Investigative Reporting Faculty & Lecturers

Faculty

Lowell Bergman (Logan Distinguished Professor in Investigative Reporting)

Lowell Bergman was one of the founders of the Center for Investigative Reporting. He spent 22 years as a producer first with ABC News and then CBS, where he was a staff producer at "60 Minutes." Since leaving CBS in 1999, he has been a correspondent and producer for PBS "FRONTLINE". For a decade from 1999-2008 he was an investigative correspondent for the New York Times. A series he co-authored on worker safety for The New York Times in a joint project with "FRONTLINE" won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. It was the first time a print/television collaboration was recognized by both a Pulitzer and its equivalent in broadcasting, the Peabody and Alfred I. DuPont awards. Bergman's earlier work on the CIA and cocaine, corruption in Mexico and the war on drugs has been the recipient of DuPonts, Peabody Awards and Emmys. His investigation of the tobacco industry for "60 Minutes" was chronicled in the feature film, "The Insider." Bergman graduated from the University of Wisconsin and was a graduate fellow in philosophy at the University of California at San Diego.

Lecturers

Robert Gunnison (Director of School Affairs)

Rob Gunnison is Director of School Affairs at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley. He arrived in 1999 after writing for 15 years for the San Francisco Chronicle in Sacramento, where he covered state government and politics with an emphasis on budget and tax issues. Before that, he was Sacramento Bureau Manager for United Press International where he covered government and politics for 11 years. His reporting on the savings and loan debacle was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. <p /> Mr. Gunnison teaches “Reporting and Writing the News” and has co-taught an investigative reporting class with Professor Bergman for six years.

Sharon Tiller (reporter)

Sharon Tiller joined FRONTLINE in 1995 as senior producer for special
projects. In that role she has overseen and helped shape numerous programs
for the series, including the critically acclaimed four-part special "Drug
Wars." Other projects include “So You Want to Buy a President,” “Why
America Hates the Press,” “Fooling with Nature,” "Secrets of the SAT, and
“Blackout.” In 1997, she helped establish and runs the "FRONTLINE West"
project at the University of California at Berkeley Graduate School of
Journalism, where producers-in-residence work with graduates of the
documentary program on a number of FRONTLINE and “World” projects each
academic year.

Steve Talbot (Visiting Instructor)

In a career of more than 25 years in public television, Stephen Talbot has written and produced over 30 documentaries, including ten films for the PBS series, Frontline. Along the way, he has won nearly every major award in the field – Emmys, Peabodys, a DuPont, a George Polk, even an “Edgar” from the Mystery Writers of America. His most recent work is “News War: What’s Happening to the News” (2007) a 90-min. Frontline report on the state of the news media with reporter Lowell Bergman. Talbot is also the Series Editor for Frontline/World, Frontline’s international news magazine, where he helps commission and supervise broadcast stories and oversees the series web site.

Previous Lecturers

Tim Reiterman (Teaching Fellow)

Reiterman, a journalism graduate of bachelors and masters programs at UC Berkeley, has worked as a reporter and editor for more than 35 years. He is the author with the late John Jacobs of Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People—widely recognized as the definitive book on the Jonestown tragedy. He has worked as a reporter for the Associated Press, as an investigative team member and city editor for the San Francisco Examiner, and as a projects editor and reporter for the Los Angeles Times, where he currently covers criminal justice, prisons and state government topics for the Times. As an editor for the paper, he helped supervise Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Los Angeles riots and the Northridge earthquake. And he oversaw a prize-winning 20-month study of homicides in Los Angeles County during the O.J. Simpson murder case, as well as a worldwide investigation of the finances of the International Olympic Committee.

Siri Schubert (Lecturer)

Siri Schubert is a veteran reporter who has spent a good part of her career in an international setting as a foreign correspondent for Handelsblatt, the leading business daily in Germany. She won the 2004 Koerber Foundation journalism award on "Living together: Integration and Diversity" (shared first prize) and has contributed a chapter to “Seeds of Hope (Hoffnung saehen)”, a book that illustrates immigration issues in Europe through life stories of immigrants. Siri was selected as one of the participants of the Journalist Alumni Study Trip: Berlin-Ankara/Istanbul 2005, organized by the Fulbright Commission, the German Marshall Fund and the Arthur F. Burns Fellowship, among others. Being from Europe and having lived on both sides of the Atlantic (USA, Germany, England) with parts of her family living in France and Switzerland, she brings unique perspectives and insights to this area of study.