URL: https://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld
BOSTON--(COLLEGIATE PRESSWIRE)--Oct 13, 2004--Whether beset by devastating floods or stifling drought, the people of Haiti are persistently plagued by the lack of an adequate, reliable water system. More than 60 percent of Haitians do not have access to clean water, a problem further complicated by the floodwaters and devastation left in the wake of Hurricane Jeanne.
''For most people in Haiti, getting water for drinking, washing, cooking, cleaning, and bathing is a daily struggle,'' says Shoshana Guy, who traveled to Haiti last July to report on the crisis. ''All over the island, wherever I looked, people were searching, hustling, even begging for the water they needed.''
Guy, a recent graduate of Columbia University`s Graduate School of Journalism, spent three weeks in Haiti as part of a fellowship program sponsored by the PBS series FRONTLINE/World. Like the broadcast series, FRONTLINE/World Fellows report international news stories not widely covered by the mainstream media and offer vivid, first-person journeys of discovery. The Fellows project is a finalist for this year`s Online Journalism Award for Enterprise Journalism.
''With various translators in tow, I walked the streets of Port-au-Prince, hiked mountain trails, bumped over washed-out roads, and visited hospitals and slums,'' Guy reports in her online diary. ''I spoke with environmentalists and impoverished mothers, big business owners and boys hawking goods in the streets; always looking for water.''
Guy is one of seven fellows who will publish their Web-exclusive reports this fall on the FRONTLINE/World Web site. In addition to the Haiti story, the site will feature a report from University of California at Berkeley student Roya Aziz, who returned to her native Afghanistan to report on the historic presidential elections. According to Aziz, many Afghans view the elections not as a choice for a particular candidate, but a vote for popular participation and political security.
''The presidential elections will show that the gun no longer has the first word,'' Jawed Koestani, president of the Freedom and Justice Movement tells Aziz. Placing his pistol on the table, the political party leader adds, ''Politics and dialogue will take its place.''
Commissioned exclusively for the Web, the fellows reports offer a unique opportunity for experimentation in online journalism that includes interactive storytelling punctuated by photography, streaming video, and slideshows. Additional fellows reports on the site or coming soon include:
* Hungarian journalist Marton Dunai takes readers on a journey by train across Europe, retracing the route of the legendary Orient Express and discovering that the lines between ''Old'' and ''New'' Europe are slowing fading.
* Student filmmakers Sachi Cunningham and Jigar Mehta bring visitors along the recently re-opened Muzaffarabad Road linking the Indian and Pakistani sectors of Kashmir.
* Recent graduate Brent McDonald travels to Guatemala to report on a country still trying to come to terms with its violent past.
* Chinese journalist Xiaoli Zhou journeys to the remote and beautiful Lugu Lake district in China to explore a little known, thousand-year-old matriarchal culture where the women raise children largely without the father`s involvement.
Now in its second year, the FRONTLINE/World Fellows program is designed to nurture new voices in international reporting by using the Web as a publishing platform for outstanding work from a new generation of journalists. The program was launched in collaboration with the University of California at Berkeley graduate school of journalism and has recently expanded to include graduate journalism students from Columbia University. Site visitors can access the full archive of FRONTLINE/World Fellows reports and learn more about the program at:
https://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/fellows.html
For an international perspective on the U.S. presidential election, visitors can also explore FRONTLINE/World�s online election project ''Dispatches from a Small Planet: Election 2004.'' Published each Tuesday through the election, the dispatches feature stories from both student journalists and recent graduates as well as award-winning veterans such as Stephen Talbot and Orville Schell.
FRONTLINE/World is a co-production of WGBH/Boston and KQED/San Francisco and is broadcast nationwide on PBS and PBS.org. Funding for the FRONTLINE/World Fellows Program and ''Dispatches from a Small Planet: Election 2004'' is provided through the support of PBS viewers and the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
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