Faculty
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Kirsten Johnson
Adjunct Faculty
Kirsten Johnson works as a director and a cinematographer. Her shooting appears in the Sundance 2012 Audience Award winner, "The Invisible War". In the last year, as the supervising DP on Abby Disney and Gini Reticker's series, "Women, War and Peace", she traveled to Colombia, Bosnia, and Afghanistan. She shared the 2010 Sundance Documentary Competition Cinematography Award with Laura Poitras for "The Oath". She shot the Tribeca Film Festival 2008 Documentary winner, “Pray the Devil Back to Hell'. Her cinematography is featured in “Farenheit 9/11”, Academy Award-nominated “Aslyum”, Emmy-winning “Ladies First”, and Sundance premiere documentaries, "Finding North", "This Film is Not Yet Rated", "American Standoff", and "Derrida”. A chapter on her work as a cinematographer is featured in the book, “The Art of the Documentary”. She is currently editing a documentary on sight that she shot and directed in Afghanistan. Her previous documentary as a director, "Deadline", (co-directed with Katy Chevigny), premiered at Sundance in 2004, was broadcast on primetime NBC, and won the Thurgood Marshall Award.
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Adrian Mihai
Adjunct Faculty
Professor Mihai, the broadcast coordinator of the department, is a freelance videographer, independent producer and multi-media designer. He produced and directed several documentaries, "E Pluribus Unum" (1994), a film that investigates the spiritual milieu of first generation immigrants from Romania, as they become integrated into the various folds of the American society, "Someone Has Killed The Sphinx" (1995), a film offers an analysis of Romanian social realities following the overthrow of Nicolae Ceausescu's dictatorship, as seen through the staging of"Oedipus", at the Romanian National Opera House, "Crossroads" (1998), a film that takes a look at Columbia University's Graduate Acting Program, created and steered by renowned Romanian-American director Andrei Serban, "E Biagoresqo Drom / The Endless Journey", a documentary about the Rroma/Gypsy communities of Romania. Professor Mihai works as freelance cameraman for various news org. such Bloomberg televison news, BBC America, Austrian TV, CNN. Since 1996, he has taught undergraduates and graduates "Electronic News Gathering".
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Joe Peyronnin
Adjunct Faculty
Joe Peyronnin has been an award winning producer and senior executive in broadcast journalism for 40 years at CBS News, Fox News and Telemundo/NBC News. Since January 2006 he has worked as an investor and corporate adviser to digital media content and software companies. He is also a regular contributor to The Huffington Post and FOXNews.com, where he writes and comments about politics, business and media.
Peyronnin created Telemundo's first network news division in 1999 and ran it until his departure in 2006. During his tenure as Executive Vice President News and Information Programming for the Miami-based Spanish language network he built an international news organization and launched many news programs. Telemundo received critical praise for its coverage of the terrorist attack on New York's World Trade Center in September, 2001, and its coverage of the Iraq War. Peyronnin was President of Fox News in 1995-1996, where he put together the core of what is now the Fox News Channel and created Fox News Sunday.
From 1989 to 1995 he served as Vice President and Assistant to the President for CBS News where he was in charge of news programming, including 60 Minutes, 48 Hours and The CBS Evening News, as well as world-wide news gathering. He had previously worked as CBS News Washington Bureau Chief and as a White House producer. As a CBS News producer he also covered all of the US-Soviet Summits, the Israeli invasion of Beirut, Lebanon, in 1982, President Reagan's visit to China in 1984, and several presidential elections and conventions. He has met every U.S. President from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush.
Peyronnin began his career in 1970 as a local news producer at WBBM-TV Chicago. He has collected two Emmy Awards for breaking news and a Polk award for CBS News coverage of the 1989 Tiananmen Square student uprising in Beijing, China. Peyronnin is currently chairman of the board for the Mental Health Association of New York City, a trustee at Columbia College Chicago and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He earned an MBA from Roosevelt University in 1977.
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Marcia Rock
Associate Professor NewsDoc, Director
MARCIA ROCK, producer/director/writer, is an author and two-time Emmy award winning independent documentary producer. She is currently working on "SERVICE: Disabled Women Veterans," a documentary on the issues women vets face from those with physical injuries who use service dogs to regain their independence to women fighting the hidden disabilities of PTSD and the insidious contributor to that, military sexual trauma. In 2008 she produced "Salt Harvesters of Ghana," that captures the beauty and dignity of women working in moon-like landscape, caught in an unrelenting cycle of work. It won best short at the Newburyport Documentary Film Festival. In 2008 she also produced Writers' Rooms: The Making of a Mural. It gives the background of Elena Climent's mural hanging in the NYU building, 19 University Place.
Before this, Rock worked with the personal documentary form with her experience framing "Surrender Tango," on how partnering in tango relates to life, 2006. It was highlighted at the New York Tango Festival and the Milan Documentary Festival. In 2002 she produced "Dancing with My Father," a story about how adult love is often shaped by what a child learns at home. She combines self-analysis and dynastic saga as she traces her family demons from a tiny Jewish community in Slovakia, to the immigrant neighborhoods of Cleveland, Ohio during the early 20th Century. In the process she finally learns to dance with her father and not around him. It was included in the Schenectady Jewish Film Festival, Dallas Video Festival, The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, Northampton Film Festival, Big Bear Lake International Film Festival, The Cleveland International Film Festival, and was featured at the American Psychological Association and the Family Therapeutic Networker Conference.
Her documentary on the women of Northern Ireland, Daughters of the Troubles: Belfast Stories won the American Women in Radio and Television Grand Award and Documentary Award; The Association of Women Journalists, Vivian Castleberry Award for Television; the Chris Award, 1st Place in the Columbus International Film & Video Festival; the Bronze Medal from Worldfest Houston; and the Silver Apple from the National Educational Media Network. It was chosen for the Cork Film Festival, the Women in Film Festival Dublin and the Southern Circuit Lecture Tour of four southern states. It aired in Ireland, Northern Ireland, Spain, Canada and on PBS stations in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Detroit, Milwaukee and Denver.
In 1998 she produced, “Back from Beyond: Women Abuse and Drugs,” profiling a new approach to drug treatment, specifically geared to women addicts convicted of non-violent felonies. It received an honorable mention from the Chris Awards (1999). In 1994 she produced City Originals: Women Making It Work hosted by Donna Hanover. This program profiles the contributions of three women to the quality of life of New York City. It received the Bronze Plaque from the Chris Awards in the social issues category (1994) and honorable mention in profiles, markets 1-25 from American Women in Radio and Television Commendation Awards (1995).
Rock has produced three major documentaries on Ireland and Irish Americans: McSorley’s New York, a documentary essay that chronicles the history of New York’s Irish immigrant community and the role McSorley’s Ale House has played in the cultural and political life of the City. It won a New York Emmy in 1987. Sons of Derry (1992) profiles two men in Northern Ireland working to overcome the bitterness of the past. It won the Bronze Medal from the New York International Program Festival (1993). No Irish Need Apply (1993) is and historical tour with writer Peter Quinn of 1860s New York based on the scenes set in his novel, Banished Children of Eve.
In 1991, she received a New York Emmy nomination for Village Writers: The Bohemian Legacy, (1990) a documentary on the literary history of Greenwich Village. Rock produced the profile of North Carolina writer Reynolds Price in Reynolds Price: A Writer’s Inheritance (1989) exploring the powerful relationship between family history and art. It won the Red Ribbon award from the American Film and Video Festival (1992). In 1988 she produced a documentary on the media coverage of the Intifada in Israel in, Israel Through the News. In 1999 she was executive producer of “Turning Inward: Ethnic Tensions in Russia.”
She won her first Emmy for The Singing Angels in China, a chronicle of a Cleveland youth choir’s trip to China in 1983.
In 1988 she and Marlene Sanders co-authored Waiting for Prime Time: The Women of Television News.
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Jason Samuels
Associate Professor Studio 20, NewsDoc
Jason Samuels is an Emmy Award-winning broadcast news and documentary producer.
Currently Jason produces prime-time documentaries for CNN. Jason's most recent work, the 90-minute documentary Obama Revealed: The Man, The President aired on CNN in September. In 2011 Jason produced the CNN documentaries Unwelcome: The Muslims Next Door and Black in America: The New Promised Land - Silicon Valley; both projects featured CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien.
Prior to joining CNN, Jason served as the executive producer in charge of documentary programming and news specials for Black Entertainment Television (2010). Before BETJason served as a senior producer for ESPN's Emmy award-winning newsmagazine E:60 (2009).
Previously Jason worked as a senior producer for ABC News (2006-2008). In that role, Jason supervised all of the digital content of ABC World News and led production of the World News Webcast with Charles Gibson, the first, live daily networknewscast produced exclusively for a digital audience. Jason also briefly served as the executive producer of the ABC World News Saturday and ABC World News Sunday broadcasts.
Prior to joining ABC News, Jason spent 11 years at NBC News (1995-2006) where he produced several award-winning long-form projects for Dateline NBC. In 2004 Jason produced the Dateline NBC documentary: A Pattern of Suspicion. This groundbreaking data-driven examination of racial profiling was awarded several of the most prestigious prizes in broadcast journalism including an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, an RTNDA-Edward R. Murrow Award and an Investigative Reporter and Editor Award.
Jason has won numerous other awards for his work including one Emmy Award, five Emmy nominations - including three for coverage of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, a Freedom Forum Excellence in Urban Journalism Award, a Cine Golden Eagle Award, a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism, a New York Association of Black Journalist Awards for Overall Excellence, and an American Women in Radio and Television Grace Award. In 2008 Jason was selected to participate in the 12-month Punch Sulzberger News Media Executive Leadership Program at Columbia University, a joint business/journalism program for emerging industry leaders.
Born and raised in New York City, Jason began his career in journalism as a news writer and producer at WCVB-TV in Boston (1993). He is a graduate of the Ethical-Culture Fieldston School in New York, and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Tufts University and a Master of Journalism degree from the University of California at Berkeley.
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Jane Stone
Professor
Jane Stone has worked over the past 17 years investigating everything from corporate negligence at Fortune 500 companies to bogus retirement homes to the trafficking in endangered species by the country's prestigious zoos. She has investigated dangerous abortion clinics, explored Pat Robertson's religious and political philosophy and profiled a dangerously overcrowded public hospital. The investigations have changed laws, shut down shoddy companies and increased workplace safety standards. They have also helped shed light on important public policy issues.
She has won three national Emmys, including one for Outstanding Investigative Journalism, three regional Emmys, an Ohio State Award, A DuPont-Columbia Award, a Peabody, and the Joan Shorenstein Barone Award for Excellence in National Affairs Reporting. She was a producer for 60 Minutes, West 57th, PBS Frontline, Dateline NBC and the CNN Special Assignment Unit. She also helped start Court TV, and in the last few years has developed a strong interest in legal journalism. She was recently awarded the American Bar Association Gavel Award for educating the public about important legal issues. Professor Stone continues to produce stories for Dateline NBC.