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Professor Pete Johnston to Retire; Anya Schiffrin Appointed Acting Director of IMC
Dear IMC Faculty and Students:
As you already are aware, Professor Pete Johnston has announced that he is retiring at the end of this academic year. I already have conveyed to Professor Johnston my deep gratitude for his nearly 20 years of exemplary service as founding Director of the International Media and Communications Concentration at SIPA. SIPA is planning a celebration in his honor this spring to thank him for the extraordinary contributions to the education and careers of hundreds of SIPA graduates. (I am also pleased that Professor Johnston will teach his writing course this coming fall, since many of this year’s entering class did not get an opportunity to study with him.)
In order to ensure a smooth transition, I have appointed Anya Schiffrin as the Acting Director of IMC for the 2008-2009 academic year. Professor Schiffrin has held a part-time appointment at SIPA since 2003-2004, during which time she taught IMC courses and worked closely with Professor Johnston as IMC co-director. She will assume a full-time role at IMC in 2008-2009. I am confident that she will be an excellent Acting Director for IMC (see her brief profile below). She has extensive international experience as a journalist and possesses a wide-ranging network of friends and colleagues in the media, academia, foundations and the public and private sectors. Many students already have benefited from the internships and employment opportunities that she has helped them to take up, as well as the new courses that she has encouraged in such areas as new media and advocacy. She also has close working relationships with the leadership of Columbia’s Journalism School, and–most importantly–great enthusiasm for building on the current strengths of IMC.
It will fall to the new, permanent SIPA Dean to appoint a permanent director for IMC. Meanwhile, a faculty Curriculum Review Committee is conducting a comprehensive review of SIPA’s curriculum this year in order to identify potential improvements in SIPA’s MIA and MPA programs. I have begun consultations about the curriculum with faculty and student leaders, and I look forward to consulting with members of the IMC community during the coming months.
Once again, I salute Professor Johnston for his extraordinary success in building the IMC concentration and promoting the careers of so many SIPA graduates.
Sincerely,
John H. Coatsworth
Anya Schiffrin spent 10 years working overseas as a journalist in Europe and Asia, writing for a number of different magazines and newspapers. She was bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswires in Amsterdam and Hanoi and wrote regularly for the Wall Street Journal. She was a Knight-Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in 1999-2000 and then a senior writer at the Industry Standard, covering banking and finance. She writes a monthly column for the Japanese business magazine Toyo Keizai.
Since 2003-2004, she has held a part-time position at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, teaching and serving as co-director of the International Media Concentration. She also directs the journalism training programs of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD), a global economic think-tank based at Columbia. The IPD journalism training program has received support from Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Ford Foundation, and the Open Society Institute. She was the founder of the website www.journalismtraining.net which provides training materials for journalists.
Schiffrin organizes seminars around the world to strengthen the capacity of journalists in developing countries to cover finance and economics. She has taught in Azerbaijan, China, Indonesia, Moldova, Mongolia, Nigeria, Kazakhstan, South Africa and Vietnam. She is a regular lecturer at the International Institute for Journalism in Berlin. Five years ago, Schiffrin launched, in collaboration with Columbia’s Journalism School, an annual seminar for journalists on “Covering Globalization”. The seminar, which has been supported by The New York Times Foundation, attracts journalists from around the world, as well as students from SIPA and the Journalism School.
Schiffrin has edited three textbooks and manuals for journalists: Covering Globalization: A Handbook for Reporters (Columbia University Press, 2004); Covering Oil: A Reporter’s Guide to Energy and Development (2005); Covering Labor: A Reporter’s Guide to Worker’s Rights in a Global Economy (2006). She also is the co-author of Business and Economic Reporting: Covering Companies, Financial Markets and the Broader Economy, which was published in 2005 by the Washington, DC-based International Center for Journalists. Her new textbook on business reporting, written with a former editor of The Financial Times, was published in China earlier this year. Her other publications/writings have been translated into French, Spanish, Bahasa, Mongolian and other languages.
She currently serves on the Advisory Board of Revenue Watch, an international NGO which seeks to ensure that developing countries receive the full benefit of their natural resources, and that the revenues generated are used, in an open and transparent way, to promote development.