Annual reception and awards ceremony — all alumni invited to attend!
Help us celebrate what has been a fantastic year for the RIAS Berlin Commission! You’re all invited to two big alumni reunion events this week in Berlin – on May 17 and May 18. The 2018 RIAS media prize awards ceremony will be held on Thursday, starting at 7 pm followed by the annual reception afterwards starting about 8:30 p.m. There will also be two big reunion events for U.S.-based fellows at the RTDNA EIJ conference in Baltimore, Maryland on September 28 and 29.
In Berlin this year, we would also like to invite you to a panel discussion and RIAS alumni reunion the following evening on May 18, starting at 4 p.m. The topic of the panel discussion is: “How has the work of foreign correspondents (from Germany) in the United States changed since the election of Donald Trump?” The panel will feature the prize winners based in the United States. That will be held in the Glashalle of the RIAS Funkhaus on the ground floor. Following that all alumni are invited to take part in a reunion buffet dinner at the Pustenblume restaurant and beer garden.
Please do let us know at info@darkseagreen-dog-940501.hostingersite.com if you will be able to attend either or both events. Thanks again for all your efforts to help us build up our alumni network and thanks to those of you who been making annual donations to help strengthen RIAS. Building up the alumni network with some 1,600 Germans and Americans in it is really one of the most important things we’re doing right now and we really appreciate your efforts with the local alumni chapters created in recent months in Cologne, Berlin, Hamburg, Washington DC, New York City and now Mainz-Frankfurt.
It has truly been a great year well worth celebrating, as some of the pictures here illustrate. There have been rising numbers applicants as well as rising numbers of participants from both the United States and Germany — thanks in part to your donations and your tireless efforts to help keep costs down. There have been 14 journalists taking part on each trip across the Atlantic this year — up from 10 in 2016 and 12 in 2017.
RIAS Berlin Commission fellows have had many eye-opening meetings with the acting US ambassador to Germany, Kent Logsdon, and the German ambassador to the United States — along with Congressmen and New Jersey governor Phil Murphy, who in a previous post as US ambassador to Germany was an enthusiastic supporter of RIAS Berlin Commission.
We are hoping that more regional alumni chapters can get started in 2018 — please let us know if you’re interested in organising a local chapter in your area. There are many alumni from over the last 25 years who are based in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Chicago, Munich and Leipzig. Ideally, the regional chapters will connect with each other and set the groundwork for more individual exchanges.
