Alumni on the Move: Election Coverage, New Roles and New Films
Graduates are on the ground covering upcoming elections, premiering thrilling documentaries and more.
Aida Alami, James Madison Visiting Professor on First Amendment Issues, was quoted in an article by the Committee to Protect Journalists about threats Moroccan journalists face.
Anakha Arikara, ‘19 M.S., and Hana Elias, ‘19 M.S., will have their short documentary Where the Wind Blows, premiere at the DOC NYC film festival on Thursday, November 14th, 2024. Where the Wind Blows follows a New Yorker who returns to Palestine to tend to an ancestral garden.
Raney Aronson-Rath, '95 M.S., won the 2024 John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism. Aronson-Rath is the editor-in-chief and executive producer of PBS FRONTLINE, winner of a 2024 Academy Award.
Meghnad Bose, ‘24 M.S., a Delacorte fellow at CJR, had his piece on the election betting market featured on NPR's Here & Now during the segment “How Much Do Polls Matter to the Election?”
Kristen V. Brown, ‘12 M.A. Arts and Culture, and Shayla Love, ‘16 M.A. Science, joined The Atlantic as staff writers covering health. Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor in chief, says that Brown “…has been a leading voice on the subjects of genetics, biohacking, vaccine psychology, and reproductive health” and praised Love as “...a relentless reporter and a brilliant writer on psychology and human behavior.”
Tanya Dua, '14 M.S., has been promoted to senior editor of technology at LinkedIn News after being at the organization for more than two years. Previously, Dua was a reporter at Business Insider and Digiday.
Samuel Earle, Candidate for Ph.D. Communications, reviewed “Strength in Numbers: How Polls Work and Why We Need Them” for the October 17th, 2024 issue of The New York Review of Books. Earle details the issues with measuring public opinion through polling and how the public interprets them.
Nicole Einbinder, '17 M.S., returned to Pulitzer Hall as a panelist for “Cruel Punishment and Lethal Restraint: Policing in the U.S.” Einbinder is a senior investigative reporter at Business Insider.
Andrea Elliott, '99 M.S., is returning to The New York Times investigations team after spending two years as a Writer in Residence and instructor at Princeton University. Elliott is a winner of two Pulitzer Prizes: one for feature writing in 2007 and one for general nonfiction in 2022.
John-Carlos Estrada, '13 M.S., directed "Barbette + Fontaine," a film about two Texas icons united by self-expression, which has been selected for the 36th annual New York LGBTQ+ Film Festival, NEWFEST.
Joseph Gedeon, '21 M.A. Politics, was recently interviewed by PEN America about his work covering disinformation and national security for POLITICO.
Maya Kaufman, '18 M.S., reported an exclusive story for POLITICO about how an aide for Mayor Eric Adams had pushed FDNY officials to contract with Remark Holdings, an AI company that has been scrutinized by the federal government. The aide resigned shortly after Kaufman’s story broke.
Melissa Korn, '07 M.S., has been promoted to deputy bureau chief of the media team at The Wall Street Journal. Korn has worked as a higher education reporter for The Wall Street Journal since 2011. In 2021, she won a New York Press Club award for her investigation into student debt.
Lomi Kriel, '11 M.A. Politics, investigated the devastating effects of Texas removing more than two million residents from Medicaid for The Texas Tribune. The investigation was produced in partnership by The Texas Tribune and ProPublica.
Refael Kubersky, '23 M.S. Documentary, was named FRONTLINE’s 2024-2025 Tow Journalism Fellow. “FRONTLINE has consistently distinguished itself as a forum for exceptional journalism,” said Dean Jelani Cobb.
“We could not be happier to see Refael as the latest Frontline/Columbia fellow.”
Robin McDowell, '93 M.S., and Margie Mason, 2021 recipients of the Ira A. Lipman Initiative in Reporting on Race and Criminal Justice, received gold Barlett and Steele Awards for their Associated Press piece, “Prison to Plate." in the Global/National Category. Silver winners, Nicole Einbinder, '17 M.S., a 2022 Ira A. Lipman Grant recipient, and Dakin Campbell, '06 M.S., won for their Business Insider piece “Corizon’s Troubled Two-Step."
Omar Mohammed, '22 M.A. Business & Economics, joined The Boston Globe as a reporter covering the economy in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Mohammed was a 2021-2022 Knight-Bagehot Fellow and previously a reporter at Newsweek.
Emily Rauhala '07 M.S., has been named The Washington Post’s Congress Editor. She previously was the Brussels Bureau chief at The Washington Post, where she covered NATO and the war in Ukraine.
Joanna Rothkopf, '14 M.A. Science, won an Emmy in Outstanding Writing for a Varsity Series for her work on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. This marks her sixth Emmy and seventh nomination.
Mazin Sidamed, '16 M.S., received the Local Champion Award at the Freedom of the Press Awards held by The Reporter’s Committee for a Free Press.
Ben Taub, '15 M.A. Politics, wrote about Russian intelligence operations in Norway for The New Yorker. Taub is a staff writer at The New Yorker and won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 2020 and a National Magazine Award in 2019.
Cydney Tucker, '16 M.S., founding member of the DEI Commission at CJS, won a 2024 Emmy award as director and producer for the Hulu documentary Rap Trap: Hip Hop on Trial.
Xintian Tina Wang, '22 M.S., published an article in Quill Magazine. She interviewed fellow graduates Eric Fan, '22 M.S., and Omose Ighodaro, '22 M.S, about "Reporting on the Underreported."