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| April 2006
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INTERNATIONAL NEWS |
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| Foreign Correspondence Network Brings Alumni, Students Together Across Globe
School of Communication Professor Bill Gentile’s Foreign Correspondence course is known for making students step outside their world at AU - into other countries. Although many of his students’ first forays into working as journalists abroad come in the form of corresponding via e-mail with AU alumni working overseas, more than a few have left his course for the very positions they sought to learn more about as class projects. Upon graduation, one of Gentile's students got a job at the Kyodo News Service, the most important of Japan's international wire services. Another spent three months embedded as a photojournalist with the U.S. Marines in Iraq, and his work is now being prepared for exhibit to promote the construction of a national monument to handicapped American service persons. A third student went to Pakistan last year and did a documentary on Afghan children that was very well received. Gentile began his career in 1977 as a reporter for Mexico City News in 1977 and as a correspondent/photojournalist for United Press International (UPI) in Mexico City. He worked at UPI’s foreign desk in New York, as a contract photographer for Latin America and the Caribbean for Newsweek, and covered the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua, winning the Overseas Press Club Award for Excellence for his book of photographs, “ Nicaragua.” He has also covered the U.S.-backed Contra War in Nicaragua, the Salvadoran Civil War in the 1980s, the U.S. Invasion of Panama, the 1994 invasion of Haiti, and the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War. He shares two Emmy awards. When he came to AU from Kent State University in 2003, he brought with him the Foreign Correspondence course he had created in Ohio hoping to “replant” it. “Frankly there’s no better place in the country to have a foreign correspondence course than here at American,” says Gentile. “One, because it is in Washington, and two, because of the terrific international community that goes to school here and the people we have teaching here in SIS and the School of Communication.” Not long after he got settled in at SOC, Gentile got the sense that AU’s diverse and dynamic alumni were not being fully utilized. After sending an e-mail query to all the alumni AU had e-mail addresses for, however, he quickly discovered “that AU has an extraordinary group of alumni living all over the world who are very, very disposed to helping American University students.” To date, more than 50 alumni from 30 countries – most living abroad, though some stateside who have lived and worked abroad in the past and still want to share their rich experiences – have contacted Gentile to help students learn more about what it takes to become a foreign correspondent. Here’s a sampling of some of the alumni who've offered to help in response to his request:
Andrea Shalal-Eas, SIS/BA ’86 , was so excited about Gentile’s program that she came to campus to talk to his Foreign Correspondence class. A correspondent for Reuter’s, she lives in the Washington, D.C., area now, but she spent several years living and working in Germany, covering events such as the Berlin Wall falling, unification, and the economic ramifications for Germany. Now, she covers defense contractors, the Pentagon, and Capitol Hill. “Working with young journalists is very important to me,” says Shalal-Eas. “I received a great deal of help from older journalists when I was getting started, and it showed me the importance of mentoring and support. I really enjoyed meeting the students in Professor Gentile's class. They asked wonderful, challenging questions, and we had a terrific conversation that went far beyond the original topic of business journalism.” Gentile had no idea he would get so many enthusiastic responses from alumni, but now that he sees the potential, his objective is to make SOC the place to learn about foreign correspondence. “I think we can do it. There’s very little contemporary information that’s really accurate, non-Hollywoodish information about how foreign correspondents work,” says Gentile. To that end, he has created a Web site, foreigncorrespondence.org, where the fruits of his labor – and that of some students – is posted for all to see. The site includes original student articles, photographs, and video, as well as items from an array of sources that help students do their jobs, according to Gentile. One student has even added some short clips from a film Gentile shot last summer in Afghanistan. The film’s topic: foreign correspondents. “I spent time hanging out with the New York Times, Washington Post, and BBC correspondents and came back with a documentary that just premiered at the Reel Journalism film festival,” says Gentile. Clips and reviews from “Dateline Afghanistan: Reporting The Forgotten War” as well as student film clips are on the site, which he invites readers to browse. -Tara Shlimowitz ’08 and Melissa Reichley
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