On Monday evening, the International Center for Journalists introduced its new class of Knight International Journalism Fellows. The six new fellows were feted at an event at George Washington University’s Jack Morton Auditorium.
The evening also featured a screening of four documentaries produced by my workshop trainees and graduate students in Egypt last year.
The new fellows (pictured here with Knight International Journalism Fellowship Director Elisa Tinsley) will train journalists in Romania, South Africa, Liberia, Mexico and Pakistan.
One of the group, Jim Breiner, was in my Knight fellow “class” from 2006, when he spent a year in Bolivia training print journalists there. Now, he’ll head to Mexico to launch a new Digital Journalism center at the University of Guadalajara. I hope to visit and lend a hand at some point down the road. I enjoyed Guadalajara during my brief stay there last year.
Monday’s event allowed me another opportunity to see my students’ films (which we dubbed First Person Films because they focus on individual characters telling their own stories) with an audience, and, in a question and answer session afterward — where I was joined by David Irons from the American University in Cairo — I heard again how much the audience members understand and appreciate these documentaries on a surprisingly deep level.
So what’s up with the singing lung tests?
The specialist told me “I don’t think it’s pneumonia.” But I feel a lot better now, and even though my lungs still sing a bit, the rumbling orchestra is gone; the tune is now more sotto voce.