Former Middle East Correspondents to Speak in SF

Sep 9, 2012   //   by Rachele Kanigel   //   Blog, International reporting, Israel  //  No Comments

Rachele Kanigel is executive director of ieiMedia and an associate professor of journalism at San Francisco State University. She directed ieiMedia projects in Perpignan (2010 and 2011) and Urbino (2009) and taught reporting in Cagli in 2007. In 2013 she will direct ieiMedia's international reporting program in Jerusalem.

A pair of veteran foreign correspondents will discuss their experiences reporting on the Middle East at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on Friday, Sept. 14.

Janine Zacharia, former Jerusalem bureau chief for the Washington Post, will appear in conversation with Joel Brinkley, former New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief. Check-in for the event is at 11:30 a.m.; the discussion will begin at noon.

Zacharia, now a visiting scholar at Stanford University, was Jerusalem bureau chief and Middle East correspondent for the Washington Post from December 2009 through April 2011. During her time at the Washington Post, she reported widely throughout the Middle East, including assignments in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Turkey.

Zacharia has also worked as chief diplomatic correspondent for Bloomberg News and as Washington bureau chief for the Jerusalem Post. She was a regular contributor to the New Republic and has appeared as a cable news analyst on MSNBC, CNN and other networks.

Brinkley is the Hearst Visiting Professional in Residence at Stanford. He  joined the Department of Communication in the fall of 2006 after a 23-year career with The New York Times, where he served as a reporter, editor and Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent.

At Stanford, Brinkley writes a weekly op-ed column on foreign affairs that appears in about 50 newspapers and websites in the United States and around the world each week, syndicated by Tribune Media Services.

A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Brinkley began his journalism career at the Associated Press and over the following years worked for the Richmond (Va.) News Leader and the Louisville Courier Journal before joining the Times in 1983. At The New York Times, he served as Washington correspondent, White House correspondent and chief of the Times’ bureau in Jerusalem.  He won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1980 and in the following years was twice a finalist for an investigative reporting Pulitzer (for one, as a member of a team).

Brinkley is the author of five books: Cambodia’s Curse: The Modern History of a Troubled Land, U.S. vs. Microsoft: The Inside Story of the Landmark Case (with Steve Lohr), Defining Vision: The Battle for the Future of Television, The Circus Master’s Mission, and The Iran-Contra Affair (with Steve Engelberg).

The discussion will take place in the Gold Room at The Commonwealth Club of California, 595 Market St, San Francisco, CA 94105.

Tickets are available through the Commonwealth Club website:
$7 for students
Free for Commonwealth Club members
$20 public