Past Fellows
Spring 2011 Fellows
Bob Calo is a Senior Lecturer at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley. He co-directs the video storytelling and reporting program there and is currently the executive editor of Richmond Confidential, one of three hyper-local news sites run by the school. In the 20 years before joining the faculty at Berkeley in 2001, Calo was a broadcast producer for NBC News in New York, a producer for the ABC News program Prime Time Live and a news and documentary producer at KQED-TV in San Francisco. In 2008, while on leave from Berkeley, he served as national coordinator for News21, the 12-university collaboration for innovative digital journalism sponsored by the Knight Foundation and Carnegie Corporation. He is currently the senior producer for Sound Tracks, a PBS series in development about the intersection of music, culture and politics. His project at the Shorenstein Center will look at cultural, political and demographic roots of audience disengagement and mistrust. Paper PDF
Alexis Gelber is a Goldsmith Fellow at the Shorenstein Center. She is a former editor of Newsweek, and supervised award-winning coverage of politics, social issues and international news as the magazine’s national affairs editor, assistant managing editor and the managing editor of Newsweek International. As Director of Special Projects from 2001 to 2008, she created special issues and new entrepreneurial projects. In 2004 and 2008 Gelber edited Newsweek’s special presidential election project, behind-the-scenes accounts of the election campaigns. Both projects were published as books by Public Affairs, and the 2004 project won a National Magazine Award. In 2009, Gelber served as the founding books editor of The Daily Beast. She is an editorial consultant based in Washington, DC and New York, where she is an adjunct professor at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. Gelber is a former president of the Overseas Press Club of America. She is a graduate of Barnard College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where she is Chair of the school’s Alumni Board. Her research will focus on women politicians in the new media age of social networking and cable TV. Paper PDF
Wajahat S. Khan is a broadcast and online journalist who has produced and anchored for Pakistan’s primary networks: Geo, Dawn and Aaj TV. Khan has also written and edited for Pakistani dailies Dawn and Express Tribune and the periodicals Newsweek Pakistan and The Herald. He was embedded with Pakistan’s ground-forces along some of the world’s most isolated and militarized borders investigating the tactical, operational and strategic postures of the Pakistani military, and was the first broadcaster from Pakistan to produce an investigative series from across the “divide” in India. He has helped pioneer the use of Facebook and Twitter in Pakistani television broadcasts. Wajahat Khan graduated from the University of Michigan in 2002 and covered the initial phase of the war in Afghanistan for The Michigan Daily newspaper. At the Shorenstein Center, he is researching and writing a paper called An Anti Social Social Media where he is investigating the role of right-wing thinkers and organizations, along with Pakistan’s military intelligence apparatus and jihadist groups, in shaping the discourse on the country’s social networks. Paper PDF
Neil Lewis is a Goldsmith Fellow at the Shorenstein Center. He was a correspondent with The New York Times from 1985 until his retirement in 2009. He has covered the Justice Department, the State Department and a variety of other assignments, including presidential campaigns, Supreme Court nomination battles and Guantanamo. Before joining The Times, he worked for Reuters news agency in Washington, London and Johannesburg. He was Reuters’ White House correspondent and served as senior correspondent in South Africa in the early 1980’s. His work has appeared in several magazines including The New Republic, Washington Monthly, Rolling Stone and The New York Times Book Review. Born and educated in New York City, Mr. Lewis holds degrees from Union College and Yale Law School. He is co-author of the book, Betrayal: The Story of Aldrich Ames, an American Spy. Mr. Lewis was most recently a general assignment and investigative correspondent in the Washington bureau of The Times. Mr. Lewis, who was vice chair of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, teaches media law at Duke Law School. His research will focus on the American Jewish community and Israel, exploring lobbies, loyalties and their influence on the press. Paper PDF
Sandy Rowe is the Knight Fellow at the Shorenstein Center. She was editor of The Oregonian in Portland from 1993 until January 2010. Under her leadership, the newspaper won five Pulitzer Prizes including the Gold Medal for Public Service. The National Press Foundation named Rowe the Editor of the Year in 2003. In 2008, Editor & Publisher magazine named her Editor of the Year. In 2010, the American Society of Newspaper Editors awarded Rowe its National Leadership Award. Rowe chairs the Board of Visitors of The Knight Fellowships at Stanford University and is a board member of the Committee to Protect Journalists based in New York. She is a member of Willamette University’s Board of Trustees and a member of the Medill School of Journalism Board of Visitors at Northwestern University. Rowe served on the Pulitzer Prize Board from 1994–2003 and was its chair in 2002–2003. She is a past president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. From 1984 until April 1993, Rowe was executive editor and vice president of The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star, Norfolk and Virginia Beach, Virginia. The Virginian-Pilot won the Pulitzer Prize for general news reporting, its first in 25 years, under her leadership. She is researching the local case for partnerships and collaboration in investigative reporting. Rowe’s year-long fellowship is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Paper PDF
