Network Voices

Colombia is one of the most dangerous beats in the world. In 2000 and 2001 alone, six reporters were killed there because of their work. In this dangerous environment, Maria Cristina Caballero developed into one of her country's toughest and most respected investigative journalists. She left Colombia in 1999 after receiving death threats. Currently a Mason Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School at Harvard University, Caballero writes frequently about the political situation in Colombia for U.S. publications. (March 2002)

Narda Zacchino, assistant executive editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, became a journalist in the 6th grade when she started a school newspaper. She got her first paying job in college as a copy editor for a group of weekly newspapers in San Diego. Zacchino rose from reporter to masthead editor during more than 30 years at the Los Angeles Times. (September 2002)

Akwe Amosu is executive editor/producer for AllAfrica Global Media and its website, allAfrica.com. She has worked in the print and broadcast media as an editor and reporter. Before taking her current job, she worked for the BBC World Service in London. (September 2002)

Aferdita Kelmendi, a 1999 winner of the IWMF's Courage in Journalism Award, is the director of Radio/TV 21, which broadcasts 24 hours a day from Pristina, Kosovo. She spoke with the IWMF about what she has been doing since she won the award and how she has incorporated conflict resolution techniques into her interviewing style.

Indian journalist Ammu Joseph discusses the state of journalism and press freedom in India as well as her recent visit to New York, where she attended a meeting of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women.

Gbemisola Olujobi, editor of the Living Section at The Guardian in Lagos, Nigeria and Diana Zulu, an editor at the Zambian Daily Mail in Lusaka, Zambia are the recipients of the first IWMF fellowship for international women journalists.

They began their fellowships in mid-April and will be in the United States until the end of June. Olujobi will be reporting on women’s issues at the San Francisco Chronicle and Zulu will focus on health issues at The Boston Herald. Both spoke with the IWMF about women in journalism and the state of press freedom in their countries.article: in the San Francisco Chronicle

At the end of Judy Woodruff’s successful interview for a job as secretary to the news director at WQKI, the ABC affiliate in Atlanta, the news director said to the recent college graduate: “How could I not hire someone with legs like yours?” She says she faced “the typical discrimination that women have faced over the years,” which she combated by “working hard and proving that I could do it.” (September 2002)

A native of Argentina, Liza Gross got her first full-time job in the media as editor of the Latin America Desk of The Associated Press in New York.

Now the executive managing editor of El Nuevo Dia in Puerto Rico, Gross was publisher of Exito, the Spanish-language daily of the Chicago Tribune for four-and-a-half years. She says she could “fill a book” with roadblocks she has faced as a woman in her career. (September 2002)

In her first job as a radio broadcaster in Chicago, Carole Simpson covered the civil rights movement and Dr. Martin Luther King’s non-violent campaign in the North, and the Chicago Seven Conspiracy Trial, two huge national stories in the U.S.

Today, Simpson makes it a priority to “mentor as many young people of color and as many women as I can, because I know how it might have helped me had I had a mentor.” (September 2002)

Souhila Hammadi is a reporter with El Watan, a national newspaper in Algeria. She spoke with the IWMF while in the United States with the Freedom House Visiting Fellows Program observing how U.S. journalists cover politics.

Sandra Nyaira is a 2002 winner of the IWMF’s Courage in Journalism Award. The former political editor at The Daily News in Zimbabwe, she is pursuing a master’s degree in international journalism at the City University of London. She spoke with the IWMF about the challenges facing women journalists in Zimbabwe.