With the job market looking up for 2012 grads–especially in health care and communications fields,  according to   the National Association of Colleges and Employers  and  Reuters– I was very pleased to join Stephen Smith of the Boston Globe and Lara Salahi  of ABC News in speaking to Emerson College students about careers in health communications.

Our panel, on April 5 was one in a series comprising Emerson’s “Communications Week.”  It was moderated by Bridgette Collado, who teaches at Emerson.

Stephen Smith,  now the Globe’s City Editor,   traced  his career as a health reporter from his early days  at the Miami Herald through his many years at the Globe--describing a drive to tell the stories of individuals  in order to bring their plight to public attention.  He pointed out that while in Massachusetts, most people have access to health care,  in other parts of the US, this is not the case.  He also described his coverage of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, focusing on the story of Reginette Cineliene  , a 14-year old  girl who lost her father, a sister, her home and a leg, spent a year living in a tent encampment, was often hungry, yet still managed to study with the goal of one day becoming a doctor.  Smith said he found Reginette  inspirational–and that he was pleased that his reporting had led readers to  provide Reginette’s remaining family with money to rent a home and pay for an artificial limb.

Lara Salahi, an ABC News  health producer, emphasized  the importance of  telling the stories of “real” people-as opposed to focusing on reports by experts. She used three brief slide/video shows to illustrate the hope and difficulties autism brings to families. One featured a young man who had wanted to be a doctor but, instead, went into radiation diagnostics; a second a  husband and wife who are raising three autistic daughters;  and the third  parents of an autistic son who died young of a seizure disorder.

Anita Harris
I described my career as somewhat unusual–mainly driven by the vagaries of the economy. I became a journalist by starting  a newspaper with college friends; worked in print, radio and television in New York City,  taught college, and went into public affairs when my college downsized.  I emphasized that with economic and technologic changes, versatility is key; it’s important to have  skills in all media, enjoy change, and if you’re going to do work independently you have to like to  market yourself.

I also outlined the broad changes I’ve  noticed.  When I started out in,  print and broadcast journalism operated in separate silos and major  news organizations had tremendous power to control and shape the information reaching the public.  Today, increasingly, we are experiencing a convergence of media, in which news organizations are employing multiple media to reach their readers–and no longer monopolize the flow of information.  The results are both positive and negative.

Convergence of media
For example, the  Globe,  previously print only, now has online version that includes video reports.  Reporters for public radio are asked to blog and carry cameras; many reporters and editors are using social media–all of which have the potential to inform the public  in a variety of ways.  However, with staff cutbacks, many journalists are working harder now than in the past;   I’m concerned that  covering stories in multiple  media could diminish the number and depth of stories on which they report.

Dissipation of control
I think  it’s great that  anyone with access to a computer can provide information to the world.  But without vetting by bona fide, trained journalists,   this democratization makes it difficult to know where information is coming from, how good it is, and, to play on words, where the truth lies– presenting special difficulties for health communicators.

—-Anita M. Harris
Anita Harris is a writer and content strategist in Cambridge, MA.

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA.

It’s not that often that a nationally-known journalists public admit to suffering from  post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but last week at Harvard’s Nieman Foundation, Today Show Co-Anchor Ann Curry  did exactly that.

In delivering the Joe Alex Morris Jr. Memorial Lecture on foreign report,  Curry described both the importance and trauma of foreign reporting–saying that while she and her crew sometimes wonder if  their coverage of wars and international disasters make a difference, she believes that by calling attention to wrongdoing and suffering,  journalists do help make the world  more empathic place.

In the lecture, Curry, who has made 72 reporting trips to 48 countries since 2000,  told an audience of journalists that that  any correspondent covering such areas who says s/he  doesn’t have PTSD} ” is either lying or doesn’t realize it.”   For journalists, the disorder is often first evidenced “when you don’t care,” any more.  Signs  and symptoms include emotional rigidness, avoidance, and an uncharacteristic lack of empathy, Curry said.

Curry and her team members “talk things out” when they’re experiencing  those signs and some undergo counseling, she said.   As a foreign reporter, “You need to be an emotional athlete to deal with trauma, with emotions…to see past the differences in languages, to look at people as if they’re your own mother, brother, sister, your own child. When you don’t do that, you’re not effective as a reporter, you appear elitistist…It’s  crucial that you care, that you try to understand the experience and point of view of the people you are writing about, she said.  ” Because if you don’t care, your viewers won’t care, either.

“When my team gathers, we often ask ourselves, why are we doing  this,” Curry said.  ”They can’t pay you enough to take the physical and emotional risk this requires.”  Not only are crews frequently threatened with violence, but “you’re leaving your family; there’s the maddening reality that it’s a battle [with news organization]  to get there. But there’s the sense of mission, the hope that some good will come of what you do. It’s an act of faith in the future.”

Curry said that she has a mission “to report on stories no one cares about”  sand asked, “If more reporters had paid attention to what the Nazis were doing in 1941, would so many people have died?”

In answer to a question posed for former Nieman Curator Robert Giles, Curry  said that in the current economic downturn, the US audience is less interested in foreign coverage than it had previously been–and that with cutbacks in news organizations, it’s more difficult now to convince news directors to send teams abroad.  Where once NBC had crews on the ground in many places,  she said, “now we travel  abroad from here.” But despite the difficulties, she will continue to cover difficult stories–in part because, if she and others don’t, aid organizations will not receive funding donations from the American public.

Curry brought tears to my eyes when she described  a 16-year-old Congolese girl who saw her parents killed, was chained to a tree,  raped, and when she couldn’t walk, was left for dead. Men from her village carried  her to a hospital. She was pregnant, and the baby died.   Two years later, in  2008,  when Curry interviewed her in an operating room and touched her hand; the young girl said she didn’t want revenge. “Instead she said ‘All I want is to rise out of this bed and thank the people who saved me and cared for me. I want to praise God, and I want to feel a mother’s love again.’

“Now, the cause of women in the Congo has been taken up by people in the US; there are  4K races to protect people from the violence,” Curry said. “As a reporter, you want to feel that some good has become of what you’ve done.”

But, she pointed out, wars and violence do not end.

In another village, in the Sudan, Curry said, men strafed a village, then lit arrows on fire and shot them at thatched roofs. When people ran out of their burning homes, the men shot at them,  shouting epithets.  Curry said she interviewed one woman– a mother– and her children. “She was just one of tens of thousands…

“After five trips to Sudan, ” she added, “I do sometimes wonder whether any of this works makes that much difference to people back on the ground. Sudan is the new Darfur, she said. People are living and dying in displaced person’s camps…”

Rather than become discouraged, Curry said,  ”We need to step back and look at the value of reporting with a wide view, through the scope of human history.  And you can’t help but realize that human empathy is growing.

“Where once, rape was a fact of war,  rape is now an international war crime.  The idea that it is wrong is wildfire. Information, truth,  lit this match, igniting wildfires across the world.

“I have no doubt that we’re evolving into a world of greater empathy.  If you can work through the PTSD, if you can raise your sword and report these stories,  you allow truth between nations and I encourage you to lift your sword.”

After the talk, the ever-versatile and inspiring Curry, who had donated her $1000 honorarium to Doctors Without Borders in Somalia, left –wearing the highest pair of heels I’ve ever seen–for a flight to Indianapolis, to cover the Superbowl.

Anita M. Harris

Anita Harris, a former national journalist, is president of the Harris Communications Group, a strategic communications firm in Cambridge, MA. \

The Morris Lecture honors Los Angeles Times foreign correspondent Joe Alex Morris, Jr., who covered the Middle East for 25 years before he was killed during the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Two years later his family, friends and colleagues founded the annual lecture by an American foreign correspondent or commentator.

Cambridge, MA, June 9, 2011— Students at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. School and Amigos School will donate disaster relief funds to the people of Japan in a special presentation to the Deputy Consulate General of Japan.  The event will take place in the King/Amigos school auditorium on June 15, 1:25-2:00pm.

Students and families at the two schools have been raising money and awareness since the earthquake and related disasters struck Japan on March 11. To express hope for the Japanese people, students have folded origami cranes and created Japanese-inspired artwork to present along with their monetary donations.

The two schools have a special connection to Asian cultures and peoples through their Mandarin Chinese language programs. Families at the two schools with friends and family in Japan have helped out with the effort, including connecting with the Japanese Consulate General to put the monetary donations to the best use to help the Japanese people.

King School Chinese Immersion Coordinator Vivian Tam explains, “Our schools’ global perspectives have brought many innovative learning opportunities to the students.  Through our school-wide Mandarin Chinese programs, students are immersed in the languages and cultures of Asian countries.  Students have raised funds for the Sichuan Earthquake disaster relief in 2009 and when the earthquake and nuclear exposure happened in Japan, our students decided to reach out.”

Contact:

Vivian Tam, Chinese Immersion Program Coordinator

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. School www.cpsd.us/mlk

Tel: 617.599-7258, E-mail: vtam@cpsd.us,

 More than 1000 people turned out to see the long-awaited (more than 200 years),  long-dreaded ( by the Harvard News Office) grazing of a cow on Harvard Yard.

The event was carried out in celebration of the retirement  Harvey Cox, who is  Harvard’s 9th  Hollis Research Professor of Divinity, and of the publication of  Cox’s new book on faith. 

The right to graze a cow in the yard was granted with the establishment of the Hollis Chair  in 1721 by university donor Thomas  Hollis, a wealthy London merchant who was a Baptist, like Cox, but never set foot in the  Yard.  The first Hollis professor and his son  evidently graze  cows there–but according to the Rev. Peter Gomes, Cox is the first since then to exercize the right–which  Gomes said was akin to being given a parking space in Harvard Square, today.

The cow, borrowed for the day from the Farm School in Athol, MA, was named “Pride” –which Cox said presented difficulties because he’s a professor of religion and pride is one of the seven deadly sins. The Farm School thus allowed Cox to temporarily change the cow’s name to “Faith,” which is apt because Cox’s new book is called  The Future of Faith.

However, after one of Cox’s friends pointed out that Harvard does not consider pride a sin, Cox decided to call the cow “Pride Faith”.  In his talk, Cox brought up the importance of treating the Earth and all of its beings with respect.

Somewhere in there, a man in a long black robe and shiny gold running shoes delivered an oration in Latin (all I could understand were the occasional “moos,”) which drew laughs from the erudite crowd–or perhaps from those with translations in hand.  

After the talks, Cox, Faith Pride, Gomes and hundreds of other people followed a  band of tuba players–whose repertoire consisted mainly of  “Old Macdonald Had a Farm” — across the stair landing of Memorial Church and the Cambridge St. overpass and through the campus to the Divinity School. 

 There,  the crowd grazed on sandwiches, punch, and cake, and the cow on a bale of hay. More speeches were followed by music played by “The Soft Touch Dance Band,” with which Cox plays the saxophone.

When I asked Cox if the event had gone as he had hoped, he responded, “Better!”  

I’m sure the News Office, which feared that bringing in livestock would make Harvard a laughingstock , is glad it’s over. 

In case you can’t tell, it was the most fun I’ve had in a long time; I’m glad I had a chance to be a part of it.

 Anita M. Harris

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA.  We also publish the HarrisCom blog.