EVANSTON, Ill. — Tara McKelvey, a freelance reporter and writer, is appointed the first Carnegie Corporation fellow for the Medill National Security Journalism Initiative, a three-year project to improve education and training in national security reporting and research funded by the McCormick Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation. McKelvey begins the six-month Carnegie fellowship immediately and will focus her research on specific aspects of U.S. military engagement around the world.
Based in Washington, McKelvey will be engaged both at Medill’s journalism programs in Evanston and in its year-round Washington program.
Two other Carnegie Fellows will be appointed for 2011.
McKelvey, a former senior editor at The American Prospect, has written articles on national security, civil liberties and foreign policy among other subjects. She is the author of “Monstering: Inside America’s Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War.” She has also contributed articles on women in the military and international women’s issues for Marie Claire magazine and writes reviews for The New York Times Book Review.
As a freelance journalist, she has received support for her work from the Alicia Patterson Foundation; the International Reporting Project at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies; the Hoover Institution; the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma and the New York University Law School, Center on Law and Security.
The $1.5 million initiative at the Medill School of Journalism is providing journalists-in-training and working journalists with the knowledge and skills necessary to report accurately, completely and with context on events and issues related to defense, security and civil liberties. The goal is to help journalists develop more effective storytelling approaches with innovative presentation and distribution to a wide range of audiences. The initiative also supports original research and leadership on media performance, always with an emphasis on the public interest.
