Features

Stanford launches journalism internship

Thursday November 21, 2002

STANFORD — A new internship honoring slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl is designed to give Stanford University students an opportunity to work overseas and emulate his stories and ideals. 

The Daniel Pearl Memorial Journalism Internship will be awarded annually to an outstanding student journalist in Stanford’s undergraduate or graduate programs. The intern will work in a foreign bureau of a major U.S. newspaper. 

The Wall Street Journal will serve as the partner newspaper for the first few years, said James Bettinger, director of the Knight journalism fellowships and professor of communications. 

“We wanted to do something that followed in Daniel Pearl’s footsteps” and emphasize ordinary people rather than those in positions of power, Bettinger said. 

The Journal will pay the intern’s salary. Travel and associated costs will come from Stanford’s Daniel Pearl Memorial Fund, which opened with an anonymous donation after Pearl’s death became public. The fund now has grown to $100,000, Bettinger said. Stanford hopes the initial intern will head overseas in 2003. 

Pearl graduated from Stanford’s communications department in 1985. He was abducted in January at age 38 while on his way to interview a Muslim fundamentalist leader in Pakistan. A month later, his captors released a videotape of his slaying.