Karen Rothmyer is a Knight International Journalism Fellow who trained journalists in Tanzania and Kenya to report on previously ignored issues like health, the environment and poverty.

Rothmyer decided to become a journalist after starting a school newspaper in Kenya, where she served in the Peace Corps. For the past eight years she has been managing editor of The Nation, the largest-circulating U.S. magazine of political commentary.

Previously she worked as a reporter and/or editor at news organizations including Newsday and the Wall Street Journal. She also taught for several years at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia, wrote a book about the Pulitzer Prizes and won an IRE award for investigative reporting.

This was her second Knight fellowship; she spent five months (2005-6) in Kenya, where she taught at the University of Nairobi and conducted newsroom workshops.