Entries for May 2010

The IWMF features exemplary articles from the Reporting on Women and Agriculture: Africa project that are submitted by local trainers in the target countries of Mali, Uganda and Zambia. Articles demonstrate the goals of the project, which trains reporters to effectively cover agriculture, the role of women in transforming food production and rural development in African countries.

The current featured article is a Daily Monitor article about a woman whose small-scale, rural project has grown into an important agricultural endeavor.

• Read about the article.

In his article, “Farmers Can Help Prevent Soil Infertility,” Times of Zambia reporter Stanslous Ngosa covers in detail declining soil fertility in sub...

By STANSLOUS NGOSA Soil fertility is declining in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa and Zambia has not been spared. There are various reasons for the ...

Each month, the IWMF features one article from the Reporting on Women and Agriculture: Africa project. Articles are submitted by local trainers in the...

Tanzanian journalist Vicky Ntetema, winner of a 2010 IWMF Courage in Journalism Award, was featured on AllAfrica, BBC News, and CBC. Click the names of the media outlets to view the coverage.

Claudia Duque, winner of a 2010 IWMF Courage in Journalism Award, was featured on Caracol Radio in Colombia. Listen to the broadcast.

Eleanor Clift, an IWMF board member who is a contributing editor at Newsweek magazine, will be honored in June with the 2010 Helen Thomas Award for Excellence in Journalism from the American News Women’s Club. Read more on the ANWC website.

The number of social networking initiatives at television stations soared over the last year, according to the latest installment of the RTDNA/Hofstra survey. Almost 40 percent of television stations surveyed said their newsroom has a Facebook page and 36 percent said their newsrooms were “constantly” active on Twitter. Read more on the RTDNA website. 

Christiane Amanpour, a member of the IWMF board of directors, was the keynote speaker in the rededication of the Journalists Memorial at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. The event was held on May 3. Read about the event. 

Moving Women Forward in the News MediaScheduled for the IWMF’s 20th anniversary year, The International Conference of Women Media Leaders will give wo...

The IWMF has announced winners of the 2010 Courage and Lifetime Achievement Awards. Award ceremonies will be held in New York and Los Angeles in October.

An investigative journalist and correspondent for Radio Nizkor in Colombia, Duque tackles some of the most difficult and dangerous stories in Colombia, including child trafficking, illegal adoption, infiltration of paramilitary groups into Colombian state institutions, human rights violations, and the murder of political humorist and journalist Jaime Garzón.  She first received death threats more than 10 years ago and has been constantly harassed by the Administrative Department of Security (DAS, the Colombian security service). She has had to go into exile three times, and her daughter has also received death threats.

A freelance Tanzanian reporter who contributes to the BBC World Service, Vicky Ntetema uncovered one of her country’s horrible secrets when she began to investigate the brutal killings of albinos and their families. Working undercover, she learned that witchdoctors were murdering albinos to dismember their bodies and sell potions made out of their hair, legs and arms.  Ntetema has received death threats since she started her reporting. She has twice left Tanzania for her safety. She now reports wearing hijab to disguise her identity and often travels with a security guard.

A Mexican journalist whose articles have illuminated Latin America for her readers, Alma Guillermoprieto is a contributor to the British-based Guardian newspaper, The Washington Post, The New York Review of Books, Newsweek and The New Yorker, she has covered Argentina’s “dirty war,” post-Sandinista Nicaragua, the “Shining Path” rebels in Peru, the Colombian civil war and the Mexican drug wars. In 1982, she was one of only two reporters to investigate rumors of mass killings perpetrated by the U.S.-supported Salvadoran army in El Mozote, El Salvador. When she published her reports in The Washington Post, the Reagan Administration tried to discredit her, but she stood firm. Eventually, the U.S. government was forced to confirm her story.

A Beijing-based Tibetan freelance writer and blogger for the site Invisible Tibet, Tsering Woeser is also a contributor to Radio Free Asia. For more than eight years, since the publication of her book Notes on Tibet, Woeser has been under constant scrutiny by Chinese authorities. Woeser lives in Beijing and reports about human rights abuses in Tibet, but her work is published only by media outside mainland China. Sources she has relied on for years will no longer speak to her for fear of retaliation; anyone who dares to meet with her is likely to be interrogated by police. Still, she remains determined to inform the world about the struggles of the Tibetan people.