Speaking about peaks of human experiences. Yes, friends I was chosen as one of the participants of the Spring 2007 Jefferson Fellowship by the East West Center, University of Hawaii. We will be spending a week at the East-West Center in Hawaii, then another week at the Silicon Valley after which we will fly to China (Shanghai and Beijing) and India (Bangalore and Chennai). All the participants of that program are listed alphabetically below.
The Jefferson Fellows
Spring 2007
April 29–May 26
Norman Bell
Editor, Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal
San Jose, California, USA
Norman Bell is editor of the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal, a weekly newspaper serving the business community in and around America’s 10th largest city. The newspaper, read by decision makers in Silicon Valley, has a news staff of 14 and a circulation of about 12,000.
Prior to joining the Business Journal in 2004, Mr. Bell had a lengthy career in managing daily newspapers, serving as the top editor at the News-Tribune in Tacoma, WA, (1986–91) and the Trentonian in Trenton, NJ, (1999) and as managing editor of the Albuquerque Tribune (1981–85) and the five-paper ANG group based in Oakland, CA, (2000–2004). He also has served as assistant managing editor at the Press-Enterprise in Riverside, CA, and Citizen-Journal in Columbus, Ohio, and metro editor at the Detroit News. For three years (1992–94), he taught journalism as the McMahan Centennial Professor of News Communication at the University of Oklahoma.
His newspapers have won a variety of awards including Casey medals, Associated Press Managing Editors public service honors and a James Madison award from SPJ for efforts on behalf of open records. A project of his design on euthanasia legislation was a Pulitzer finalist. He served two terms as president of the New Mexico Associated Press Managing Editors group.
Mr. Bell holds a master’s degree in American studies from Union University in Schenectady, NY, and a bachelor of commerce degree from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He also has attended professional programs at the American Press Institute and the Poynter Institute.
Chen Pi-Fen
Senior Reporter, Commercial Times
Taipei, Taiwan
Chen Pi-Fen, also known as Cristina, has been working as a journalist with the Commercial Times for fourteen years. The Commercial Times Co., Ltd., established in 1978, is a major member of the China Times Inc., Ltd., one of the largest domestic news groups in Taiwan. The Commercial Times is a Chinese language business daily widely read and respected by Taiwan’s investors and entrepreneurs as a professional source of financial news and market analysis.
Starting as a general reporter, Ms. Chen quickly worked her way up to become a first tier reporter and team leader in daily news. She currently serves as Section Convener of the Banking and Finance News Department and coordinator in different sections with the editorial desk. She has covered economic issues and events throughout Asia and continues to observe macroeconomic change, technology development, industry supply chains, government policies, and the Asian regional market.
She won the Pan-Asian Journalism Award of Citibank in 1993 for her story “The Greater China Policy from Multinational Corporations,” and has secured interviews with political and economic leaders such as Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and more than twenty winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Ms. Chen also contributes to academic research as a Ph.D student in the College of International Studies in Tamkang University in Taiwan and as a research partner in the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research. She holds a master’s degree in economic society and media from Tamkang University, and participated in a journalism course at Columbia University in the United States in 1993.
Emma Connors
Senior Information Technology Writer, Australian Financial Review
Sydney, Australia
Emma Connors is the senior information technology (IT) writer at the Australian Financial Review (AFR), a business daily, owned by Fairfax Media covering corporate, economic and government news. Ms. Connors writes for the daily news pages and contributes features to the weekend edition. The AFR also publishes two monthly magazines and Ms. Connors usually juggles contributions to those publications with news writing.
Ms. Connors has been at the newspaper for almost 10 years. Before she joined the paper, she was editor of a monthly magazine, MIS Australia. Early in her career, she spent a couple of years working in London on trade publications and worked for a wine magazine in Sydney.
Last year Ms. Connors shared the Sun Microsystems features prize for IT Journalism. In 1999 she won the Eureka Prize for print journalism, for a feature story she wrote on how people who have grown up with computers think differently from those who have not. The Eureka prizes are prestigious among the science and engineering community in Australia.
Ms. Connors has a bachelor of arts in print journalism from Charles Sturt University.
Maria Henson
Deputy Editorial Page Editor, The Sacramento Bee
Sacramento, California
Maria Henson is the deputy editorial page editor for The Sacramento Bee, based in California’s capital city. She is the number two editor in the editorial department, overseeing the editorial writers, the editorial cartoonist, the public affairs columnist, the op-ed page, letters to the editor and the Sunday Forum section. One of the state’s largest metropolitan newspapers, The Sacramento Bee is prominent in its coverage of politics and state government. The newspaper’s daily circulation is 278,000 and on Sunday 330,000.
Ms. Henson came to The Sacramento Bee in June 2004 from her job as assistant managing editor for enterprise at the Austin American-Statesman in Texas, where she directed investigative and explanatory projects, headed the newsroom training efforts and oversaw the Sunday paper. She has worked as a writer at newspapers in Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky and North Carolina and has served as the Arkansas Gazette’s Washington correspondent covering Congress and federal agencies. In 2000, she went to Amherst, Mass., for one week to teach Indonesian journalists and, in 2001, traveled to Indonesia to continue the training for two weeks. Having covered Bill Clinton when he was Arkansas governor, Ms. Henson accepted an invitation in 1993 to speak in Athens, Greece, about the 1992 U.S. presidential election to European political consultants. The next year, she was a featured speaker at Taegu University in South Korea discussing U.S. press issues.
She has won a range of local, state and national journalism awards during her career. In 1992, she won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing for a series about how the justice system in Kentucky failed battered women and their children. Her series led the state legislature to pass every piece of reform legislation proposed to address domestic violence that year. In 1993-94 she was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. In 2005, the series she edited about Yosemite National Park in California won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. She has been a Pulitzer Prize juror for four terms and has served on the selection committee for Nieman Fellows. Her hope is one day to publish a children’s story she wrote that was inspired by a news account after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
Ms. Henson received her bachelor’s degree in English with a minor in art history from Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in 1982.
Lee Jeahun
Staff Writer, Online News Department, The Kukmin Daily
Seoul, Korea
Lee Jeahun is a staff writer covering economic and political issues for the online news department of The Kukmin Daily. In addition to his economic and political coverage, he posts newsflash reports based on the reports of other staff writers on the Kukmin Daily website. Founded in 1988 by Yoido Full Gospel Church, The Kukmin Daily is published from Monday through Saturday. With around two hundred staff writers, The Kukmin Daily, based in Seoul, covers everything from international and domestic news to features and styles, and uniquely, includes a religious section. The paper takes the U.S.-based Christian Science Monitor as its role model.
Mr. Lee joined the online news team in April 2006. The online news department was set up in April 2004 and provides news content for The Kukmin Daily multimedia website (www.kukinews.com). Prior to this, he worked with the political news and sports departments. While with the political news team, Mr. Lee covered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Ministry of Unification. He accompanied then Minister Chung Dongyoung (September 2005) to Pyongyang, North Korea to cover the 16th South-North Korea Ministerial-level Talks. In 2001, he was sent to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border city of Peshawar to cover the U.S. war on terrorism. He wrote a story about the death of fellow journalist, Aziz Haidari, a Reuter’s photographer who was shot to death by assumed Taliban insurgents.
In 2006 and 2001, Mr. Lee was awarded an in-company “exclusive report prize” for his coverage. In 2001, he was invited to Taipei by the Taipei Mission in Korea to learn more about and discuss cross-strait relations.
Mr. Lee graduated from Korea University in 1998 and holds a B.A. in Chinese language and literature. Mr. Lee maintains a strong interest in Chinese studies and the Sino-U.S. relationship. From 1994 to 1995 he took a four month language course at Beijing International Studies University and traveled extensively in China.
Liu Kunzhe
Reporter for International Desk, China Youth Daily
Beijing, China
Liu Kunzhe is a reporter for the international news desk of China Youth Daily. She is responsible for reporting diplomatic and foreign affairs, but has a strong personal interest in hi-tech innovation and climate change. China Youth Daily is one of the most influential newspapers in China, with a broad readership among the young educated urban middle class in the country. The newspaper’s daily circulation is approximately 500,000 copies, and it ranks number two among China’s national daily newspapers.
Ms. Liu came to China Youth Daily (CYD) in July 2001 after graduating from the Beijing Broadcasting Institute. Apart from being a professional reporter and editor at CYD, she also has been an intern-correspondent in the Berlin office of the Financial Times Deutschland from May to July 2006, and an intern-editor for the new program of China Central TV from January to April 2001.
Ms. Liu has won numerous awards. These include: Asia-Pacific Fellowship 2006, organized by the International Journalists’ Program of Germany; 14th China Journalism Prize (two prizes respectively in Newspaper Unit and in News Editing Unit); “Monthly Best Article Prize” from CYD for her interview with Mr. Romano Prodi, the President of the European Commission of EU; “Monthly Best Article Prize” from CYD for her serial reports on “the 2003 Conference of the Third World Academy of Science” which also won high acclaim from Lu Yongxiang, the President of the China Academy of Science.
She received her master’s degree in mass communication and international relations from the Beijing Broadcasting Institute (2001) and her bachelor’s degree in foreign affairs management from Qingdao University (1998). In addition, she received a certificate in environmental reporting from the International Institute for Journalism, Berlin, Germany (2004).
David L. Llorito
Research Head, BusinessMirror
Manila, Philippines
David Llorito has worked for almost two decades in socioeconomic research; economic and business journalism; communications/information dissemination; social assessment; and policy analysis and advocacy in agricultural, environmental, and urban policy issues. Mr. Llorito assumed his post as head of the research section of the Philippine Business Daily Mirror Publishing, Inc. in October 2005. He supervises the firm’s daily research operations, writes editorials and features, and prepares special reports on trends in the Philippine political economy for the company’s daily business newspaper called BusinessMirror. He also writes for Asia Times, an online magazine based in Hong Kong, on economic issues including business process outsourcing, mining and labor migration.
He was previously engaged as writer, researcher and consultant by several organizations including media outfits like Today Independent Daily News and Manila Times Publishing Corporation as well as research and consultancy firms like Louise Berger International and the Ateneo Center for Social Policy and Public Affairs. In 2005, Mr. Llorito was a fellow of the US State Department’s International Visitors Program (IVP) for Leadership in Print Journalism where he had the chance to interact with executives and editors of leading U.S. media organizations.
Recent awards include: 2006 Jaime V. Ongpin Awards for Excellence in Journalism (Explanatory Category); 2006 Australian Ambassador’s Choice Awards for his articles on globalization and how it’s transforming labor-management relations; the Jose Burgos Awards for Biotechnology Journalism (finalist, best feature category) for his stories on biofuels; and the 2005 Jaime V. Ongpin Awards for Excellence in Investigative Journalism (top ten finalist) for his exposes on land titling scams.
Mr. Llorito has a master’s degree in urban and regional planning from the University of the Philippines and a bachelor of arts in political science from the Mindanao State University in Marawi City in Southern Philippines.
Mara Lee
Associate Producer, NPR Continuous News Desk
Washington, DC
Mara Lee is an associate producer with the continuous news desk at National Public Radio (NPR), a producer and distributor of news, talk, and entertainment programming. A not-for-profit membership organization, NPR serves an audience of 26 million Americans each week in partnership with more than 800 independently operated public radio stations. The website, npr.org, includes original online content as well as audio streaming and 10 years of archived audio.
Before joining NPR in February 2007, Ms. Lee worked as a Washington correspondent for the Evansville, Indiana, Courier & Press, in the Scripps Howard bureau. In that job, she covered the races of two Republican incumbents who were defeated in the November 2006 election, part of a wave of defeats that led to the Democratic takeover of Congress. She also covered the then-head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Dick Lugar.
From 1996 to 2005, Ms. Lee worked in Ohio, first at Mansfield, Ohio’s News Journal, and for the last six years, at the Dayton Daily News. In Dayton, she began covering economics as part of the U.S. Census beat. She also did a two-day series in 2004 about white-collar offshoring in Ohio workplaces. That series, “Dayton to Delhi; Outsourcing: Jobs in Jeopardy?” won awards at the state and national levels. The Cleveland Press Club named it as best business writing in the state that year. It was also a finalist for the Livingston Awards, a national contest recognizing journalists younger than 35 from TV, radio and print. She also has received awards for breaking news and for feature writing from the Associated Press and Society for Professional Journalists. Economic issues are prominent in Ohio politics, as the state continues to be battered by manufacturing declines, and it trails many states on the coasts in attracting investment and jobs. Before going to Ohio, she worked at a trade magazine, Washington Technology, and at newspapers in Alabama, Virginia and North Carolina.
Ms. Lee has a B.S. in journalism from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, 1993. Past professional training has included the Paul Miller Fellowship for Washington reporters, and a Knight Center fellowship about urban and suburban issues.
Long Nguyen Dang Vu
Journalist and News/Feature Editor, The Vietnam Investment Review
Hanoi, Vietnam
Long Nguyen Dang Vu is a journalist and news/feature editor for the Vietnam Investment Review (VIR) which publishes six issues per week with a single issue circulation of 120,000 copies. VIR is printed in two versions, English and Vietnamese.
Before, moving to VIR seven years ago, Mr. Long worked as a full-time journalist for the Vietnam Business Forum and the Vietnam Economic Times. In addition to his work at VIR, Mr. Long also assists with editing a commercial and economic program titled: “The Market 24 Hours” for Vietnam’s national television broadcasting station and contributes stories to the London headquartered online newspaper, http://www.scidev.net/. In his more than 10 years working as journalist, Mr. Long has written thousands of stories and articles related to both social and economic issues which have been printed in dozens of domestic and foreign newspapers.
Mr. Long received scholarships to attend an economic and financial reporting course in Berlin organized by the International Institute for Journalism based in Germany and the 4th World Conference of Science Journalists in Montreal organized by the World Federation of Science Journalists and the Canadian Science Writers’ Association. In addition, he has participated in many short term workshops and courses related to economic journalism in many countries world-wide.
Mr. Long has a degree in English translation and interpretation from the Hanoi University of Foreign Studies, and has received certificates in Business and Financial Economic Reporting and Online Advance Business and Economic Reporting granted by the International Institute for Journalism in Berlin.
Sidhartha
Economics Editor, The Times of India
New Delhi, India
Sidhartha is Economics Editor in The Times of India, responsible for tracking and analyzing developments on economic policy and in the world of business. The Times of India is India’s largest English language newspaper and is part of Bennett Coleman & Co Ltd, the largest media house, with significant presence in the print media through publications like The Economic Times, Navbharat Times and Femina, besides interests in television and radio stations.
Sidhartha joined The Times of India in January 2006 from Business Standard, a leading financial daily, after an eight year stint. Starting in the weekend section of Business Standard in 1998, writing features on business, personal finance and motoring, over the years, he has tracked various sectors ranging from telecommunications, energy, trade, finance and micro and macro-economic policy.
He graduated in economics from Delhi University’s Ramjas College in 1997, and went on to complete a post-graduate diploma course in print journalism from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, New Delhi.
Alfred Siew
Technology Correspondent, The Straits Times
Singapore
Alfred Siew is a correspondent with The Straits Times, the largest daily newspaper in Singapore, covering the technology beat for the daily newspaper, as well as the weekly infocomm magazine called Digital Life. He writes news stories, features, commentaries and product reviews for both the main section of The Straits Times and Digital Life. Besides writing, he also supervises and leads packages for in-depth reports. He has been with the Singapore Press Holdings, which publishes The Straits Times, for close to eight years.
Technology issues that Mr. Siew currently covers include: new media, and how young users are changing the rules for the Internet; technology and government, and how initiatives from the public sector can move or slow down adoption of technology and open/clamp up markets; the benefits of technology adoption; and the latest mobile devices, and how consumer habits are changing with every new gizmo that hits the shelves.
Mr. Siew has won several awards, most recently for his coverage of the Internet outage on Boxing Day 2006 that affected most parts of East Asia resulting from an earthquake off the Taiwan coast that cut off several undersea telecom cables.
Mr. Siew graduated in 1999 with a bachelor of communications studies with honours from the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. While in school, he ran a dot.com business called Mediagate Communications that hosted and designed websites for small and medium businesses. The company was born in August 1996, and closed shop in June 1999, just as the dot.com craze hit fever pitch.
Teramoto Seiji
Staff Writer, Department of Economy, Chunichi Shimbun
Nagoya, Japan
Teramoto Seiji has worked for Chunichi Shimbun as a staff writer for almost 20 years. Chunichi Shimbun, one of the biggest Japanese daily newspapers is based in Nagoya, close to the headquarters of Toyota. The combined circulation is more 5 million. It also has over 10 overseas branch offices, including Washington D.C, New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Cairo, Bangkok, Manila, Beijing, Shanghai, Seoul.
Mr. Teramoto currently is responsible for covering the automobile industry, especially Toyota, as a chief writer in the department of economy. Prior to this, he was a correspondent and a deputy of the New York branch office from 2002 to 2005. In New York, he primarily wrote articles about the U.S economy and United Nations, but he also covered political issues including post 9/11 policy shifts and the beginning of the Iraq War. Mr. Teramoto started his career with the Chunichi Shimbun in April, 1988. After working at the Fukui branch office, he began to work in the department of economy in 1990 and covered manufacturing companies, retail business and the energy industry. His first exposure to the United States was a four week journalist program sponsored by the U.S. State Department in 1997. In 1998, he studied at West Virginia University for one year with financial support from Chunichi Shimbun.
Mr. Teramoto graduated from Kanazawa University, one of Japan’s National Universities, with a bachelor’s degree in economics.
Spring 2007
April 29–May 26
Norman Bell
Editor, Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal
San Jose, California, USA
Norman Bell is editor of the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal, a weekly newspaper serving the business community in and around America’s 10th largest city. The newspaper, read by decision makers in Silicon Valley, has a news staff of 14 and a circulation of about 12,000.
Prior to joining the Business Journal in 2004, Mr. Bell had a lengthy career in managing daily newspapers, serving as the top editor at the News-Tribune in Tacoma, WA, (1986–91) and the Trentonian in Trenton, NJ, (1999) and as managing editor of the Albuquerque Tribune (1981–85) and the five-paper ANG group based in Oakland, CA, (2000–2004). He also has served as assistant managing editor at the Press-Enterprise in Riverside, CA, and Citizen-Journal in Columbus, Ohio, and metro editor at the Detroit News. For three years (1992–94), he taught journalism as the McMahan Centennial Professor of News Communication at the University of Oklahoma.
His newspapers have won a variety of awards including Casey medals, Associated Press Managing Editors public service honors and a James Madison award from SPJ for efforts on behalf of open records. A project of his design on euthanasia legislation was a Pulitzer finalist. He served two terms as president of the New Mexico Associated Press Managing Editors group.
Mr. Bell holds a master’s degree in American studies from Union University in Schenectady, NY, and a bachelor of commerce degree from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He also has attended professional programs at the American Press Institute and the Poynter Institute.
Chen Pi-Fen
Senior Reporter, Commercial Times
Taipei, Taiwan
Chen Pi-Fen, also known as Cristina, has been working as a journalist with the Commercial Times for fourteen years. The Commercial Times Co., Ltd., established in 1978, is a major member of the China Times Inc., Ltd., one of the largest domestic news groups in Taiwan. The Commercial Times is a Chinese language business daily widely read and respected by Taiwan’s investors and entrepreneurs as a professional source of financial news and market analysis.
Starting as a general reporter, Ms. Chen quickly worked her way up to become a first tier reporter and team leader in daily news. She currently serves as Section Convener of the Banking and Finance News Department and coordinator in different sections with the editorial desk. She has covered economic issues and events throughout Asia and continues to observe macroeconomic change, technology development, industry supply chains, government policies, and the Asian regional market.
She won the Pan-Asian Journalism Award of Citibank in 1993 for her story “The Greater China Policy from Multinational Corporations,” and has secured interviews with political and economic leaders such as Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and more than twenty winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Ms. Chen also contributes to academic research as a Ph.D student in the College of International Studies in Tamkang University in Taiwan and as a research partner in the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research. She holds a master’s degree in economic society and media from Tamkang University, and participated in a journalism course at Columbia University in the United States in 1993.
Emma Connors
Senior Information Technology Writer, Australian Financial Review
Sydney, Australia
Emma Connors is the senior information technology (IT) writer at the Australian Financial Review (AFR), a business daily, owned by Fairfax Media covering corporate, economic and government news. Ms. Connors writes for the daily news pages and contributes features to the weekend edition. The AFR also publishes two monthly magazines and Ms. Connors usually juggles contributions to those publications with news writing.
Ms. Connors has been at the newspaper for almost 10 years. Before she joined the paper, she was editor of a monthly magazine, MIS Australia. Early in her career, she spent a couple of years working in London on trade publications and worked for a wine magazine in Sydney.
Last year Ms. Connors shared the Sun Microsystems features prize for IT Journalism. In 1999 she won the Eureka Prize for print journalism, for a feature story she wrote on how people who have grown up with computers think differently from those who have not. The Eureka prizes are prestigious among the science and engineering community in Australia.
Ms. Connors has a bachelor of arts in print journalism from Charles Sturt University.
Maria Henson
Deputy Editorial Page Editor, The Sacramento Bee
Sacramento, California
Maria Henson is the deputy editorial page editor for The Sacramento Bee, based in California’s capital city. She is the number two editor in the editorial department, overseeing the editorial writers, the editorial cartoonist, the public affairs columnist, the op-ed page, letters to the editor and the Sunday Forum section. One of the state’s largest metropolitan newspapers, The Sacramento Bee is prominent in its coverage of politics and state government. The newspaper’s daily circulation is 278,000 and on Sunday 330,000.
Ms. Henson came to The Sacramento Bee in June 2004 from her job as assistant managing editor for enterprise at the Austin American-Statesman in Texas, where she directed investigative and explanatory projects, headed the newsroom training efforts and oversaw the Sunday paper. She has worked as a writer at newspapers in Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky and North Carolina and has served as the Arkansas Gazette’s Washington correspondent covering Congress and federal agencies. In 2000, she went to Amherst, Mass., for one week to teach Indonesian journalists and, in 2001, traveled to Indonesia to continue the training for two weeks. Having covered Bill Clinton when he was Arkansas governor, Ms. Henson accepted an invitation in 1993 to speak in Athens, Greece, about the 1992 U.S. presidential election to European political consultants. The next year, she was a featured speaker at Taegu University in South Korea discussing U.S. press issues.
She has won a range of local, state and national journalism awards during her career. In 1992, she won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing for a series about how the justice system in Kentucky failed battered women and their children. Her series led the state legislature to pass every piece of reform legislation proposed to address domestic violence that year. In 1993-94 she was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. In 2005, the series she edited about Yosemite National Park in California won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. She has been a Pulitzer Prize juror for four terms and has served on the selection committee for Nieman Fellows. Her hope is one day to publish a children’s story she wrote that was inspired by a news account after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
Ms. Henson received her bachelor’s degree in English with a minor in art history from Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in 1982.
Lee Jeahun
Staff Writer, Online News Department, The Kukmin Daily
Seoul, Korea
Lee Jeahun is a staff writer covering economic and political issues for the online news department of The Kukmin Daily. In addition to his economic and political coverage, he posts newsflash reports based on the reports of other staff writers on the Kukmin Daily website. Founded in 1988 by Yoido Full Gospel Church, The Kukmin Daily is published from Monday through Saturday. With around two hundred staff writers, The Kukmin Daily, based in Seoul, covers everything from international and domestic news to features and styles, and uniquely, includes a religious section. The paper takes the U.S.-based Christian Science Monitor as its role model.
Mr. Lee joined the online news team in April 2006. The online news department was set up in April 2004 and provides news content for The Kukmin Daily multimedia website (www.kukinews.com). Prior to this, he worked with the political news and sports departments. While with the political news team, Mr. Lee covered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Ministry of Unification. He accompanied then Minister Chung Dongyoung (September 2005) to Pyongyang, North Korea to cover the 16th South-North Korea Ministerial-level Talks. In 2001, he was sent to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border city of Peshawar to cover the U.S. war on terrorism. He wrote a story about the death of fellow journalist, Aziz Haidari, a Reuter’s photographer who was shot to death by assumed Taliban insurgents.
In 2006 and 2001, Mr. Lee was awarded an in-company “exclusive report prize” for his coverage. In 2001, he was invited to Taipei by the Taipei Mission in Korea to learn more about and discuss cross-strait relations.
Mr. Lee graduated from Korea University in 1998 and holds a B.A. in Chinese language and literature. Mr. Lee maintains a strong interest in Chinese studies and the Sino-U.S. relationship. From 1994 to 1995 he took a four month language course at Beijing International Studies University and traveled extensively in China.
Liu Kunzhe
Reporter for International Desk, China Youth Daily
Beijing, China
Liu Kunzhe is a reporter for the international news desk of China Youth Daily. She is responsible for reporting diplomatic and foreign affairs, but has a strong personal interest in hi-tech innovation and climate change. China Youth Daily is one of the most influential newspapers in China, with a broad readership among the young educated urban middle class in the country. The newspaper’s daily circulation is approximately 500,000 copies, and it ranks number two among China’s national daily newspapers.
Ms. Liu came to China Youth Daily (CYD) in July 2001 after graduating from the Beijing Broadcasting Institute. Apart from being a professional reporter and editor at CYD, she also has been an intern-correspondent in the Berlin office of the Financial Times Deutschland from May to July 2006, and an intern-editor for the new program of China Central TV from January to April 2001.
Ms. Liu has won numerous awards. These include: Asia-Pacific Fellowship 2006, organized by the International Journalists’ Program of Germany; 14th China Journalism Prize (two prizes respectively in Newspaper Unit and in News Editing Unit); “Monthly Best Article Prize” from CYD for her interview with Mr. Romano Prodi, the President of the European Commission of EU; “Monthly Best Article Prize” from CYD for her serial reports on “the 2003 Conference of the Third World Academy of Science” which also won high acclaim from Lu Yongxiang, the President of the China Academy of Science.
She received her master’s degree in mass communication and international relations from the Beijing Broadcasting Institute (2001) and her bachelor’s degree in foreign affairs management from Qingdao University (1998). In addition, she received a certificate in environmental reporting from the International Institute for Journalism, Berlin, Germany (2004).
David L. Llorito
Research Head, BusinessMirror
Manila, Philippines
David Llorito has worked for almost two decades in socioeconomic research; economic and business journalism; communications/information dissemination; social assessment; and policy analysis and advocacy in agricultural, environmental, and urban policy issues. Mr. Llorito assumed his post as head of the research section of the Philippine Business Daily Mirror Publishing, Inc. in October 2005. He supervises the firm’s daily research operations, writes editorials and features, and prepares special reports on trends in the Philippine political economy for the company’s daily business newspaper called BusinessMirror. He also writes for Asia Times, an online magazine based in Hong Kong, on economic issues including business process outsourcing, mining and labor migration.
He was previously engaged as writer, researcher and consultant by several organizations including media outfits like Today Independent Daily News and Manila Times Publishing Corporation as well as research and consultancy firms like Louise Berger International and the Ateneo Center for Social Policy and Public Affairs. In 2005, Mr. Llorito was a fellow of the US State Department’s International Visitors Program (IVP) for Leadership in Print Journalism where he had the chance to interact with executives and editors of leading U.S. media organizations.
Recent awards include: 2006 Jaime V. Ongpin Awards for Excellence in Journalism (Explanatory Category); 2006 Australian Ambassador’s Choice Awards for his articles on globalization and how it’s transforming labor-management relations; the Jose Burgos Awards for Biotechnology Journalism (finalist, best feature category) for his stories on biofuels; and the 2005 Jaime V. Ongpin Awards for Excellence in Investigative Journalism (top ten finalist) for his exposes on land titling scams.
Mr. Llorito has a master’s degree in urban and regional planning from the University of the Philippines and a bachelor of arts in political science from the Mindanao State University in Marawi City in Southern Philippines.
Mara Lee
Associate Producer, NPR Continuous News Desk
Washington, DC
Mara Lee is an associate producer with the continuous news desk at National Public Radio (NPR), a producer and distributor of news, talk, and entertainment programming. A not-for-profit membership organization, NPR serves an audience of 26 million Americans each week in partnership with more than 800 independently operated public radio stations. The website, npr.org, includes original online content as well as audio streaming and 10 years of archived audio.
Before joining NPR in February 2007, Ms. Lee worked as a Washington correspondent for the Evansville, Indiana, Courier & Press, in the Scripps Howard bureau. In that job, she covered the races of two Republican incumbents who were defeated in the November 2006 election, part of a wave of defeats that led to the Democratic takeover of Congress. She also covered the then-head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Dick Lugar.
From 1996 to 2005, Ms. Lee worked in Ohio, first at Mansfield, Ohio’s News Journal, and for the last six years, at the Dayton Daily News. In Dayton, she began covering economics as part of the U.S. Census beat. She also did a two-day series in 2004 about white-collar offshoring in Ohio workplaces. That series, “Dayton to Delhi; Outsourcing: Jobs in Jeopardy?” won awards at the state and national levels. The Cleveland Press Club named it as best business writing in the state that year. It was also a finalist for the Livingston Awards, a national contest recognizing journalists younger than 35 from TV, radio and print. She also has received awards for breaking news and for feature writing from the Associated Press and Society for Professional Journalists. Economic issues are prominent in Ohio politics, as the state continues to be battered by manufacturing declines, and it trails many states on the coasts in attracting investment and jobs. Before going to Ohio, she worked at a trade magazine, Washington Technology, and at newspapers in Alabama, Virginia and North Carolina.
Ms. Lee has a B.S. in journalism from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, 1993. Past professional training has included the Paul Miller Fellowship for Washington reporters, and a Knight Center fellowship about urban and suburban issues.
Long Nguyen Dang Vu
Journalist and News/Feature Editor, The Vietnam Investment Review
Hanoi, Vietnam
Long Nguyen Dang Vu is a journalist and news/feature editor for the Vietnam Investment Review (VIR) which publishes six issues per week with a single issue circulation of 120,000 copies. VIR is printed in two versions, English and Vietnamese.
Before, moving to VIR seven years ago, Mr. Long worked as a full-time journalist for the Vietnam Business Forum and the Vietnam Economic Times. In addition to his work at VIR, Mr. Long also assists with editing a commercial and economic program titled: “The Market 24 Hours” for Vietnam’s national television broadcasting station and contributes stories to the London headquartered online newspaper, http://www.scidev.net/. In his more than 10 years working as journalist, Mr. Long has written thousands of stories and articles related to both social and economic issues which have been printed in dozens of domestic and foreign newspapers.
Mr. Long received scholarships to attend an economic and financial reporting course in Berlin organized by the International Institute for Journalism based in Germany and the 4th World Conference of Science Journalists in Montreal organized by the World Federation of Science Journalists and the Canadian Science Writers’ Association. In addition, he has participated in many short term workshops and courses related to economic journalism in many countries world-wide.
Mr. Long has a degree in English translation and interpretation from the Hanoi University of Foreign Studies, and has received certificates in Business and Financial Economic Reporting and Online Advance Business and Economic Reporting granted by the International Institute for Journalism in Berlin.
Sidhartha
Economics Editor, The Times of India
New Delhi, India
Sidhartha is Economics Editor in The Times of India, responsible for tracking and analyzing developments on economic policy and in the world of business. The Times of India is India’s largest English language newspaper and is part of Bennett Coleman & Co Ltd, the largest media house, with significant presence in the print media through publications like The Economic Times, Navbharat Times and Femina, besides interests in television and radio stations.
Sidhartha joined The Times of India in January 2006 from Business Standard, a leading financial daily, after an eight year stint. Starting in the weekend section of Business Standard in 1998, writing features on business, personal finance and motoring, over the years, he has tracked various sectors ranging from telecommunications, energy, trade, finance and micro and macro-economic policy.
He graduated in economics from Delhi University’s Ramjas College in 1997, and went on to complete a post-graduate diploma course in print journalism from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, New Delhi.
Alfred Siew
Technology Correspondent, The Straits Times
Singapore
Alfred Siew is a correspondent with The Straits Times, the largest daily newspaper in Singapore, covering the technology beat for the daily newspaper, as well as the weekly infocomm magazine called Digital Life. He writes news stories, features, commentaries and product reviews for both the main section of The Straits Times and Digital Life. Besides writing, he also supervises and leads packages for in-depth reports. He has been with the Singapore Press Holdings, which publishes The Straits Times, for close to eight years.
Technology issues that Mr. Siew currently covers include: new media, and how young users are changing the rules for the Internet; technology and government, and how initiatives from the public sector can move or slow down adoption of technology and open/clamp up markets; the benefits of technology adoption; and the latest mobile devices, and how consumer habits are changing with every new gizmo that hits the shelves.
Mr. Siew has won several awards, most recently for his coverage of the Internet outage on Boxing Day 2006 that affected most parts of East Asia resulting from an earthquake off the Taiwan coast that cut off several undersea telecom cables.
Mr. Siew graduated in 1999 with a bachelor of communications studies with honours from the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. While in school, he ran a dot.com business called Mediagate Communications that hosted and designed websites for small and medium businesses. The company was born in August 1996, and closed shop in June 1999, just as the dot.com craze hit fever pitch.
Teramoto Seiji
Staff Writer, Department of Economy, Chunichi Shimbun
Nagoya, Japan
Teramoto Seiji has worked for Chunichi Shimbun as a staff writer for almost 20 years. Chunichi Shimbun, one of the biggest Japanese daily newspapers is based in Nagoya, close to the headquarters of Toyota. The combined circulation is more 5 million. It also has over 10 overseas branch offices, including Washington D.C, New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Cairo, Bangkok, Manila, Beijing, Shanghai, Seoul.
Mr. Teramoto currently is responsible for covering the automobile industry, especially Toyota, as a chief writer in the department of economy. Prior to this, he was a correspondent and a deputy of the New York branch office from 2002 to 2005. In New York, he primarily wrote articles about the U.S economy and United Nations, but he also covered political issues including post 9/11 policy shifts and the beginning of the Iraq War. Mr. Teramoto started his career with the Chunichi Shimbun in April, 1988. After working at the Fukui branch office, he began to work in the department of economy in 1990 and covered manufacturing companies, retail business and the energy industry. His first exposure to the United States was a four week journalist program sponsored by the U.S. State Department in 1997. In 1998, he studied at West Virginia University for one year with financial support from Chunichi Shimbun.
Mr. Teramoto graduated from Kanazawa University, one of Japan’s National Universities, with a bachelor’s degree in economics.
