About This Project
The American military is undergoing a profound shift in strategy that is transforming its presence as well as its mission on a global scale.
During the summer of 2006, we reported stories from a range of angles – cultural, economic, political and environmental – regarding the nearly half-million women and men serving the security interests of the United States overseas.
Biographies of News21 Fellows and Reporters
Nik Bonovich
Nik Bonovich is a political writer and analyst. He has written and analyzed polls for ABCNews.com, The California Target Book, The Hotline, Congress Daily, Capitol Weekly. Prior to his journalism career Nik worked on various state Assembly, state Senate, U.S. House, U.S. Senate and statewide proposition campaigns. Most recently he worked in the ABC News Political Unit and will be working this fall in the ABC Polling Unit. His interests in politics include, polls, demographics, political geography and voter trends. He received a Bachelors Degree from UCLA and a Masters from UC Berkeley.
Nik was the political editor for the project. He wrote the politcal essay on the Interior West that accompanies the Montana suite. He also wrote and compiled the sidebar text for Purple America and Youth Vote maps.
Cynthia Dizikes
Cynthia Dizikes is a recent graduate of the UC Berkeley graduate school of journalism. She has worked as a reporter for the Anniston Star in Alabama and the Easy Reader in California. Her work has been published in CongressDaily, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Oakland Tribune, and on WashingtonPost.com. Her thesis project, "Commitment", a magazine profile
about a scientist at Stanford, received the 2008 Gobind Behari Lal Award for the Most Outstanding Science or Health-Related story. This fall she will be interning at the LA Times Washington Bureau.
Dizikes collaborated with Drew Himmelstein and Caryln Reichel on the suite of stories from Minnesota about Middle Class Values.
Larissa Haida
Larissa Haida is currently enrolled in the Erasmus Mundus Masters program during which she has studied in Denmark and The Netherlands. Before entering the masters program, she studied communication science in Germany. Her thesis - a study on the media coverage of the European Presidency 2007 - was published in book form in April this year. Larissa has interned at various newspapers in Germany and the United States. Her work has been published in outlets such as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Die Welt.
Larissa collaborated with Carola Mamberto and Adithya Sambamurthy on the Rocket City, USA documentary from Huntsville, Alabama.
Adithya Sambamurthy
Adithya Sambamurthy is a photojournalist and documentary filmmaker based in Berkeley, California. He is currently completing dual Masters degrees in Journalism and International Relations at the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to graduate school, he worked five years as a staff photojournalist at small and large newspapers around the US, and freelanced for publications in Europe and in India. While at the Graduate School of Journalism, he won a Student Emmy for producing the television magazine show Crossroads, and the Dorothea Lange Fellowship for Main Street California, a photo essay set along US Highway 99. His thesis documentary short Healthy. Happy. Holy., about the Anglo-American Sikh community of New Mexico earned him the Hearst Prize for Excellence in Documentary. Adithya was born in India and grew up in Germany and the United States. After graduation, he hopes to continue working as a photojournalist and documentary producer.
Adithya collaborated with Larissa Haida and Carola Mamberto on the Rocket City, USA documentary from Huntsville, Alabama.
Biographies of News21 Editors
Jane Stevens, Coordinator
Jane Stevens is a freelance multimedia journalist who began a newspaper career at the Boston Globe and San Francisco Examiner. She's been an assistant foreign/national editor, Sunday magazine writer, and technology reporter and columnist. She founded a syndicated science and technology feature service with 20 newspaper clients worldwide, including the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and Asahi Shimbun's AERA Magazine. For four years, she lived and worked in Kenya and Indonesia. She’s written for magazines, including National Geographic, and worked for New York Times Television as a videojournalist. She has done multimedia reporting for the New York Times, Discovery Channel, and MSNBC.com.
