Keeping Flexible: How Patrick Terpstra Finds The Right Medium For His Reporting
Patrick Terpstra is the kind of journalist who has never been anything else. At age six, he started a neighborhood newspaper. Print soon gave way to video, as he watched historic moments like the Challenger explosion and Bush 41’s inauguration. Terpstra graduated from the University of Missouri in 2003 with a bachelor’s in journalism, then moved to Florida to cover NASA for Central Florida News 13. From there he went to Norfolk, Virginia, for four and a half years, then back to the D.C. area, where he was born, and has covered everything from “thugs and drugs, crime and slime,” to the earthquake in Haiti.
Terpstra was recently selected as an NPF Paul Miller fellow and has just started as a senior producer with Cox Media Group in its Washington bureau.
Reporting From the Edge of Retirement
David Hendricks is planning on retiring…sometime in the near future. The 58-year-old business reporter and columnist has spent 35 years working for the San Antonio Express-News, writing on countless financial subjects. Consequently, reporting on the topic of retirement hits very close to home for Hendricks, especially since he still has a 17-year-old daughter he needs to put through college. With a sharp eye for the specific financial situations arising from the recession and the silver tsunami of the baby boomers retiring, Hendricks has used his business column as an outlet to highlight problems overlooked by major news organizations.
Bringing A World of Knowledge to Retirement Reporting
As an international correspondent for National Public Radio, Jennifer Ludden reported from Central America, the Middle East, West Africa and Europe, covering a wide range of issues such as immigration, the Oslo peace process and the Kosovo War. She returned to the United States after 9/11 to start a family, and started reporting on family issues a couple years ago. This month, she’ll be contributing to NPR’s special series on Life in Retirement.
CNN producer believes Alzheimer’s is “inherently a national story”
The topic of Alzheimer’s disease has always been a personal one for CNN.com Health producer Elizabeth Landau. Her grandmother suffered from Alzheimer’s, and the effects of her disease took a toll on Landau’s entire family. Landau’s grandmother passed away in 2007, and Landau has been interested in reporting on Alzheimer’s research ever since.
Landau earned her master’s in journalism from Columbia University before starting out with CNN as a Master’s Fellow in 2007. She returned in 2008 after interning for Dow Jones and writing for law360.com, and was promoted to CNN.com health writer in June that same year. In May, she participated in the NPF program Alzheimer’s Issues 2011, which focused on ethical issues, global aging and the personal cost to care-givers.
How The Baltimore Sun’s John Fritze Frames the National Debate For Maryland’s Readers
By his own account, The Baltimore Sun Washington correspondent John Fritze wasn’t supposed to end up in the field of Congressional reporting. He was “fully expected” to continue in his father’s footsteps and become a goldsmith. Alas, Fritze lacked the talent to become a jewelry maker, but found his niche in journalism instead. Fritze is a 2002 alumnus of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and has also worked as a political reporter for The Indianapolis Star and USA Today.
Fritze attended the NPF issues briefing on the debt ceiling in May, just as the debate was heating up on the Hill, and has worked ceaselessly in covering it specifically from the Maryland constituency’s point of view. When I spoke with him, he was just about to follow Congress’s lead and take a vacation.
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