Willkommen. I am a German-American journalist, educator and innovative storyteller with 25+ years of experience in international media and higher education. My work is positioned at the intersections of science, technology, health, migration, education, culture and trauma. I engage diverse communities on these subjects through storytelling, talks, events, consulting and leadership. Current or recent projects include:
- trauma workshops for journalists (e.g @JAWS, @RJI)
- journalism start-up support (e.g. @RiffReporter)
- innovation in STEM-education (e.g. @aceraschool, @OneBraveIdea)
- critical incident analysis (e.g. with the Academy for Critical Incident Analysis @JohnJayCollege)
- media literacy for survivors, their advocates, and law enforcement (e.g. @NAMI, @Boston Resiliency Center)
- stewardship (e.g. @TrustForTraumajournalism)
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 and other publications on both sides of the Atlantic.
My time at the Nieman Foundation
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.
At Nieman, I’ve had the privilege to direct the 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.
How I got 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 a national women’s magazine to a new media start-up within the publishing house Gruner & Jahr to Europe’s largest tabloid (BILD am Sonntag). I was able to launch this career in no small part due to the great training I received as a trainee at the regional Westfalian 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 Medford, Mass. with my husband and two children (11 and 14).
You can contact me at scf@stefaniefriedhoff.com or via twitter @stefanie2000
