CURRICULUM: INTERNATIONAL JOURNALISM

The Department of Journalism, Department of Near Eastern Studies, Center for Middle Eastern Studies and Center for Latin American Studies have for several years collaborated on a program that enables students to combine regional and language skills with opportunities to do research, reporting, and digital-imaging work in other countries.

In Spring 2004, the first class traveled to Chile, and their series of articles and pictures was picked up by the Tucson Citizen, a Gannett newspaper and Tucson's afternoon daily. In Spring 2005, another group reported on people and events in Panama for the Citizen. Since then groups have traveled to Mexico (2006), Puerto Rico (2007) and Argentina (set for March 2008).

The Journalism Department also has broadened the coverage area of El Independiente, South Tucson's community newspaper, so students will do more reporting on the Mexico - U.S. border. Two faculty members -- both award-winning international journalists -- lead the program.

Alan Weisman is the faculty member concentrating on Latin America who leads the student trips. He is the author of The World Without Us, a bestseller translated into 30 languages that was named the best nonfiction book of 2007 by both Time magazine and Entertainment Weekly. Weisman's reports from around the world have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, the Los Angeles Times Magazine and Harper's. He is a senior producer for Homelands Productiona, whose work airs on National Public Radio, Public Radio International and American Public Media.

Maggy Zanger focuses on Middle East journalism, specifically on analyzing media coverage of international crises, during fall semesters. She was the in-country director of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting in Iraq. The institute, supported by international human rights organizations, trains Iraqi journalists who want to work for independent news media. Professor Zanger previously was a faculty member at the American University in Cairo, and the director of the publications program of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University.

Professor Zanger has developed a new focus for the Journalism Department's News Analysis course, which will emphasize news coverage of wars and humanitarian crises in the Middle East. Classes are open to all undergraduate and graduate students in the Journalism, Latin American Studies and Near Eastern Studies programs. Zanger also is the faculty adviser to El Independiente, the student-produced newspaper that serves the city of South Tucson and the only bilingual newspaper in the country that is produced by students in a real community on a regular basis. In addition to covering South Tucson, students are tackling issues affecting southern Arizonans living along the U.S.-Mexico border, some 70 miles from the University.

Mort Rosenblum teaches an International Reporting course every winter in the journalism department as a professional-in-residence. He left the Arizona Daily Star to join The Associated Press in 1965. Since then, he has reported on peace and war from 200 countries, eventually becoming the AP's chief international foreign correspondent. From 1979 to 1981 was editor of the International Herald Tribune. He left AP in 2004 and is now a founding editor of Dispatches, a new quarterly on world affairs. Rosenblum has written a series of books about U.S. press coverage of international affairs, as well as books about political and economic issues in Africa and France. His latest book is Escaping Plato's Cave: How America's Blindness to the Rest of the World Threatens Our Survival. Rosenblum has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize eight times, and has won a major award from the Overseas Press Club.