Ten distinguished journalists and nonfiction writers have been named visiting professors in Princeton University’s Ferris Seminars in Journalism for the 2018–2019 academic year. Each of the award-winning reporters and renowned authors will come to the Humanities Council, home to the Ferris Seminars, for a full semester to teach an intensive, intimate course and contribute to the intellectual life of campus.
The visiting professors will join Ferris Professors of Journalism in Residence Joe Stephens, who spent two decades as an investigative projects reporter for The Washington Post, and John McPhee, who has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1965, in offering a record number of journalism courses next year.
The roster draws from the top tiers of public broadcasting as well as the newsrooms of The Washington Post and The New York Times. Its members include some of the best-known names in nonfiction writing, including four Pulitzer Prize winners.
The visiting professors for Fall 2018:
—Will Englund is a foreign assignment editor at The Washington Post, where he directs coverage of Russia, Eastern Europe, and East Asia. In The McGraw Seminar in Writing: Covering Hostile Governments, he will teach how reporters overcome efforts to curb independent journalism.
—Michael Calderone is a senior media reporter at Politico. He will teach about the intersection of media and politics with a focus on the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections in The Media in America: Determined Press, Skeptical Public, and the Next Presidential Race.
—Deborah Amos covers the Middle East and refugees in the U.S. as a correspondent for NPR News. Her course, International News: Migration Reporting, will focus on immigration and refugee policy and practice and include a fall-break trip to Canada.
—Kira Kay is the creator and director of the Bureau for International Reporting and a special correspondent for PBS NewsHour. Students in her course on Reporting After War will examine post-conflict nation building in Bosnia and go on a fall-break trip for in-field reporting.
—Kathleen McCleery is a special correspondent and freelance producer for PBS NewsHour. Her course on Politics and the Media: Covering the 2018 Elections will focus on media coverage of a hotly contested Congressional race and include a fall-break trip to a key state.
In Spring 2019 the Ferris Seminars in Journalism will welcome the rest of the 2018–2019 roster:
—Mike McIntire is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has been at The New York Times since 2003. Students in his “Investigative Journalism” course will master basic investigative tools and techniques in everyday reporting and major enterprise pieces.
—Stacey Vanek Smith is a correspondent for NPR’s Planet Money and a former student in the Ferris Seminars. She will teach an “Audio Journalism” course on reporting and writing for radio, producing a podcast, and how to pitch a story.
—Nick Chiles has worked as a journalist and author for more than 30 years. He will teach a course on “The Media and Social Issues” that addresses examining the other and focusing on diversity in a time when the U.S. population is undergoing demographic shifts.
—Pico Iyer has worked as a journalist for more than 200 newspapers and magazines, authored 12 books, and delivered three TED Talks. In “The Literature of Fact,” he will aspire to blend memoir, reportage, personal history, and the devices of fiction in exploring the foreign.
—Deborah Sontag is a writer and teacher whose celebrated work in journalism spans 35 years, including 25 years at The New York Times. In “The McGraw Seminar in Writing,” she will teach students how to write about immigrants and refugees.
Princeton’s journalism seminars were inaugurated in 1957 by a bequest from former New York Herald journalist Edwin F. Ferris. They have since become one of the nation’s most respected programs of journalism courses—as well as some of the University’s most highly rated courses.
