Columbia names Knight-Bagehot fellows for 2014-15

Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism named 10 Knight-Bagehot Fellows in economics and business journalism for the 2014-2015 academic year.

They include journalists from The Associated Press, Bloomberg News, CNN Money, Forbes, Marketplace, Thomson Reuters and The Wall Street Journal.

The mid-career fellowships provide full tuition and a living stipend of $55,000 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 and brightest in business journalism,” said Terri Thompson, director of the program, in a statement. “We look forward to welcoming them for a rigorous program of study here at Columbia.”

The fellows are:

Nathan Becker, 27, is a copy editor and sports editor for The Wall Street Journal in New York where he was hired in 2009 as a breaking-news reporter. After graduating from Truman State University in 2008, he interned as a business reporter for MarketWatch in San Francisco and Bloomberg News in Chicago.

Dan Bobkoff, 31, has spent the last two years reporting on top business stories and trends for NPR News and the public radio show, Marketplace. Before working in New York City, he reported for public radio stations from Ohio and Massachusetts. He won the National Headliner Award and regional Edward R. Murrow Award for his work as the Cleveland reporter on “Changing Gears,” a public radio project that explored the economic transformation of the industrial Midwest. He graduated from Wesleyan University in 2005.

Maria Danilova, 32, is the chief correspondent in the Kiev Bureau of the AP. Born in Russia, she holds a B.A. in Linguistics from Moscow State University and an M.A. in Political Science from Central European University. She previously worked in Moscow for The Washington Post and The Moscow Times and joined the AP’s Moscow bureau in 2003.

Mark Garrison, 35, is a reporter and substitute host for Marketplace. Based in New York, he covers a variety of topics, including economics, media, transportation, retail, marketing and culture. His previous public radio experience includes newscasting for NPR, The Takeaway and New York’s WNYC. He has worked for NBC, ABC and CNN. At CNN and served as senior editorial producer for Anderson Cooper 360° and part of the team that won Peabody and duPont Awards for coverage of Hurricane Katrina and the 2004 Asian tsunami, respectively. Garrison graduated from the University of Georgia with a B.A. in journalism and psychology.

Annalyn Kurtz, 27, is a senior writer for CNN Money, covers economic indicators and the Federal Reserve through breaking news articles, blog posts, data visualizations and “real people” slideshows. She is the winner of two SABEW Best in Business awards. As an adjunct lecturer at CUNY’s School of Journalism, she co-teaches a course on covering the economy for graduate journalism students. While a student at Arizona State University, she interned at The Arizona Republic and Phoenix Business Journal. She graduated in 2008 with a B.A. in Journalism.

Alfred Lee, 29, is a staff reporter for Los Angeles Business Journal where he writes about legal issues in industries, including real estate, retail, health care and manufacturing. The recipient of many awards, including two SABEW awards and L.A. Press Club’s first place in News Feature, he has also worked for Pasadena Star-News and Los Angeles CityBeat and freelanced for NPR, Los Angeles Review of Books and Flaunt. He is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles.

Angela Moon, 32, is a correspondent covering Wall Street for Thomson Reuters with specialty in financial markets. She analyzes and reports breaking news and trends in stock trading, market structure, exchanges and derivatives. She is also a regular contributor for Thomson Reuters’ Insider TV. Born in Seoul, South Korea, she graduated with honors from the University of Toronto with a B.A. in English Literature and International Studies. Prior to joining Thomson Reuters, she was a general news reporter for South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency.

Niamh Sweeney, 34, was working as a New York-based freelance journalist for the Irish Times, Sunday Business Post, Fortune, NPR and Irish Independent when the Deputy Prime Minister of Ireland asked her to return to her native Ireland as his special adviser. A graduate of Trinity College Dublin, Dublin Institute of Technology and Columbia’s School of Journalism, she moved back to Dublin in 2012 to manage the Deputy PM’s press and advise on foreign and domestic policy matters. In addition to freelancing, she has reported for Bloomberg Radio, The Street and RTE News (Ireland’s national broadcaster).

Halah Touryalai, 31, is a staff writer at Forbes where she writes features for the magazine and web articles for Forbes.com about wealth management, asset management, banking, and economic and markets trends. She is also the author of The New Wealth Doctors, Wall Street’s Hottest Career, an e-book about the shortage of young financial advisors on Wall Street. Before joining Forbes in 2010, she reported and wrote for REP. magazine, formerly Registered Rep. magazine. At Pace University, where she majored in English, she was news editor of the university’s official newspaper.

Erin Zlomek, 30, is a contributing writer for Bloomberg Businessweek and a speed desk editor for Bloomberg News, where she analyzes SEC filings to filter market-moving disclosures. After graduating from Virginia Tech in 2006 and completing the Pulliam Journalism Fellowship, she joined The Arizona Republic where she was a business reporter until she joined Bloomberg in 2010.