Willkommen. I am a German-American journalist working on the issues of business, technology, science and societies, culture and trauma (and yes that includes international development.) I engage diverse communities on these subjects through writing, talks, events, education initiatives, consulting and leadership. I’m a board member @Riffreporter, a journalism start up. I also organize journalism conferences, and work with institutions such as the Boston Marathon Bombing Resiliency Center and the National Alliance on Mental Illness on media literacy for survivors, advocates and law enforcement.
Over the past two decades, my work has been featured in The Boston Globe, Time magazine, Nieman Reports, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Folio/Neue Zuercher Zeitung, GEO, Familie & Co. and other publications on both sides of the Atlantic.
From 2006 to 2014, I ran a variety of programs at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, including Nieman’s Trauma Journalism Program, a specialized fellowship in Global Health Reporting and topical conferences on subjects such as immigration or Secrecy and Journalism in the New Media Age.
Here are some of the things I’ve done or do:
I’ve had the privilege to direct the Nieman Foundation’s efforts to strengthen and improve Global Health Reporting and to work with accomplished journalists focusing on poverty, development and health. This program for six years produced exemplary reporting on the subject, in its later years in collaboration with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. I continue to try and build community among those around the world who aim to tell these stories.
Other Nieman projects include the 75th anniversary and reunion in fall 2013; conceiving and editing a cover package for Nieman Reports on Truth in the Age of Social Media; conferences on subjects such as Press Freedom in Latin America, or an online guide for journalists covering pandemic flu, coveringflu.org
Starting Nieman’s Trauma Journalism program with support from the Dart Foundation in 2006, I created projects such as an interdisciplinary conference on trauma, journalism and storytelling (in collaboration with the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma) and a workshop bringing together victim advocates and crime reporters.
I teach media literacy, for example at the Massachusetts Victim Assistance Academy, and assist in the development of training materials, such as these tip sheets on covering domestic violence or this case study on a school shooting in Winnenden, Germany (in German).
So, how did I get here?
I crossed the Atlantic in 1998, to work as a freelance correspondent and science writer out of Cambridge, Mass. for European media. Prior to that, I was news editor and editor of the Sunday Magazine at BZ, one of several newspapers fighting for market share in Berlin in the decade after the fall of the wall.
I had come to Berlin from Hamburg, where I’d been a feature writer for various publications, from Europe’s largest tabloid (BILD am Sonntag) to a magazine start-up within the publishing house Gruner & Jahr. I was able to launch this career in no small part due to the great training I received as a trainee at the regional newspaper Ruhr Nachrichten, where I rotated through eight newsrooms in five different cities.
I have spent a transformative year at Harvard as a 2001 Nieman fellow, studying among other things molecular biology, philosophy of science and how the Internet is changing our species, from social behavior on- and offline to children’s ideas about the world (the latter with the great Sherry Turkle.)
I live in Cambridge, Mass. with my husband and two children (7 and 10).
You can contact me at scf@stefaniefriedhoff.com or via twitter @stefanie2000
