Voices of Resilience: Journalism in the Face of Conflict and Contemporary Politics

Featuring Keynote Speaker Award-Winning Kenyan Journalist Catherine Gicheru and Panels on Exiled Journalists and Academic Perspectives on Peace and Conflict Journalism

Schedule

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About the Speakers

Juan Carlos Ampié

Juan Carlos Ampié is a News Producer with over 20 years of experience working in Esta Semana, Nicaragua's top T.V. newsmagazine. Co-founder of the printed alternative weekly newspaper La Brújula Semanal. University instructor in T.V. Production at Universidad Centroamericana de Nicaragua and Esta Semana's production workshops. He was forced into exile by the Sandinista regime's violent crackdown on independent journalists in late 2018. In the US, he has produced multimedia journalism for Telemundo-NBC and wrote film criticism for the indie blog Popflick.com. He is the Director of Student Media and Multimedia Journalism professor at Marquette University's Diederich College of Communication.  

Anuradha Bhasin

A journalist with over three decades of experience, she has expertise in covering and writing about the Kashmir conflict, human rights, militarization, and security affairs. Her work also focuses on wide-ranging other issues including the intersection of militarization, development and climate change, communities and identity politics in the Kashmir region. She is also the author of the book ‘A Dismantled State; The Untold Story of Kashmir after Article 370’ published by Harper Collins India, in 2022. She is a Commonwealth Fellow 2016, John S. Knight Fellow 2023 and a Senior JSK Journalism Fellow at Stanford 2024. 

Catherine Gicheru

Catherine Gicheru is an award-winning Kenyan journalist, editor, and media innovator dedicated to advancing investigative journalism, fact-checking, and media sustainability in Africa. A 1992 Nieman Fellow, she founded The African Women Journalism Project (AWJP) in 2020, which empowers women journalists across the continent with training, mentorship, and funding to produce in-depth, data-driven stories on underreported issues. 

Gicheru is a former ICFJ Knight Fellow and served as the Kenya Country Director for Code for Africa, where she spearheaded data journalism initiatives and newsroom innovation. She is also the co-founder of PesaCheck, East Africa’s first fact-checking initiative focused on public finance and budgets. A former editor at Nation Media Group and The Star, she was Kenya’s first woman bureau chief and news editor. 

Her investigative work has earned her numerous accolades, including the International Women’s Media Foundation’s (IWMF) Courage in Journalism Award. A Reuters Institute Fellow, Gicheru remains a leading advocate for press freedom, digital innovation, and solutions journalism across Africa. 

Patrick Johnson

Patrick R. Johnson is an Assistant Professor of Journalism and Media Studies in the Diederich College. His work focuses on developing more sustainable and equitable journalism practices through news literacy and education. He also spends a lot of his time working with LGBTQ+ journalists and LBGTQ+ journalism history. 

Susan Moeller

Susan Moeller is Professor of Media and International Affairs at Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland, College Park. Her multiple books include Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death. She was a senior fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School and a professor at Brandeis and Princeton universities. She co-founded the Salzburg Academy on Media & Global Change in Austria. Her awards include being named a Carnegie Scholar, the State of Maryland’s Teacher of the Year. She was twice a Fulbright Professor.  Her MA and PhD are from Harvard and her BA is from Yale.

Pedro Xavier Molina

Pedro Xavier Molina, better known as PxMolina, is a Nicaraguan cartoonist and journalist whose work has been published by national and international outlets and magazines for over two decades. His work focuses on political and social issues, denouncing human rights abuses and advocating for individual and collective rights. He is currently living in exile in the US, after the Ortega regime’s crackdown on dissent intensified in 2018. Molina was recently named the finalist of the Herblock Prize 2024 (USA) and has won a host of prestigious awards for his work, including the 2023 Vaclav Havel Award for Creative Dissent (International), the 2021 Gabo Award for Excellence (Latinamerica), the Maria Moors Cabot Prize from Columbia University (USA) The Courage in Cartooning award from Cartoonists Rights Network (International) and the Excellence in Journalism Award granted by the Inter-American Press Association. 

Sue Robinson

Sue Robinson (PhD, Temple University) holds the Helen Firstbrook Franklin Professor Journalism endowed research chair at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Journalism & Mass Communication. A former journalist, she is the author of three books about how journalism can better serve democracy and our communities.

 

Ron Smith

Ron Smith serves as the executive director of the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service, which provides professional journalism coverage of Black and Brown residents. Before his current role, Ron served as the managing editor for news at USA TODAY. In addition, he was the deputy managing editor for daily news and production at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He’s also worked at The Oregonian, the Los Angeles Times and Newsday. In 2024, he was inducted into the Milwaukee Press Club Media Hall of Fame and has edited several Pulitzer Prize-winning stories. 

Nareh Vartanian

Nareh Vartanian is a junior in the Honors Program at Marquette University. She is a journalism major in the Diederich College of Communication. Minoring in French, Vartanian spent the spring 2024 semester in Lille, France. She has been a Marquette University Tour Guide since the summer of 2024. As a proud Armenian, Vartanian has been involved with promoting the Armenian cause through Armenian National Committee of America programs, the Armenian Youth Federation, and local internships.

Steven Youngblood

Steven Youngblood is journalism programs coordinator for the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. He was the founding director of the Center for Global Peace Journalism at Park University in Parkville, Missouri, where he was a communications and peace studies professor for 27 years. He has organized and taught peace journalism seminars and workshops in 44 countries/territories (32 in person; 12 via Zoom). Youngblood is the author of the university textbook, “Peace Journalism Principles and Practices,” edits “The Peace Journalist” magazine, and writes and produces the “Peace Journalism Insights” blog. He was a 2020-21 Luxembourg Peace Prize laureate. 

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About the Nieman Symposium

The Lucius W. Nieman Symposium, named after the founder of The Milwaukee Journal, Lucius W. Nieman, is an annual event sponsored by the J. William and Mary Diederich College of Communication. 

The Nieman Symposium and Speaker Series is currently chaired by Dr. Sudeshna Roy, Associate Professor of Journalism and Media Studies. Past Nieman Chairs include Dr. Ana Garner, Professor of Journalism; Dr. Bonnie Brennen, former Professor of Journalism at Marquette University; Philip Seib, Professor of Journalism at USC Annenberg; Richard H. Leonard of The Milwaukee Journal; Albion Ross of The New York Times; and Scott Klug, former U. S. congressman and CEO of Trails Media Group.