Joe Alex Morris Jr. Memorial Lecture
Due to changes in the Nieman calendar, two Morris lecturers came to Harvard in 2012 to speak about foreign reporting. In February, Ann Curry, at the time co-anchor of NBC News’ “Today” program, spoke about her many reporting trips overseas, the need to better explain and understand international affairs and the trauma associated with covering disturbing events. In November, New York Times senior writer C.J. Chivers delivered a talk on how social media has drastically changed foreign reporting, both for better and worse, and the value of established news organizations in an era of citizen journalism.
Curry has traveled around the world to report on major news developments, events of international significance and a variety of human interest stories. She also has conducted a number of exclusive interviews with world leaders and newsmakers.
Curry’s assignments have taken her to numerous conflict zones including Sudan, where she reported on the ethnic cleansing taking place in Darfur and Chad; the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where she examined the challenges facing women and children in the city of Goma; Iraq, where she covered the run-up and start of the war in Iraq in 2003; and Albania and Macedonia, where she covered the refugee crisis caused by the genocide in Kosovo in 1999.
She additionally has reported from the scene of a number of devastating natural disasters including the Japanese tsunami of 2011, the massive earthquakes in Haiti and Chile in 2010 and the widespread flooding in Pakistan the same year. She also covered the effects of the tsunami in Southeast Asia that struck in December 2004.
At
The New York Times, Chivers covers conflict, crime, the arms trade and human rights for the foreign and investigative desks and contributes to the “
At War” and “
Lens” blogs. He is a frequent contributor to Esquire and writes occasionally for other publications.
His book “The Gun,” a history of automatic arms and their influence on human security and war, was selected as a New York Times Editor’s Pick and a Best Book of 2010 by The Atlantic and The Washington Post.
From 1988 until 1994, Chivers was an infantry officer in the United States Marine Corps, who served in the Persian Gulf war and performed peacekeeping duties as a company commander during the Los Angeles riots in 1992. His military service has informed his reporting, providing a lens not shared by many of his colleagues and one that has allowed him to report on conflict from a unique perspective.
As a reporter, his work has taken him to Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Georgia, Chechnya, the Palestinian territories, Israel and Central Asia. He was Moscow correspondent for
The Times from 2004-2008.
February 2012 - Ann Curry
November 2012 - C.J. Chivers