Reporting on Overlooked Communities and Having Their Voices Heard
Recent Lipman Center Fellows discuss their reporting and share their insights.
Please join us for a conversation with the Lipman Center Fellows, who will discuss their projects and the reporting and interview techniques they used to uncover stories in the Geechee/Gullah community of South Carolina, the Inupiaq people in Alaska, and a Black neighborhood in Virginia.
The fellows will touch on the challenges of reporting on underrepresented communities: building trust where journalists have historically extracted shallow stories and left; finding sources within those communities; pitching editors who prefer familiar or stereotypical narratives.
This event is sponsored by the Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights at Columbia University.
Monday, September 14, 2026, 12:15 - 1:45pm
Registration required: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1999286100546?aff=oddtdtcreator.
Box lunch will be provided.
Columbia Journalism School, World Room, 3rd Floor, Pulitzer Hall, 2950 Broadway, New York, NY 10027
Moderated by: Lipman Center Program Manager Dolores Barclay
Guests:
Paisley Dodds, a member of the investigations' accountability team at The Post and Courier, is a former international investigations reporter and London Bureau Chief for The Associated Press. She has worked with Frontline and covered stories ranging from civil rights in the South to suicide bombings to U.N. sexual abuse and exploitation. Her Lipman Center project was on the threatened Gullah/Geechee community in South Carolina.
Kenneth R. Rosen, author and former senior editor at Newsweek, is writing a book about the Arctic for Simon & Schuster. He has reported from Ukraine, Syria, and Malta, and his stories have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Seattle Times, Foreign Policy, Politico Magazine, and elsewhere. He is the author of “Troubled,” an investigation of behavioral treatment programs. His Lipman Center Project investigated how Trump's mining policies affect the Inupiaq community in Alaska.
Brandi Kellam is an Emmy-winning journalist who reports for ProPublica and the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism. As a journalist for CBS News, she covered the 2020 U.S. Senate impeachment trial of then-President Donald Trump and spent five weeks on the ground in Minneapolis following protests over George Floyd’s murder by police. Brandi’s reporting has also focused on criminal justice reform, including criminal record expungement for individuals with non-violent drug offenses and marijuana decriminalization. Her Lipman Center project focused on gentrification in Newport News, Virginia, which disproportionately affects Black communities. She won a 2024 Paul Tobenkin Memorial Award and a Gracie Award for her stories.