Two earn international reporting fellowships
Two Boston University students have been selected by BU and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting for international health reporting fellowships in Africa this summer as part of the center’s growing Campus Consortium Partnership of 16 institutions of higher learning.
Meghan Dhaliwal, a College of Communication senior, and Jason Hayes, a School of Public Health graduate student, will spend several weeks at the Pulitzer Center’s Washington, D.C. headquarters and several more on the reporting trip. They will be mentored by Center— supported journalists and staff, focusing on such issues as water and sanitation, and reproductive health.
With the Pulitzer Center's approval, each school in its consortium selects at least one student fellow and finances the fellowships. The Center commissions multimedia reporting projects with the completed project featured on its website. Fellows also work with the Center in efforts to further disseminate their projects through media partners.
These paid fellowships are part of an ongoing collaboration between the Pulitzer Center and the Boston University Program on Crisis Response and Reporting, a cross-campus collaboration of faculty and resources from BU’s College of Communication (COM), School of Public Health (SPH) and Center for Global Health and Development (CGHD).
Last summer, SPH graduate Anna Tomasulo was the first BU recipient of this fellowship, traveling to Nepal to research and write about child marriage. Her work on this topic was subsequently published in the Huffington Post.
Dhaliwal, a photojournalist from Scotch Plains, NJ , who has done course work at SPH, started her own NGO in Uganda, selling jewelry to benefit a rehabilitation center for sex workers. She has traveled extensively in the developing world including Ghana and several trips to India. As a student in Semester at Sea in 2011 she visited Dominica, Brazil, South Africa, Mauritius, Singapore, Vietnam, China and Taiwan.
“Meghan is a talented and passionate journalist who is always willing to put in the hard work necessary to get to the heart of a story, and she has shown a readiness to go where others might fear to tread,” said Prof. Peter Southwick, her academic adviser.
Hayes, from Pittsburgh, PA, is a second-semester masters of public health student in the SPH Department of International Health focusing on complex humanitarian emergencies. A 2008 Colby College history graduate, in 2007 he completed an Amazon resource management and human ecology program in Belém, Brazil. A certified EMT who has worked in Haiti and Alaska, he is relatively new to the world of journalism but jumped in enthusiastically this year by enrolling in a long-form magazine feature writing class.
“Jason is extremely thoughtful, a good long-form writer and an energetic and resourceful reporter,” said Prof. Robert Manoff. “He is very committed to pursuing public health issues and reporting— precisely the combination we are looking for.”
The BU Program on Crisis Response and Reporting has organized several events dealing with the intersection of journalism and public-health disasters. A year-later retrospective on the Haitian earthquake brought together journalists and aid workers to discuss the ethics and logistics of crises reporting. Last fall, award-winning journalists Stephanie Sinclair and Cynthia Gorney discussed child marriages worldwide, based on their reporting for National Geographic, VII photo agency, and the Pulitzer Center. Last month, the Program co-sponsored with the Photo Resource Center an exhibit and panel discussions on “Global Health in Focus.”
“We were thrilled with the level of interest and the high caliber of the applicants for this summer’s internship,” said Prof. Anne Donohue, who with colleague Prof. Elizabeth Mehren and CGHD professors Jennifer Beard and Monica Onyango directed these events and internships at BU. “We hope we can expand this type of opportunity for more students in the near future.”
The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting is an award-winning non-profit journalism organization dedicated to supporting the independent international journalism that U.S. media organizations are increasingly less able to undertake. Its focuses on under-reported topics, promoting high-quality international reporting and creating platforms that reach broad and diverse audiences. Its educational programs provide students with fresh information on global issues, help them think critically about the creation and dissemination of news, and inspire them to become active consumers and producers of information.
Founded in 1839, Boston University is an internationally recognized institution of higher education and research. With more than 33,000 students, it is the fourth largest independent university in the United States. BU contains 16 colleges and schools along with many multi-disciplinary centers and institutes which are central to the school's research and teaching mission.
