CRC alumnus David Ng talks with the actor/directorabout his new stage work, based on the life of serial killer Jack Unterweger. Los Angeles Times, May 2, 2008.

The choreography of murder is a messy business. For Malkovich, it's an artistically challenging one as well. The actor is playing real-life Austrian serial killer and bestselling author Jack Unterweger in a world premiere production, "Seduction and Despair," scheduled to run this weekend at Barnum Hall Theatre in Santa Monica.

Malkovich is no one's idea of a conventional movie star, so it should come as little surprise that when working on stage he gravitates toward projects that are eccentric and potentially disturbing. "Seduction and Despair" is an unabashedly experimental work that combines elements of theater, opera and digital video art into what its creators hope will be a new artistic form.

CRC alumna Hailey Eber examines the vogue of lo-fi photography in the digital age. The Brooklyn Rail, April 2008.

"Nonfiction: Weird America"

CRC alumnus Thomas Rogers reviews Gregory Gibson's new book, Hubert's Freaks. The Brooklyn Rail, April 2008.

"Noise-Pop, Rachael Ray, and the Magic Box: SXSW 2008"

CRC alumnus John S.W. MacDonald crams 2,000 bands into four days at Austin's annual music festival. The Brooklyn Rail, April 2008.

Long the domain of male performers, the drag scene has gradually given birth to a movement of women known as faux queens. Storming cabaret stages from coast to coast, these flamboyant females are seizing the fake lashes from their gay boyfriends, and proving that sisters are gluing it for themselves.

CRC alumna Evie Nagy reports on women who impersonate women. Bust, April/May 2008. The article was also edited by a CRC alumna, Priya Jain, who is the features editor at Bust.

CRC alumnus John MacDonald reviews the latest Sun Kil Moon record. The Village Voice, April 1, 2008

It was a tale of sex, violence and a young girl crossing the color line. It was raw, gripping, sad and triumphant, tracing the heroine's successful escape from an environment of abandonment, abuse, poverty and gangs. It was supposed to be true.

Not a word of it was.

Alumna Stacey Patton in The Washington Post on the Margaret Seltzer memoir hoax

As infomercials move into mainstream TV, heed these tips to avoid scams.

Alumna Gergana Koleva writes about infomercial scams and how consumers can protect themselves from being hoodwinked by them. Dow Jones MarketWatch.com, January 21, 2008

CRC alumna Kathryn Joyce looks at how U.S. religious right activists are seizing on immigration anxieties and falling "Western" birth rates in European countries as an opportunity to export U.S. culture war tactics abroad. The Nation, March 3, 2008.

CRC alumna Meline Toumani reports from Turkey on the Kurdish crisis and one man's attempt at multiculturalism. The New York Times Magazine, February 17, 2008.

INSIDE The Chelsea Hotel (Powerhouse Books) by acclaimed photographer and NYU Department of Journalism alumna Julia Calfee releases the end of March and promises a glimpse of the iconic Chelsea Hotel not seen before and not likely to be seen again.

That garden stone, handmade carpet or embroidered T-shirt you just bought was probably made by child labor.

Portfolio alumna Megha Bahree's report for Forbes on child labor in India.

Where have all the nurses gone?

A shortened version of alum Barnaby Lo's documentary on the flight of medical professionals from the Phillipines is featured on the PBS Frontline "Rough Cut" site. Lo originally created the piece for the Advanced News and Documentary class at NYU, and it was part of the New Docs: The 2007 Graduate Film Festival.

Alumna Shomial Ahmad with an audio piece on an unlikely business: a North Texas butcher shop busy with orders for the Muslim holiday Eid ul Adha. First run on NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday.

Rumor had it that a crocodile lived at JFK Airport — an anonymous source spilled the beans.

Alumna Sabine Heinlein searches the tropics of eastern Queens in the Dec 2007/Jan 2008 issue of The Brooklyn Rail.

Alumna Freda Moon reports on the tensions between cabbies and owners in the New Haven Advocate.

In pushing its free-trade pact with Colombia, the administration is arguing for an anchor of democracy and capitalism in an increasingly hostile region.

CRC and Portfolio alum Adam Graham-Silverman with a cover story in the December 3, 2007 issue of CQ Weekly. Download as PDF (570K)

NE Charter School Uses Innovative Program to Combat Teen Pregnancy

Inside one young man's quest to remain in New York City, rather than be returned to the violent setting he fled by foot nearly two years ago.

GLOJO alumna Gabriela Reardon in the November 26, 2007 City Limits.

A special report for MarketWatch from Portfolio alumna Polya Lesova looks at how military and political developments are affecting Turkey's economy and rising profile in world markets. The package consists of multiple articles and a video overview.

Alumni Dustin Roasa writes from Cambodia for The American Scholar, Autumn 2007.

Pakistan has been in turmoil for months, and its nascent television news industry has been following each twist and turn of the historical drama. But this weekend, President Musharraff announced he would put Pakistan's democracy on hold, and he is doing his best to put blinders on television news as well. He will have his hands full.

Portfolio alumni Shahan Mufti in the Columbia Journalism Review.

Why the home of a freed slave should be kept where it stands.

Alumna Stacey Patton's Op-Ed in The New York Times.

Yale vs. Roomba: The feud that fried a famous restaurant.

Alumna Freda Moon's cover story on the saga of a six-year property battle between two hard-working restaurateurs and the city's most important institution, Yale University. In the New Haven (Connecticut) Advocate.

All over the sprawling Salt Lake suburbs, the writing’s on the wall(s).

Portfolio alum Jonah Owen Lamb explores the wide world of "graf" in the suburbs of Salt Lake City for the Salt Lake City Weekly.

Former black revolutionary Watani Stiner turned himself in to San Quentin so his children could come to America. Was it worth it?

Matthew Fleischer, a Portfolio alum, with the cover story for the August 22, 2007 issue of LA Weekly.

"4,000 ultra-conservative, largely home-schooling Christians gathered to correct a month-old mistake: to do Jamestown right."

Alumna -- and Revealer editor -- Kathryn Joyce's Newsweek.com debut, a great piece about a fundamentalist celebration of Jamestown's 400th anniversary.

Dan Bell, a CRC alum from England looks at sharia law in the backstreets of Britain, and how Islamic courts are ruling on everything from banking and alcopops to forced marriage and divorce, in The Guardian's G2.

Some drugs approved to treat HIV may also protect people not infected with HIV if taken before they engage in high-risk activities. Then why has it been so difficult to conduct the necessary studies to prove—or disprove—the theory?

Portfolio alum Adam Graham-Silverman in the June 2007 issue of POZ.

Marlo Donald was kicked off Social Security for kicking someone almost 20 years ago. The bizarre tale of a "fugitive felon."

Alumna Freda Moon on the Social Security Administration's "Fugitive Felon Program," the cover story in the April 26, 2007 New Haven (Connecticut) Advocate.

A proposed power plant in Sevier County threatens a local lifestyle and the air all of us breathe.

Portfolio alum Jonah Owen Lamb on a local community's fight to keep a proposed power plant from being built in their valley, in the Salt Lake City Weekly.

The overwhelming majority of the military funerals...are for World War II veterans, a generation that is dying nationwide at the rate of 1,600 per day

David K. Randall on the U.S. Army's Honor Guard in The New York Times.

Some of the country's top experts on "re-entry" share their thoughts on success for those who have served their time.

Alumna Sabine Heinlein in the April 23, 2007 City Limits.

"A New Calling"

In Afghanistan a private mobile phone company is wiring a devastated country—and daring to put women to work.

Portfolio alumna Megha Bahree reports from Afghanistan for Forbes.

The Miles for Smiles clinic delivers the dental care rural kids need — right to their doorstep.

Due to the low number of dentists in the state, Maine is considered to be an underserved state when it comes to oral hygiene. Alumna Melanie Brooks looks at one of the more interesting efforts to improve services, in the Bangor Metro.

Once the definitive voice on current events, network news fights to be heard over new media cacophony.

Alum David Puner looks at the dinosaurs of TV news and where things might be going, in GOOD Magazine, "media for people who give a damn."

Alum Dustin Roasa relates run-ins with the censors while working as a journalist in Vietnam, in the January/February 2007 issue of CJR.

New Haven's mayor wants to shut down five black neighborhood bars because they are "hot spots" for trouble. But crime data tell a different story.

Alumna Freda Moon on the complicated relations between crime, race and politics, in a cover story for the New Haven (Connecticut) Advocate.

Grad Tim Stelloh in The Advocate on the not unusual [anywhere] disagreements among tenants, landlords and the federal government in Norwalk, Connecticut.

To understand why the playground of Beirut has again become a battleground, look beyond the myth-making biographies of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Alumna Annia Ciezadlo writes for The Nation on the ongoing developments in Beirut two years after the assassination of Rafik Hariri. More of Annia's work can also be found on her website.

"Lord of the Skies"

If you're doing business in Afghanistan, you need a powerful patron. Few people know this better than Zamarai Kamgar, president of the nation's first private airline, whose family has survived the British, the Soviets and the Taliban.

Portfolio alumna Megha Bahree reports from Afghanistan for Forbes.

Greenpoint's bums are a tragicomic reminder of the risks and temptations of the idle life. A life with plenty of time, a life without purpose, money, or hope.

Alumna Sabine Heinlein celebrates some of the less-celebrated residents of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, in the February 2007 Brooklyn Rail.

Arctic melting accelerates, revealing uncharted islands and threatening to raise sea levels all over the world.

Recent graduate John Collins Rudolf on signs of a warming earth in the Science Times section of The New York Times.

These dichotomies - athlete/intellectual, fierce fighter/ nurturer, Harvard-educated economist/African leader, technocrat/feminist - are what give Ms. Johnson-Sirleaf a unique perspective, both as the leader of Liberia and as the first democratically elected female head of state on the continent.

Alumna Ruthie Ackerman in The Christian Science Monitor.

A landmark church hangs on as the old meets the new.

Alumna Melanie Brooks on a landmark church and the group of women who have kept it alive for decades, in New Jersey's The Star-Ledger.

Alumna Shomial Ahmad writes in Newsday on Christian Palestinians in Long Island, NY, and their connections to their "old" and "new" homes.

Alumni Allen Salkin in The New York Times on the success, and questions raised, by "Dateline NBC" and the group they work with to track potential child predators online (and get big ratings).

The renowned photographer's snapshots of her partner Susan Sontag and of her family, exhibited for the first time, are shocking in their intimacy -- but they should have stayed inside that shoe box.

Recent alumna Sarah Karnasiewicz in Salon.

"Upgrading"

Immigrant Asians, especially Indians, have quietly grabbed a big piece of America's lodging industry. Increasingly, they are standing out.

Portfolio alumna Megha Bahree with a cover story for Forbes Asia.

There's a new youth movement afoot in this country. It's a counterculture fusion of politics and pop, and it's taking over a high school near you. Like the waves that came before it, it's got passion, music, and anti-authority posturing, but more than anything else, this one has God. So what does it mean when today's youth counterculture has a mindset more akin to Jerry Falwell's than Abbie Hoffman's?

CRC alumna Lauren Sandler reports from this junction of Evangelicalism and youth culture, traveling across the country to investigate the alternative Christian explosion. Righteous is her first book.

Alumna Annia Ciezadlo reports from Beirut, Lebanon for both The Nation and The New Republic, recently covering dreams deferred, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's bid to lead global jihad (subscription), and connections between Lebanon and Iraq (subscription).

More of Annia's writings from Beirut can be found at her TNR Author page.

"One year we were looking for it and it wasn't there," said Roxie Shamburger, president of the American Gospel Quartet Convention. "It was just something that I loved and looked forward to. People really missed it when it went away. I got so many calls asking, 'When is the gospel coming back?'"

"Tragedy, again"

Volunteer firefighter and Floral Park senior who responded to a crash that killed four young people dies

Alumna Shomial Ahmad covers a tragedy on Long Island for Newsday.

"Each one shows their cultural dance," Nureen Abuzahria explained. "But guess which dance they all know? The American dancing! The hip-hop! Usher comes on and they all know what to do! It joins them together. God bless America!"

SHERP alumna Emily Hager profiles scientist Douglas Wilson, a geophysicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who last November led a team of 120 scientists and crew members to a spot 500 miles off Costa Rica and two miles beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean. From the May 16, 2006 Science section of The New York Times.

Recent graduate Anna Boluda's documentary Queer Spawn will be broadcast in June on channel thirteen/WNET during the June LGBT Pride programming. It is scheduled for June 15th at 10.30pm.

The documentary has been selected for eleven festivals(!) so far, including the Brisbane Queer Film Festival (Australia), George Stickel Festival of Moving Images (New Jersey), Q Cinema (LGBT festival in Fort Worth, Texas) and OUT OK (LGBT festival in Oklahoma).

Synopsis: There are over 10 million children with gay or lesbian parents in the United States. More than the entire population of New York City. In this insightful and interesting documentary we meet several teenagers and find out what they think. Do they feel extra pressure? Are they gay themselves? (30 mins).

NYU Journalism alum John Simerman ('94) is the 2006 recipient of ASNE's Jesse Laventhol Prize for Deadline News Reporting by an Individual. Simerman, a reporter at the Contra Costa Times, wrote his prize-winning story "bleary-eyed" at 3am after having witnessed the midnight execution of Stanley "Tookie" Williams at San Quentin State Prison on December 13, 2005.

One of only seventeen print and broadcast journalists selected to witness the execution, Simerman's 600 word news story is a chilling piece of reportage, written in plain, dispassionate language. It's a style he owes to his old NYU professor Michael Norman, who Simerman credits for teaching him the technique: "Witness the liberal use of the simple declarative sentence in this story: This is the Norman curse, rearing its head 12 years later at 3 a.m., when defenses are weak." Professor Norman learning of his former student's recent success had these declarative statements of his own. "John was always a strong writer and aggressive reporter, devoted to accuracy and to the great virtues of the simple declarative sentence. His award-winning story, written on an extreme deadline, is sensational."

Rearing back like a raging snake, the woman hisses and writhes on the floor. Another divine match. Haitian weddings, with a sprinkling of voodoo.

Alumna Annia Ciezadlo reports from Lebanon for The New Republic on Beirut's cartoon riots, and the rise of Sunni militants in Lebanon.

In New York's expensive and competitive housing market, many landlords seeking higher rents have become more aggressive in trying to evict older tenants.

The High Line, the West Side railroad that will soon be a park, has a 72-year history as intriguing as its future.

Did a struggling white writer of gay erotica become one of multicultural literature's most celebrated memoirists—by passing himself off as Native American?

Portfolio alum Matthew Fleischer writes a feature article for LA Weekly, in a prodigiously researched piece in which he casts doubt on the identity of a critically-acclaimed memoirist, Nasdijj, whose many hard-luck claims include Navajo ancestry. Coming out as James Frey, JT Leroy, and other "memoirists" who have exaggerated their personal stories are in the news, Matthew's piece has seen wide circulation and recognition.