CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (March 8, 2005) — Charlayne Hunter-Gault, CNN’s Johannesburg bureau chief and correspondent, is the 24th Joe Alex Morris Jr. Memorial Lecturer at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism.
The lecture honors the foreign correspondent of the Los Angeles Times who was killed in February 1979 while covering the Iranian Revolution in Tehran. The lectureship was created in 1981 by Morris’ family, Harvard classmates and friends and is awarded annually by the Nieman Foundation.
Hunter-Gault joined CNN in April 1999 from National Public Radio, where she worked as the network’s chief correspondent in Africa. She came to NPR in 1997 after 20 years with PBS, where she was a national correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. During this time she also anchored the award-winning Rights and Wrongs, a television news magazine on human rights.
She began her career as a reporter for The New Yorker then worked as a local news anchor for WRC-TV in Washington, D.C. Hunter-Gault also worked for The New York Times for 10 years, including two years as the newspaper’s Harlem bureau chief.
Her numerous honors include two Emmy Awards and two Peabody Awards, one for her work on “Apartheid’s People,” a NewsHour series on life during apartheid in South Africa, and the second for general reporting on Africa in 1998. Hunter-Gault also is the author of In My Place, a memoir of her role in the civil-rights movement as the first black woman admitted to the University of Georgia.
The Nieman Foundation administers the nation’s oldest midcareer fellowship program for journalists. Each year 12 American and 12 international journalists come to Harvard University for a year of academic study. Since 1938, more than 1,100 men and women from the United States and 77 other nations have studied at Harvard as part of the fellowship program.
In addition to the fellowships, the Nieman Foundation publishes Nieman Reports, the oldest U.S. magazine devoted to a critical examination of the practice of journalism. The foundation also is the home of the Nieman Program on Narrative Journalism and the Nieman Watchdog Journalism Project to encourage reporters and editors to monitor and hold accountable those who exert power in all aspects of public life.
Previous Joe Alex Morris Jr. Memorial Lecturers
2004: Anthony Shadid, The Washington Post
2003: Chris Hedges, The New York Times
2002: Anne Garrels, National Public Radio
2001: Roger Cohen, The New York Times
2000: Jane Pelez, The New York Times
1999: Eason Jordan, CNN
1998: Michael Skoler, National Public Radio
1997: Ann Cooper, National Public Radio
1996: Thomas Friedman, The New York Times
1995: Jim Wooten, ABC News
1994: Deborah Amos, ABC News and National Public Radio
1993: R.W. Apple Jr., The New York Times
1992: Peter Arnett, CNN
1991: Leslie Gelb, The New York Times
1990: Jonathan Randal, The Washington Post
1989: Nicholas Daniloff, U.S. News & World Report
1988: Harrison Salisbury, The New York Times
1987: Stanley Karnow, King Features Syndicate columnist
1986: Peter Jennings, ABC News
1985: Jack Foisie, Los Angeles Times
1984: Eric Sevareid, CBS News
1983: Norman Kempster, Los Angeles Times
1982: Flora Lewis, The New York Times