Alumni Highlights

Lucas Waldron (‘17) describes his job as “finding ways to explain complicated concepts using visuals.” That includes video, motion graphics, mapping and data visualization. Waldron (‘17) joined ProPublica right after graduating from Berkeley’s Journalism School. With degrees in Politics and Film Studies at the University of San Francisco, he had little professional experience. In his…

In January, over a dozen alumni joined industry guests and hosts Professor Jennifer Redfearn, Jigar Mehta (’05), Duc Pham (BS ’02) and alumni regent Amanda Pouchot at the annual “Cal @ Sundance” event in Park City, Utah. The campus conclave celebrates the community of Berkeley alumni involved in the prestigious festival. Berkeley Journalism’s rich history…

Our latest alumni profile features Lisa Pickoff-White, whose dedication and involvement with Berkeley Journalism continues more than a decade after she graduated. Her lasting imprint on the school is seen through the many initiatives at KQED that involve Berkeley Journalism students. She is a frequent guest speaker, sharing wisdom with students about her work and…

Berkeley-based disability rights pioneer Hale Zukas died on November 30th in Berkeley, California. He was 79 years old. Born with cerebral palsy, which significantly impaired his mobility and speech, doctors advised his parents to put him in an institution. Instead, they facilitated a full, productive life for him. His extraordinary life was celebrated in “Hale,”…

Reporter and producer Rae de Leon’s (’14) new documentary, “Victim/Suspect,” will screen as an official selection of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival in the U.S. Documentary Competition. The film is the result of a four-year investigation and features a first-of-its-kind case study of investigations in which police charged self-reporting sexual assault and rape victims with…

Two back-to-back suicides at a juvenile detention center in rural Louisiana raise troubling questions about the state’s justice system and exposes a legacy of abuse and neglect. The explosive findings by recent J-School graduates appear in a documentary short and on the front page of the country’s newspaper of record.   On Oct. 30, Berkeley…

On October 21, Berkeley Journalism alumnus Brian Howey (‘22) published a major investigation into non-fatal police shootings on the front page of The Washington Post. Howey collaborated with Wesley Lowery, one of the country’s premiere investigative reporters covering law enforcement, and Washington Post Data Editor Steven Rich on the story. Berkeley Journalism alums Bashirah Mack…

When the 43rd Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards are presented on Wednesday (Sept. 28) and Thursday (Sept. 29) and by The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, 22 Berkeley Journalism alumni and faculty will be among the nominees being honored. We were thrilled to not only see veteran journalists Bill Whitaker (’78/’17) and…

Michael Milano doesn’t like interviews. It is not that he doesn’t like people — he loves people, and people, generally, love him. But he says everything he wants to say is in his work. He gave very few interviews after his two widely acclaimed films came to light and those were not to the biggest…