About Brave Old World Columbia News21

In 2010, Columbia’s News21 team traveled to the Los Angeles suburbs and the Montana wilderness, to the land of 10,000 lakes and the Deep South, reporting on the seismic demographic shift as the United States becomes a more elderly nation.

We talked to gerontologists, academic and medical researchers, service and advocacy groups, older Americans and their families to learn about the emotional, physical and cognitive experience of aging. Our stories — told through text, video, photos, graphics and experiential simulations, plus one animated cartoon — portray the aging America of today and tomorrow.

Our project is part of the Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education, led by 12 of America’s leading universities and supported by two major foundations.  Eight schools create News21 incubators, annual national reporting projects overseen by campus professors and distributed nationally through both traditional and innovative media.  Visit projects by our partner schools: Arizona State, Berkeley, Maryland, North Carolina, Northwestern, Southern California and Syracuse.

Reporters

  • Alex Berg
  • Connor Boals
  • Patrick Egan
  • Aaron James
  • Abigail Jones
  • Sharaf Mowjood
  • Sherisse Pham
  • Mary Plummer
  • Nushin Rashidian
  • Scott Sell
  • Josh Tapper

Editors

  • Paula Span - Executive Editor
  • Duy Linh Tu - Multimedia Editor
  • Karen Stabiner - Editor
  • Alan Haburchak - Web Editor
  • Adam Glenn - Social Media Editor