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By contributing to Arthur F. Burns Fellowships, Inc., you allow us to make a difference for German and American journalists, their news organizations and their audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. To make a tax-deductible donation please contact Burns.
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Biography
Deborah Kolben is a reporter and editor based in New York. She has previously worked for the New York Daily News, The New York Sun, and the Village Voice and has written for the New York Times, Financial Times, the New York Post, and the Guardian. Deborah got her start covering cops and community boards for the Brooklyn Papers where she learned how to write 12 stories a week. She moved on to the Daily News where she honed her skills chasing dead bodies and real estate developers. At the New York Sun, she covered the country’s largest school system before becoming the paper’s city editor. From there, she moved on to become the managing editor at the Village Voice. A New York City native, Deborah earned a M.A. from Johns Hopkins University and a B.A. from the University of Michigan. She is excited to put her reporting skills to use in Germany and hopes to learn what it takes to do radio or television while she’s there.
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Burns Fellowship: Final Report
In the days leading up to my fellowship, I had been corresponding with one of the editors at Deutsche Welle. Our emails had been fairly formal, so I was a bit surprised when the editor appeared in an old flannel shirt and ripped jeans. It was the first day of the Russian-Georgian crisis. The editor showed me to a computer and simply explained: “Today is very busy, perhaps we can talk later.”
The operation for the online department is split between Bonn and Berlin with the majority of the staff in Bonn. During the summer there is often just one person in Berlin. And that day, he was it.
The “later” that he mentioned, never came. I sat for several hours reading the DW website. From what I could tell, there was very little original content. Most of the stories were pulled from wire service, translated into English, and formatted to fit the DW style. At the end of the day I said goodbye and was informed that I could come in the next day—but nobody would be there.
After a week, I realized that if I wanted to get something out of the fellowship I would have to really push.
The online and radio departments at Deutsche Welle are about to merge. It’s been a drawn out process that probably should have happened years ago. As a part of the merger, the online department must be trained in how to produce r adio. This was good for me. I had originally requested to work on the radio side, but I was told that there were no radio positions. So, I asked to join the radio training in Berlin. This ended up being the most beneficial part of my fellowship.
A wonderful radio reporter who works for both NPR and DW conducted a two-day workshop for me and two other editors. On the first day, we discussed the differences between print and radio and read through a number of radio scripts. On the second day, we were sent out into Berlin to report and put together our own radio piece.
A city minister had recently complained that it was cruel to keep bears in the middle of Berlin. Unlike Knut, Berlin’s favorite cuddly bear, these brown bears live in Kollnischer Park, a small and seldom-visited public space in Berlin. We put together a three-minute radio piece on the subject.
After that training, I traveled to Bonn to meet with some of the radio editors. While there, I learned about a camp in the middle of nowhere—a 20-minute walk down a dirt road from the closest train station. There, 30 Palestinian and 30 Israeli young people had been brought to hash out a plan for peace.
For two weeks, they ate together, played together, and fought together. In between trips to places like Phantasialand, they were forced to sit together and hash out a plan for peace. I spent three days with them, recording their progress, their arguments, and their stories. An Israeli woman talked about a friend who was blown up in a café in Tel Aviv. A Palestinian man vented about being imprisoned in an Israeli prison and then having his land taken from him.
I turned the reporting into a six-minute radio piece for Inside Europe, an English language radio program on Deutsche Welle. It took a lot of pushing to find people who could help me on the technical side.
Now that the fellowship is over I’m staying in Berlin for another year. I’m already working on two more pieces for Inside Europe and hope to keep up a relationship with them while I’m here.
Deutsche Welle may become a more interesting placement in the following year once the merger has already happened.
Published Stories from the Fellowship
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 Days after moving to Berlin from Brooklyn this summer, I fell into a deep funk. It was the kind of can’t-get-out-of-bed depression where at 5 p.m. you realize that you haven’t left the apartment all day — except once, and that was to get a donner kebab, the pervasive Turkish street food and Berlin’s answer to the New York slice. I knew that outside, out in Berlin, there were galleries to see and cafés to idyll in, but I couldn’t bring myself to leave. It all just seemed so gray, vast and empty. I was realizing that Berlin, with all its heavy history, could do this to a person.
Read More...
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 WAKING up in a strange hotel can be disorienting. Now imagine staying down the hall from 60 cows, 2 goats and a baby rabbit. Oh, and you’re sleeping on a pile of hay.
Read More...
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For U.S. Applicants
Address (USA):
International Center for Journalists (ICFJ)
1616 H Street, NW, Third Floor
Washington, D.C. 20006
Tel: 1-202-737-3700
Fax: 1-202-737-0530
Email: burns@icfj.org |
For German Applicants
Address (Germany):
Internationale Journalisten-Programme
(IJP) e. V.
Postfach 1565
D-61455 Königstein/Taunus
Tel: 49-6174-7707
Fax: 49-6174-4123
Email: info@ijp.org |
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