and sat across from Lynette. The most memorable moment of my interview was when she asked me about my hobbies. I described my penchant for putting audio clips of news on top of musical beats. My favorite one: Excerpts of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton’s third debate, on top of Tupac’s “Gangsta Party.”

Everyone laughed and Lynette shared a part of her bio that I had missed; she had been a DJ at a hip-hop station. She seemed like a new kind of director.

I got selected and at the first big event of the year, the Hovey Lecture, featuring ProPublica’s Alec MacGillis ’10, Lynette welcomed all the guests warmly, then politely told them that there was something missing from the event: new people. Events like this one should be out there, at libraries, theaters, anywhere, really, where a diverse, possibly younger, crowd who had never heard of Wallace House and wasn’t plugged into journalism would go. Perfect, I thought—I was moving toward Wallace House just as Lynette was moving Wallace House somewhere else.

Thanks to Wallace House’s interest in bringing more events to more people in more locations, I found myself getting around the only way I knew how: walking. And it did me good.

But her timing couldn’t have been better. The world was changing, and journalists needed to be among the people, soaking it all in and sharing what they do with people who perceived them as suspect. Wallace House brought Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter David Fahrenthold of The Washington Post for a public event on his coverage of Donald Trump’s charitable giving. Before he spoke, Lynette arranged for me and another Fellow obsessed with politics to have lunch with him. In February, Wallace House brought then NPR host Joshua Johnson to record a live episode of the show “1A.” Shortly after, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens gave a talk titled “Free Speech and the Necessity of Discomfort.” To prove his thesis, he stood on stage as an endless parade of undergrads pelted him with sharply worded statements, sometimes delivered in the form of a question.

This was not the Wallace House back garden. I was witnessing journalism and reporting, surrounded by the people it was affecting. It reminded me of my Queens Tribune days, with late nights at community board meetings and early-morning doorknocking with local candidates.

Thanks to Wallace House’s interest in bringing more events to more people in more locations, I found myself getting around the only way I knew how: walking. And it did me good.

Since the fellowship, I’ve been tweeting less and absorbing more. Stories are driven more by accountability and less by clicks. It’s been five years, one wedding, a pandemic, a newborn, and two jobs since I left Ann Arbor. And it’s been exactly zero days since Lynette’s words about being out and in touch with the world have left me.

Azi Paybarah is a 2018 Knight-Wallace Fellow and national reporter covering campaigns and breaking politics at The Washington Post.


This article appeared in the Fall 2023 issue of the Wallace House Journal.

The 36th Graham Hovey Lecture: Freedom of Information and the Public’s Right to Know

Q&A with Anna Clark of ProPublica

The annual Graham Hovey Lecture was started by Charles Eisendrath in 1987 in honor of his predecessor Graham Hovey, director of the fellowship program from 1980 to 1986, to recognize a Knight-Wallace journalist whose career exemplifies the benefits of a fellowship and whose ensuing work is at the forefront of our national conversations. This year we welcomed Anna Clark, a 2017 Knight-Wallace Fellow and currently a journalist with ProPublica living in Detroit. She is the author of “The Poisoned City: Flint’s Water and the American Urban Tragedy,” which won the Hillman Prize for Book Journalism and the Rachel Carson Environment Book Award, and was longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. She is a nonfiction faculty member in Alma College’s MFA Program in Creative Writing and was also a Fulbright fellow in creative writing in Kenya. Anna sat down with director Lynette Clemetson to discuss the dangers of a culture of secrecy and what it takes to push back.

Q: When I raised the idea of government transparency to you as a possible topic for your Hovey Lecture, I was concerned that you might think it was too wonky, but you were all in.

A: Freedom of information and public disclosure policies are part of our architecture for democracy and justice. I’m very passionate about it.

Q: Many people don’t know that Michigan ranks low in some areas of transparency.

A: I love this state, but I am sorry to say that we are not on the strongest side of this issue. We’re notable for being one of only two states in which the legislature and the governor’s office are exempt from public records requests.

Anna Clark returned to Wallace House not only with her infectious smile, but to offer insight into the restrictive laws preventing access to public records.

Q: It comes up for debate regularly, but the law hasn’t changed.

A: Well, interestingly, whatever party is not in power is really pro opening things up, and then once they are in power, they hesitate. (Laughs.) So yeah, people have been talking about this for years and years. And it has real stakes for the ability of reporters to do their jobs and for people to know what’s going on in their communities.

Q: For large institutions that get a lot of requests, public universities included, it can be easy to think of FOIA as a nuisance. How do we change that?

A: It’s true. Not every FOIA request is made in the name of democracy. There are frivolous requests, harassing ones, excessive ones, overly vague and broad ones that are a genuine burden to our public officials. Still, I think it is a virtue that you aren’t required to give a reason to make a request. If you’re an official who is doing the right thing, if you’re educating people, serving this state, this nation, in important ways, that should be evident in the details of the released records. Not making them available, even when you’re doing the right things, cultivates a kind of secrecy that breeds suspicion and distrust.

Q: There’s been a lot written about how a lack of government transparency exacerbated the water disaster in Flint. You document the downfalls in your book, “The Poisoned City.” You also recently wrote about a lack of transparency in a different part of the state—the ongoing wait for an external review of the 2021 mass shooting at Oxford High School. How do larger government transparency issues relate to the situation in Oxford?

A: The Oxford school shooting in November 2021 was a very different kind of crisis than Flint. What’s similar is that the people in Oxford are starved for a clear, comprehensive telling of what happened, not just in the courts, which are prosecuting the shooter and his parents, but in the context of their school and the public school district that had a number of interactions with the shooter in the days and hours leading up to the shooting.

If you have a culture where the attitude is “just trust us” and you expect people to be okay with it, that trickles down to even the most locally elected, part-time, volunteer school board officials, who nonetheless are responsible for high-stakes decisions that could potentially cost people their lives. We’re creating a norm that is actually dangerous where this culture of secrecy is something we’re familiar with. That doesn’t mean it needs to be our normal.

Tabbye Chavous, Vice Provost for Equity and Inclusion, Chief Diversity Officer at the University of Michigan and member of the Wallace House Executive Advisory Board, welcomes guests to the Wallace House gardens.

Q: How did the fellowship prepare you to tackle this issue of government secrecy, starting with your book on Flint?

A: Well, I was a completely fried, burned out, single, full-time freelancer working all the time and feeling increasingly depleted. Without the fellowship, I don’t know how I would have emotionally been able to sustain the work of reporting and writing the book, let alone the emotional toll. Having fun with people, sleeping more, not worrying about my bills all the time, it was so restorative. And that was essential to help me go forward to finish this book and bring it into the world.

Q: What did you gain from the university?

A: It was a powerful opportunity to come at the book with resources and tools I just never had before. I took classes in the law school on water policy and environmental justice. I took an urban planning class on metropolitan structures. Visiting cities in Brazil and South Korea gave me a new perspective to think about how cities in the U.S. are made and unmade. Not having any institutional affiliation or much money when I came to the fellowship, I never had access to archives like that. Suddenly, I got this university email address and all the resources of the campus libraries, including the library at the U-M’s Flint campus, became available.

Q: And yet, you didn’t come into the fellowship with a concrete plan for what you were going to do. That makes a lot of people nervous. What advice would you give to current or future fellows who worry about having everything mapped out?

A: Some of it is just trusting yourself. Like, if you have a Tuesday, and you don’t have any classes at all, you can trust that things will show up on that day that you will learn and grow from, including just empty space, which might be the thing you need most of all.

Q: That can be a hard case to make when people’s careers feel so perilous and the industry is under so much pressure.

A: The toll this work takes—even in the best of times, let alone in these times of scarcity and threat—is so excruciating. If people are going to do this work for years and decades, well, people are not machines. We’re not machines. You need to replenish yourself. We need journalists who are whole people, who have the internal and external resources to sustain themselves for the long run. This program is so rare for truly investing in journalists, not just in what they produce. That’s an investment in journalism for the long term, not just the news cycle.

Wallace House director Lynette Clemetson presents Anna Clark with the inscribed Hovey Bowl and her name added to the Hovey Lecture plaque.

Anna Clark is a 2017 Knight-Wallace Fellow.


This article appeared in the Fall 2023 issue of the Wallace House Journal.

The Eisendrath Symposium brings the Oscar-nominated documentary “20 Days in Mariupol”

Wallace House Presents a free screening of the Oscar-nominated documentary “20 Days In Mariupol,” and a conversation with the filmmakers

WCEE Film and Eisendrath Symposium Event
5:30 PM | Monday, FEB. 5, 2024
Michigan Theater

Free and open to the public.
This is a non-ticketed event.
Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis

This event will not be live-streamed.

A special screening and conversation

An AP team of Ukrainian journalists trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol struggle to continue their work documenting atrocities of the Russian invasion. As the only international reporters who remain in the city, they capture what later become defining images of the war. The documentary shows vivid, harrowing accounts of civilians caught in the siege and a window into what it’s like to report from a conflict zone and the impact of such journalism around the globe.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers.

The Eisendrath Symposium honors Charles R. Eisendrath, former director of Wallace House, and his lifelong commitment to international journalism.

About the filmmakers

Mstyslav Chernov is a documentary director and video journalist at The Associated Press and president of the Ukrainian Association of Professional Photographers. Since joining the AP in 2014, he has covered major conflicts, social issues and environmental crises across Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Most recently, Chernov documented Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Together with longtime colleague Evgeniy Maloletka, Chernov recorded the siege of Mariupol, showing the world eyewitness accounts of the Russian attacks on the city in the documentary “20 Days in Mariupol.” Chernov’s reporting in Mariupol earned the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service and an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary.

Raney Aronson-Rath is the editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE, PBS’ flagship investigative journalism series, and is a leading voice on the future of journalism. Aronson-Rath oversees FRONTLINE’s acclaimed investigative reporting on air and online and directs the series’ editorial vision — executive producing more than 20 in-depth documentaries each year on critical issues facing the country and the world. FRONTLINE has won every major award in broadcast journalism under Aronson-Rath’s leadership. She is a producer of the documentary “20 Days in Mariupol.” For nearly two decades, Aronson-Rath has served as a Livingston Awards judge. A program of Wallace House Center for Journalists, the prize honors reporters under the age of 35 and identifies the next generation of journalism leaders. 

Michelle Mizner is an Emmy-winning documentary producer and film editor on staff at FRONTLINE PBS. Her work for the series has been recognized by the Peabodys, World Press Photo, duPont-Columbia Awards, and SXSW. Select titles as a producer and editor include “Life in Baghdad,”  “Inside Yemen,” with correspondent Martin Smith, and “The Last Call” with director Marcela Gaviria. In addition to films, Mizner has produced several acclaimed interactive documentaries, including “Inheritance,” “The Last Generation,” and “Un(re)solved.” She is the producer and editor of the documentary “20 Days in Mariupol,” her first feature-length film.

Co-sponsors:
Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia
International Institute

Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies

This event is produced with support from Knight Foundation.