craigduff

DOCUMENTING WAR, CONFLICT AND EBOLA International video journalist Ben Solomon covers the Middle East and Africa for The New York Times. In the past year, he has spent several weeks in Ukraine, a month in Afghanistan and covered the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone and Liberia. In this special event, he’ll share some of his evocative and emotional video work and discuss his career …

New York Times International Video Journalist Ben Solomon visits Medill November 24th Read More »

It’s been 25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. And five years ago I sat down with Anthony Suau, who photographed the events as the wall fell. We had an amazing conversation that turned into this Emmy award-winning video piece:

I’ve been reading with great interest the news coming from Nepal (Life and Death Choices in a Himalayan Blizzard) of a freak snowstorm hitting the highest pass of the Annapurna Circuit — a 21-day trek that’s quite popular among backpackers traveling in the region. The storm caught many unawares, and dozens of people were caught up …

Tragedy strikes the Thorong-La pass Read More »

Here are a few images from my brief visit in to the mausoleum in Karachi of the founding father of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

Stephen Franklin and I teamed up this summer to produce a multi-part series on gun violence in Chicago for MSNBC.com. We spent most of July and part of August exploring the areas of Chicago most affected by guns. We met the families of gun victims, paralyzed survivors of shootings, law enforcement working to curb the …

Ricochet – The reverberating effects of gun violence in Chicago Read More »

A triptych from my last night at Burning Man 2014.

It seems counter-intuitive, but what I’ve discovered since I met the very good people at the Chicago Youth Boxing Club is that teaching kids the discipline of boxing changes their attitudes about fighting. The CYBC is a scrappy non-profit, in the basement of La Villita Community Church in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood. And it’s about much …

Wait a minute, teaching kids to fight helps combat street violence? Read More »

  When my friend Carolyn suggested I join her and her family and a couple of other friends at Grand Tetons National Park to give her a proper sendoff as she takes a new job in Washington state, I started looking for a place to stay. The lodges at the park were filled up, and since …

My riverside home the past few nights Read More »

Last week, I produced this segment for MSNBC.com about Ms. Gwendolyn Baxter and the young people she works with at the Greater Roseland Community Committee’s Youth Voices Against Violence program. I witnessed one of their circles, where they open up and share about the toughest issues facing them in their neighborhoods. The topic of the day was gun …

Youth Voices Against Violence in the Roseland neighorhood of Chicago Read More »

Last week, Ira Glass, the host of This American Life on public radio, saw John Lithgow command the role of King Lear on the stage of the Delacorte Theater in New York’s Central Park. [Read portions of Lithgow’s blog on preparing for the role here.] Afterwards Glass  lauded the performance, but took a swipe at the …

I’ve seen 34 of his 37 plays: Shakespeare doesn’t suck. Read More »