Columbia names Knight-Bagehot fellows for 17-18

Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism announced 10 Knight-Bagehot Fellows in economics and business journalism for the 2017-2018 academic year.

The mid-career fellowships provide full tuition and a living stipend of $60,000 for experienced journalists to take graduate courses at Columbia’s Schools of Business, Law and International and Public Affairs. Fellows also attend special seminars at the Journalism School, led by scholars and business experts during the nine-month program, which begins in August. The program is open to journalists with at least four years’ experience.

“These journalists represent the best in business journalism,” said Terri Thompson, director of the program. “We look forward to welcoming them for a rigorous program of study here at Columbia.”

This year’s fellows are:

Ben Bergman, 35, is the senior business/economics reporter at Los Angeles NPR News station, KPCC. He also regularly contributes business stories to national NPR and Marketplace programs and anchors coverage of major breaking news for KPCC. Bergman graduated cum laude with a B.A. in politics from Occidental College in 2004. During his senior year, he interned for The New York Times and CBS Network News. After graduation, he spent the next eight years as a producer for NPR’s Morning Edition.

Samuel Black, 31, is a journalist who has made award-winning documentaries for film, television, and radio. Most recently he produced investigative documentaries for Fault Lines, Al Jazeera English’s weekly current affairs program. Before that he worked at Alex Gibney’s Jigsaw Productions, where he co-produced feature-length documentaries about subjects including WikiLeaks, Eliot Spitzer, and Jack Abramoff. He has reported stories for This American Life, and was researcher on HBO’s feature film Too Big To Fail. A graduate of Yale University, he is the recipient of numerous prizes, including an Overseas Press Club Award for best international reporting dealing with human rights.

Matt Jarzemsky, 31, is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, covering private equity, bankruptcy and equity capital markets since 2013. He joined Dow Jones Newswires as a reporter in 2011. Previously, he covered commercial real estate for Institutional Investor News and interned for Bloomberg News on its markets desk. He has a journalism degree from University of Missouri-Columbia.

Matthew Kish, 41, reporter for the Portland Business Journal, covers sportswear, banking and general assignment news for this weekly business newspaper published by American City Business Journals. The winner of seven SABEW awards, his investigation about Oregon’s emergence as a hotbed for shell company abuse prompted the secretary of state to develop legislation to address the problem. He has reported for the Indianapolis Business Journal and The Arizona Republic, among others. He graduated summa cum laude from Ohio Dominican College, earned a master’s degree from Reed College, and teaches news writing and reporting at the University of Portland.

Karen Langley, 30, is a state Capitol reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where she covers Pennsylvania’s governor and legislature, annual state budgets and public pension debates. As a student at the University of Notre Dame, where she graduated cum laude in 2008, she wrote and edited for the student-run daily newspaper, The Observer. She went on to intern at The Philadelphia Inquirer and then joined the Concord (N.H.) Monitor, where she worked as a reporter for three years before moving to Harrisburg, Pa.

Jonnelle Marte, 30, is lead writer for the personal finance section of The Washington Post. Before joining the Post in 2014, she was a reporter for MarketWatch, WSJ Digital Network and Wall Street Journal Sunday. As a student at Florida International University, from which she graduated cum laude in 2008, she interned at the St. Petersburg Times, the Detroit News and the Boston Globe. She also worked for four years as a metro reporter for the Miami Herald.

Humeyra Pamuk, 36, started working for Reuters in 2002, while studying at Galatasaray University in Turkey for an M.A. in European Union Studies; currently she serves as a senior correspondent for Reuters based in Istanbul. In her nearly 15 years at Reuters, she has worked out of London, Cairo and Dubai, covering everything from commodities and energy markets to Turkey’s failed coup, and has reported from hostile environments such as Syria and Iraq. She holds a B.A. in International Relations from Koc University.

Hindol Sengupta, 37, joined Fortune India in 2010; as Editor-at-Large for the Indian edition of Fortune, he writes from Delhi on political economy. He has worked at CNBC-TV18, CNN-IBN and Bloomberg TV (India), and is the author of seven books. Among his three upcoming books is a history of the Indian free market by Simon & Schuster. He was declared a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2017 and has been short-listed for the Hayek Book Prize given by the Manhattan Institute for economic writing in memory of the Nobel laureate economist F. A. Hayek.

Brian Spegele, 29, has been a Wall Street Journal reporter in China since 2011, documenting China’s slowing economy and its disruptions on the global energy sector. A graduate of Indiana University, where he majored in journalism and international studies and minored in Chinese language, he interned at the St. Petersburg Times before joining the Journal.

Andrea Wong, 28, has covered the dollar and U.S. Treasury market for Bloomberg since 2013. Her investigation on the secret Treasury holdings of Saudi Arabia led the U.S. Treasury Department to disclose the kingdom’s data for the first time in four decades. A graduate of Hong Kong Baptist University, she joined Bloomberg as an intern in 2010, and for three years covered the financial markets of China and Taiwan, with a focus on currencies and government bonds.