Kate Nocera was one of three BuzzFeed News journalists honored by the National Press Foundation recently. Ms. Nocera and colleagues Gregory Johnsen, and John Stanton received an Everett McKinley Dirksen Award for Distinguished Coverage of Congress for their piece “60 Words and A War Without End.”

According to a press release by BuzzFeed, the NPF judges said: “BuzzFeed’s 10,500-word article is a magisterial account of a 60-word congressional resolution, the vaguely worded language that authorized military action against the ‘nations, organizations, or persons’ deemed responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The consequences of that resolution, passed with only a single dissenting vote, continue to reverberate across the globe. BuzzFeed captures the historic drama of that moment and all that has happened since, from Capitol Hill to the offices of Executive Branch lawyers to the targets of U.S. commando attacks in Libya and Somalia. The details are unforgettable—and so is the unsparing focus on how the Bush and Obama administrations have each used these 60 words, ‘unbound by time and unlimited by geography,’ to wage a global war with no clear rules and no visible end.”

Ms. Nocera is the senior congressional correspondent for Buzzfeed, and has worked for the New York Daily News and Politico.

If you’ve seen a recent copy of the Washington Post or New York Times, then you’ve probably also seen the incredible work of photographer Ilana Panich-Linsman ’02. The Texan-based photographer and her intimate style—which requires Ms. Panich-Linsman to gain an incredible amount of trust from her subjects—were profiled recently in American Photo’s One to Watch series.

Among Ms. Panich-Linsman’s long-term projects: “The Tree and the Apple,” a series on a young member of the beauty-pageant industry, “My Two Moms,” on a parenting partnership in rural New York; “Limbo,” on the the lives of Iraqi women refugees in Jordan; “Martha,” which chronicled the final weeks of a pancreatic-cancer patient in hospice.

Describing the long-term projects as both “empathetic” and “deriv[ing] much of its strength from its unflinching honesty,” the article quoted Ms. Panich-Linsman as saying she’s glad that her photography starts conversations.

“Some people think that I’m glamorizing [the pageant world] and others think I’m condemning it,” she told American Photo. “The goal of a photojournalist is to do neither, right? To be straightforward and tell the story in a visually interesting way. It’s like walking a tightrope: You don’t want to fall off in either direction.”

See more of her work here.

On Tuesday, January 27, I had dinner with Sebastien Bonnot ’08, Shamanth D’Souza ’10, Christine McBride ’92, Hudson Coley ’08, and his girlfriend Emma at Capdeville, a fabulous little restaurant that was recommended by Christine.

This was a lot of fun and the food was simply outstanding.  I had duck and strawberry wontons along with mac and cheese with truffle oil!

The funniest part of the evening was when Christine and Sebastian both realized that they worked for the same events company, Solomon Group.  They spent a while talking shop and who they worked with.

Sebastian came to Williston Northampton as result of Hurricane Katrina.  When the storm displaced all the kids here, Williston Northampton took Sebastian in.  After his sophomore year, he left to return to New Orleans, but quickly realized his school wasn’t being rebuilt quickly, so he came back as a midyear boarder and ended up graduating from Williston Northampton  He now does events management.

Continue reading →