The Instructors

Neil Henry worked for 16 years as a metro, national and foreign correspondent based in Nairobi, Kenya for The Washington Post, and as a staff writer for Newsweek magazine.  He joined the faculty at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism in 1993. A former John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University, he is the author of a 2002 racial history, Pearl’s Secret. His second book, American Carnival, examining the problems of the news industry’s adjustment to the digital age, was published in May, 2007.  In May 2009, Professor Henry’s appointment as dean, which began on a transitional basis in July 2007, was made permanent. Dean Henry produced important new initiatives at the School during his first two years in the post, including an award winning digital news initiative in which J-School students in the program’s core reporting classes are producing local news content in multimedia formats for Bay Area communities.

Cassandra Herrman is a documentary filmmaker based in Berkeley, California.  She recently produced a story about legendary Afrobeat singer Fela Kuti for the new PBS global music series “Sound Tracks”.  Prior to that, she co-directed and photographed “Tulia, Texas”, the story of a small town struggling with the aftermath of a controversial drug sting. “Tulia, Texas” broadcast on the PBS series INDEPENDENT LENS in 2009.  For PBS’ FRONTLINE/World, she has produced and filmed numerous documentaries in Africa, including stories about human rights in Zimbabwe; female runners in Kenya; and the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, nominated for a 2006 National Emmy Award.  Cassandra received her master’s degree from U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism in 2001.

Martha Saavedra is the Associate Director of the UC Berkeley Center for African Studies. Trained as a Political Scientist at UCB, she has taught at St. Mary’s College of California, UC Berkeley and Ohio University. Her research and publications have ranged from agrarian politics, development and ethnic conflict in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan to gender, sport and development in Africa to representations of Africa in Chinese popular culture.  She is on the editorial boards of Soccer and Society; Sport in Society; and Impumelelo: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Sports in Africa. At the Center, she coordinates the UnderstandingSudan.org and the Horn of Africa curriculum projects, oversees public programs and fellowships, and works closely with the African languages program.

David Tuller was a reporter and editor for ten years at the San Francisco Chronicle. He served as health editor at Salon.com and frequently writes health stories for the New York Times. He received his masters in public health at Berkeley in 2005.

The Reporters

Madeleine Bair, a radio-journalist by training, has been carrying a microphone in her backpack since she was a child reporter with the Oakland bureau of Children’s Express. After chasing Hillary Clinton down for an interview in China and being yelled at by J.C. Watts at the Republican National Convention, she realized that journalism was her calling. Since then, she has worked as a producer on a daily radio magazine at Chicago Public Radio and traveled Latin America with a notepad in the back pocket. Thus far, the trip has included radio dispatches from the Caribbean and Nicaragua, articles for the Associated Press, and training of young journalists at Chicago’s RadioArte.

Gerald Businge is a journalist, researcher and entrepreneur from Uganda. He is a widely published journalist with extensive reporting experience in development issues including agriculture, gender, health, government and business. Businge started reporting for radio in 2000 before joining Uganda’s leading newspaper, New Vision as a features writer. In 2003, he started working with Ultimate Media Consult (U) Ltd, where he is a founding director. The company supplies daily news and feature stories to media houses in Uganda and internationally for broadcast, print and online.

Matt Durning is a freelance producer and video journalist currently studying documentary filmmaking at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.  From 2004-2008 he helped produce national political campaign media. Matt has recently worked as a production assistant with FRONTLINE/World in Berkeley and as a programming intern with Al Jazeera English Television in Washington, DC. In 2009, he co-produced a short documentary about air pollution in Cote D’Ivoire for FRONTLINE/World’s ‘Rough Cut’ series.

Shalwah Evans is a freelance writer and reporter in the Bay Area. Originally from New York, she has worked primarily in the nightlife and fashion industries. She has written for www.clubplanet.com, is a content producer for www.associatedcontent.com and currently has a fashion column on www.missionlocal.org.  Her interests in education, politics and community involvement challenge her in her writing every day, and she’s happy to explore them in new terrain.  She has an interest in international reporting covering fashion, culture, agriculture and gender issues.

Beth Hoffman is a freelance radio and multimedia producer, and a writer specializing in food and agriculture reporting.  She was a frequent contributor at Utah’s NPR station KUER, and airs nationally on NPR, The World, Latino USA and Living on Earth. She completed a series on the artistic, cultural and environmental connections to food called Bite Sized, and a year long documentary radio project with photographer Sean Graff entitled Old World, New Kitchen.  Beth also worked as Senior Interviewer and Researcher for the Center for Documentary Arts (CDA). She currently publishes on bethaudio.com.

Luc Ihaddadene is a Paris-based journalist and visiting scholar at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.  He has contributed to several leading newspapers and magazines in France, including Le Monde, La Croix and Le Nouvel Observateur. He has also worked for magazines for teenagers, and recently completed a book aimed at youth about sustainable consumption (to be published at Bayard Jeunesse Publishing, Paris). He has studied contemporary history, including Africa’s former French colonies history, at la Sorbonne for 5 years. Global wealth disparities and strategies to tackle global poverty are now the core of his interests as a freelance journalist.

Bagassi Koura is a Second year Documentary Film Student at Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.  Originally from Burkina Faso, he has worked for years as a freelance journalist in West Africa with international news outlets including Agence France Presse, die Tageszeitung  and Afrikanet.com.

Deepa Krishnan is a financial reporter from Mumbai, India.  She has specialized in covering India’s nascent commodity futures markets and commodity trading. She began as a reporter in Business Standard, an English-language financial paper, and moved to The Economic Times, India’s largest financial daily in 2006. In the last six months, she worked as a television reporter for the newspaper’s newly launched TV channel, ET Now. She has a bachelor’s degree in Economics, and has a post-graduate diploma in Journalism, with a specialization in television, from Asian College of Journalism, India.

Aude Lorriaux is a journalist in France, and visiting scholar at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley. She has contributed to various established newspapers and agencies such as Le Monde, the AFP, the worldwide French Press Agency, La Croix, and L’Est Républicain. Lorriaux graduated from the French Press Institute in 2009. She also holds a master’s degree in Political sciences from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Lille, France. There she founded the School’s Amnesty International Youth Committee, which did organize various events dealing with international human right issues, notably the Darfur crisis in Sudan.

Clare Major is a second-year documentary student at the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.  She has worked as a commercial video editor and as an agriculture extension agent; she hopes her future work will take her somewhere in the middle.  A native of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, she graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 2004 and served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal, West Africa, from 2004 to 2006.  In the summer of 2009 she worked as an intern in the New York Times video unit.

Edwin Okong’o is a Kenyan-born writer, journalist, humorist and satirist. He is an editor at New America Media, and a reporter for FRONTLINE/World. He has also done reporting on small Africa communities in the Mid-West.  He graduated from the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley in 2007.

Jill Replogle has worked as a freelance journalist in print, radio and video for the past eight years, mostly reporting from Central America. Her reporting interests include public health, international development and politics, and human rights, among many others. Her work has appeared in The Miami Herald, Time.com, and The Lancet, and aired on The World, CurrentTV, and VJMovement.com.

Martin Ricard is a reporter with a print background pursuing a master’s degree in multimedia journalism. Before entering the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, he wrote for The Daily Review in Hayward, California.  In 2008, he co-launched Oakland North, one of the hyperlocal news websites at the journalism school. This past summer, he interned as a reporter for The Washington Post, where he covered general assignment, development and transportation on the Metro Desk. While Martin has covered a variety of topics throughout much of his career, his true passions are in covering race, youth trends and social issues.

Alexia Underwood is a freelance writer and journalist working in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Besides working as a production assistant/ researcher for the National Geographic Channel and PBS FRONTLINE/World, she has reported on Oakland and other East Bay cities for the past two years. Her reporting interests include international development issues, human rights, education, and the Middle East and Africa.

Stefano Valentino has been working as a freelance journalist since 2001 after working as a staff reporter at the Brussels-based newswire Europolitcs. Over the last ten years, he has covered European affairs extensively for il Giornale, Italia Oggi, Lombard Finanza.  Since 2005, Brussels has become his strategic hub for worldwide field reporting. He has reported from around 30 countries for the major Italian newspapers and magazines il Sole 24 Ore, il Messaggero, il Venerdi, Panorama, and Famiglia cristiana. In 2008 he launched his own EU online customized news service www.euroreporter.eu. That same year he also founded the non-profit association Reporters for an Interactive, Cooperative and Specialized Information (RICSI), which is currently developing a global news marketing platform for freelancers, www.freereporter.info.

Samean Yun has been working for a national English newspaper, the Cambodia Daily, based in Cambodia for eight years. He started as a crime reporter, then became a political reporter, and was promoted to be the newspaper’s assignment editor and political writer before coming to Berkeley. Following the establishment of the Khmer Rouge genocidal tribunal in 2001, Samean traveled to former Khmer Rouge stronghold provinces to interview former Khmer Rouge leaders. Samean received a degree in journalism from the Royal University of Phnom Penh in 2002. In 2005, he spent six months working with Rocky Mountain News as an Alfred Friendly Press fellow.

Collaborators

Joshua Kato has been an active journalist with The New Vision, the leading daily in Uganda for 12 years. His main interest is in developmental issues including agriculture and local governance, though he has also written politics and entertainment. He completed a diploma in education (secondary) and later a bachelor’s degree in development studies.