Among the five fellows are one of China's leading journalists, the former London bureau chief for National Public Radio, and a U.S. Army historian. The fellows will spend the spring researching and preparing papers on several timely issues, including the role of the British press in keeping the Clinton scandal alive, the effect of former president John F. Kennedy's speeches on policy formation and the press in the 1960s, and the birth of a new journalism in China.

The Visiting Lombard Professor, Wolfgang Donsbach, a professor of communication at the Dresden University of Technology in Germany, will teach a course at the Kennedy School on "Journalists and the Political Process."

"Once again, the Shorenstein Center has attracted an extraordinary mix of fellows and scholars," said Marvin Kalb, director of the Center. "I am fascinated by the prospect of a Chinese journalist from Beijing exchanging impressions with an American journalist from London, a military historian from Washington with a presidential scholar from Pennsylvania State University, and a German scholar from Dresden University with a policy analyst from Romania. Their differences in perspective and approach should encourage lively and insightful research and deliberation."

The 1999 Spring Fellows are:

Thomas Benson teaches rhetoric, political communication, and media criticism at Pennsylvania State University. Benson's recent essays have considered such topics as the rhetoric of public memory, the Hollywood blacklist, the uses of the Internet in the formation of civil and political culture, Gerald Ford's Watergate rhetoric, FDR at Gettysburg, and political ghostwriting. Benson's research project examines the relationship of presidential speechwriting to speechmaking, policy formation, and the press -- with special emphasis on the presidency of John F. Kennedy.

Michael Goldfarb was the London bureau chief for National Public Radio (NPR) until February 1999. He has been filing for NPR's foreign desk since 1991 on British politics, the monarchy, Northern Ireland, European culture, and the conflicts in Bosnia and Iraqi Kurdistan. In 1993, Goldfarb returned to the United States and traveled throughout the Midwest. The resulting series of programs, Homeward Bound, won Britain's Sony Award for Best Writing for Radio. Goldfarb will examine the role of the British press in keeping the Clinton scandals alive.

William Hammond is a senior historian with the U.S. Army's Center of Military History. His published works include two volumes in the Army's history of the Vietnam War titled Public Affairs: The Military and the Media. Hammond is an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland where he teaches courses on the history of the U.S. news media and on the Vietnam War. Hammond's research project will describe in detail the process the Army used to accredit reporters in Vietnam.

Xiguang Li, senior editor and director of the political and cultural desk at Xinhua News Agency, was elected as one of the top 100 Chinese journalists by the Chinese Association of Journalists in 1995. Over the past five years, he has received more than 40 press awards, which include the first prize for National Best Disaster Stories (1988), and first prize for National Best Science Stories (1994). Li worked as a visiting journalist at The Washington Post in 1995. During that time, he became interested in the American media coverage of China, which culminated in a co-authored book called Demonizing China. Inspired by President Clinton's June 1998 visit to China, Li wrote How Bad Is China? His research project will focus on the birth of a new journalism in a market-oriented new China.

Alina Pippidi-Mungiu is a Romanian journalist and political author. After the fall of Romanian president Nicolae Ceausescu, Pippidi-Mungiu left a career in medicine and became a full-time journalist and political author. She was editor-in-chief of the national news weekly Expres and news director of Romanian Public Television. She teaches political psychology at the National School of Politics and Administration in Romania and founded the only Romanian public policy-oriented think tank, the Center for Institutional Reform. Pippidi-Mungiu authored Romanians after '89. She will examine television reform in East-Central Europe.

This semester's Visiting Lombard Professor is Wolfgang Donsbach, a professor of communication and director of the Department of Communication at the Dresden University of Technology. His research interests are primarily in the study of political communication, particularly the role of journalists in a comparative perspective. He also has done extensive research on people's exposure to political news. Donsbach received his Ph.D. from the University of Mainz, Germany. He was president of the World Association for Public Opinion Research and division chairman of Political Communication in the International Communication Association.

The Laurence M. Lombard Professorship was established by the family and friends of Laurence M. Lombard, a director of the Dow Jones Company for 28 years, to help build a substantial body of knowledge concerning the interaction of media and politics.

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