Past Fellows and Visiting Faculty
Fall 2009 Fellows
John G. Geer is a Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. He earned his Ph.D. in 1986 from Princeton University and his B.A. from Franklin and Marshall College, with Phi Beta Kappa honors in 1980. Geer has published five books and over 25 articles on presidential politics and elections, and recently served as editor of The Journal of Politics. His book In Defense of Negativity: Attack Ads in Presidential Campaigns won the 2008 Goldsmith Book Award. He has appeared on FOX, CNN, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, ABC and NPR, and has also written op-ed pieces for Politico, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today and Chicago Tribune. Geer will look at the news media’s coverage of attack advertising and what role this coverage may have in the recent increase in negativity in political campaigns. Paper PDF
Loen Kelley is the producer of “Justice,” the first Harvard University lecture series offered to the public, both online and on the air. Twelve one-hour episodes will be broadcast in the fall of 2009 on PBS. Previously, Kelley had a 14-year career at CBS News where she covered high-profile criminal trials, Colombia’s war on drugs and the 1997 handover of Hong Kong. During her 20 years in television with CBS, CNN, CNBC and WGBH, she developed two new television series and produced long-form documentaries, live daily business news, celebrity interviews, reality shows and breaking news events. In 2001 she received the Edward R. Murrow Award for best news documentary. Her research at the Shorenstein Center will focus on the evolving roles of television reporters as they adapt to the world of new media. Paper PDF
Bill Mitchell, the Shorenstein Center’s Sagan Fellow, is a member of the faculty at the Poynter Institute, where he leads a new program exploring emerging economic models for news. He writes the NewsPay blog for Poynter Online. Mitchell, who also heads Poynter’s international programs, joined the Institute in 1999 to direct the school’s website, a resource for journalists around the world. His Poynter teaching has included seminars in ethics, leadership and new media development in South Africa and in Poland. Before joining Poynter, Mitchell worked as director of electronic publishing for the San Jose Mercury News, as Detroit bureau chief for Time magazine and in various reporting and editing roles for the Detroit Free Press, including city hall bureau chief, Washington correspondent and European correspondent. At the Shorenstein Center, he will examine frameworks for sustaining news in the public interest. Paper PDF
Stephen Williams, the Shorenstein Center’s Goldsmith Fellow, is executive editor for the BBC’s global channels in the Asia Pacific region, which extends from Iran through Central Asia to Afghanistan, China and Vietnam. He oversaw the launch in early 2009 of the internationally acclaimed BBC Persian TV, and he was the senior editor at BBC World TV. He was the BBC’s producer in East Berlin before and during the fall of the Wall. He went on to be an overseas producer. His journalistic career began in South Wales in a newspaper group as a reporter. Williams moved to the role of regional radio news and sports reporter/anchor and finally to BBC television news headquarters in London in 1988. He is the senior executive overseeing the new TV channel, ten radio channels and all their associated websites. At the Shorenstein Center, his research will focus on the media’s impact on foreign policy. Paper PDF
Fall 2009 Visiting Faculty
Daniel Okrent is the Visiting Murrow Lecturer on the Practice of Press and Public Policy. Before his appointment as the first public editor of The New York Times in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal, he was editor-at-large at Time Inc.; editor of new media for all Time Inc. publications; and managing editor of Life magazine. Okrent was the first Hearst Foundation Fellow in New Media at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and was a Shorenstein Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School in 2006. His six books include Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center, which was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in history, and Public Editor #1, an annotated collection of his Times columns. His forthcoming Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition will be published in 2010. He will be teaching “Writing and Reporting on Politics and Policy.”
