The Program in Journalism at Princeton University is delighted to announce the latest slate of innovative and distinguished journalists chosen to serve as visiting professors in its acclaimed writing seminars. The reporters and authors will each teach an intensive course within the Humanities Council, academic home to the program, during the 2021-22 academic year.
The visiting faculty will join the program’s Ferris Professors of Journalism in Residence: Joe Stephens, founding director of the program and veteran investigative projects reporter; John McPhee, staff writer for The New Yorker and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of more than 30 books; and Deborah Amos, international correspondent for National Public Radio.
“At a time of epic change, we are thrilled to welcome some of the world’s leading journalists to campus to help our students and faculty envision a path forward,” Stephens said. “These intrepid diggers and master storytellers will inspire our students, enrich our community and further a long tradition of exemplary journalism at Princeton.”
Journalism’s incoming visiting professors:
— Razia Iqbal is an anchor of Newshour on the BBC World Service and has been a journalist at the BBC for the last three decades. In Spring 2022 she will teach an international news seminar that explores how a single event – 9/11 – caused a paradigm shift in both global affairs and journalism, and how it continues to challenge the fourth estate.
— Terence Samuel is managing editor for news at National Public Radio, responsible for managing the daily news gathering of all NPR shows, platforms and news products. His Fall 2021 course on politics and the media will focus on the political profile as a means of capturing how individuals fit into, and shape, the broader political landscape.
— Barbara Demick is a longtime foreign correspondent and an award-winning author of three books. In Spring 2022 she will teach the program’s McGraw Seminar in Writing on covering repressive regimes as authoritarianism is on the rise globally. Students will learn how to gather reliable information in countries that restrict press freedom.
— Michael Calderone is a media analyst and senior editor at Vanity Fair’s Hive, a news site about politics, media and technology. His Spring 2022 course – about how journalists work to hold the powerful accountable in government, business and entertainment – will aim to understand the role of newsrooms in a time of public distrust.
— Helen Thorpe is a journalist and an award-winning author of books of narrative non-fiction. In Fall 2021 she will teach a seminar on creative non-fiction that examines how vast differences in power, income and social status are addressed in literary masterpieces, and to what extent it is possible for writers to understand their subjects’ struggles.
The seminars taught by visiting professors will complement those led by the program’s in-residence professors. In the fall, Stephens will teach Investigative Journalism: Accountability Reporting, while Amos will offer International News: Migration Reporting. In the spring, Stephens will teach his course about media literacy in the digital age.
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, offering some of the University’s most highly rated classes. Gifts from other generous alumni and their families have expanded the program’s offerings.
