The U.S.-based Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, an award-winning non-profit dedicated to supporting independent global journalism, announced that it will take on a summer student from Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q) for a reporting fellowship.
One journalism student from NU-Q will be selected to conduct an international reporting project of his or her choice focused on a systemic issue that has been underreported in the press. Past projects have examined issues such as education in Ecuador, youth identity in the Greek debt crisis, and the human impact of climate change in Kiribati. The student will receive a $3,000 reporting grant from the Pulitzer Center and one-on-one mentoring from the center’s network of highly accomplished reporters.
"Our ongoing partnership with the respected Pulitzer Center is built on a shared belief in the power of learning outside the classroom; this is especially important in the rapidly changing field of media and communication,” said Everette E. Dennis, dean and CEO of NU-Q. “This partnership adds a new dimension to the world-class education at NU-Q, giving students more practical tools to learn to craft stories that make an impact.”
The announcement came on the heels of a four-day visit to NU-Q’s Doha campus by the Pulitzer Center’s Managing Director, Nathalie Applewhite. NU-Q is the first international university partner to join the center’s acclaimed Campus Consortium, which provides young student reporters an unparalleled opportunity to learn from the best. Last year, the center provided 21 fellowships, having worked with 500 journalists over the last decade. Grantee work has been featured in top tier publications such as the Huffington Post and Atlantic Monthly.
Speaking on the fellowship and campus visit, Applewhite said: “As the Pulitzer Center’s Campus Consortium goes global, we are proud to welcome NU-Q as our first international partner and announce the availability of this fellowship for students here. More important than the grant money are the resources of staff and expertise surrounding the student’s project. We pair up students with a mentor who has either worked in the region or specialized in the topic of the project. I was very impressed with the students at NU-Q. There is a lot of talent here and I am very much looking forward to continuing the collaboration.”
On the visit, Applewhite was joined by acclaimed journalist Caryle Murphy, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting and the George Polk Award for Foreign Reporting. Murphy has reported extensively on youth and women in the Gulf and Middle East for publications like The Washington Post and The National. Last Wednesday, she gave a rousing talk to a packed lecture hall of NU-Q students and staff on her new book, A Kingdom's Future: Saudi Arabia Through the Eyes of its Twentysomethings.
The partnership between NU-Q and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting has been ongoing for several years. In 2013, NU-Q hosted three award-winning journalists from the center for a speaker series about covering the Muslim world for international audiences. The accomplished journalists included Alia Malek, a Syrian-American and author of A Country Called Amreeka: U.S. History Retold through Arab American Lives; Ayman Oghanna, an award-winning Iraqi-British photojournalist; and Habiba Nosheen, a Pakistani-Canadian multimedia journalist whose documentary, Outlawed in Pakistan, aired on PBS Frontline earlier that year.
