FRONTLINE Announces 2023-2024 Columbia Journalism Fellows

BOSTON, MA — Thu., Sept. 21, 2023 — This fall, FRONTLINE (PBS) welcomes its newest cohort of journalism fellows from Columbia Journalism School: Kaela Malig and Inci Sayki. Malig and Sayki represent FRONTLINE’s ninth cohort of journalism fellows from Columbia University. Their year-long fellowships aim to expose emerging investigative journalists to FRONTLINE’s award-winning approach to documentary storytelling, immersing fellows into all phases of the series’ reporting and production process. Their fellowships are generously supported by The Tow Foundation and Keith Goggin. Malig joins FRONTLINE as a Tow Journalism fellow. She holds a master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism with a focus on investigative reporting, foreign correspondence and video journalism. While at Columbia, she was a Brigid O’Hara-Forster and Association of Foreign Press Correspondents scholar and was awarded an Overseas Press Club scholarship and duPont Awards fellowship. 

Before Columbia, Malig reported on the bloody Philippine drug war and the orphaned children it left behind. A four-time Society of Publishers Asia Awards for Editorial Excellence winner, she interned for Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa’s news outlet Rappler and reported for The Washington Post and CNN before working for the Philippines’ biggest broadcast company.

Sayki joins FRONTLINE as a Goggin Journalism Fellow. She completed her master’s degree at the Columbia Journalism School with a focus on investigative and social justice reporting, as well as a minor focus on data journalism. 

Sayki previously covered daily news for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, investigated money in politics for OpenSecrets and reported stories for various New York-based publications.  She holds a bachelor’s degree in politics, philosophy and economics from the University of Manchester. She is originally from Istanbul, Turkey, where she gained hands-on reporting experience at a local news channel.

“We are so pleased to have our newest cohort of FRONTLINE/Columbia Journalism School fellows join our newsroom,” said Raney Aronson-Rath, editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE. “Over the past several years, these fellows have been essential to our digital and documentary reporting processes. We are grateful to The Tow Foundation, Keith Goggin and Columbia Journalism School for supporting these fellowships and warmly welcome Kaela and Inci to FRONTLINE,” added Aronson-Rath, who is an alumna of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism herself.

“Frontline has consistently defined excellence in the field of documentary filmmaking and we’re thrilled to have this group of fellows continue the dynamic relationship between our two organizations. We deeply appreciate the support that makes this fellowship possible,” said Jelani Cobb, dean of Columbia Journalism School.

Over the course of their fellowships, Malig and Sayki will have the opportunity to work alongside FRONTLINE’s filmmaking teams to aid in the development of the series’ acclaimed documentaries. This work will include contributing to the research and development of stories, reporting out leads, wrangling and analyzing data, helping set up interviews and shoots, as well as various tasks as documentaries undergo editing, vetting and post-production. They’ll also have opportunities to contribute to FRONTLINE projects on other platforms — including the series’ Local Journalism Initiative, which supports local news outlets producing investigative journalism projects, as well as pursuing and crafting shorter-turnaround digital stories for FRONTLINE’s website. 

About FRONTLINE FRONTLINE, U.S. television’s longest running investigative documentary series, explores the issues of our times through powerful storytelling. FRONTLINE has won every major journalism and broadcasting award, including 104 Emmy Awards and 31 Peabody Awards. Visit pbs.org/frontline and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube to learn more. FRONTLINE is produced at GBH in Boston and is broadcast nationwide on PBS. Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional support for FRONTLINE is provided by the Abrams Foundation, Park Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the FRONTLINE Journalism Fund, with major support from Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation, and additional support from Koo and Patricia Yuen.

About the Tow Foundation Celebrating 35 years of service, The Tow Foundation was established in 1988 by Leonard and Claire Tow as a way to give back to the communities that shaped them. Its five primary impact areas are equity and justice, medicine and public health, arts and culture, higher education, and civic engagement. Grounded in decades of work in Connecticut and New York, the Foundation supports visionary leaders and nonprofit organizations to find and enact innovative solutions to persistent inequality. It works to ensure people can become full participants in their communities, achieve transformative and lasting progress, and develop approaches that allow everyone to reach their full potential.

About Columbia Journalism School For 111 years, the Columbia Journalism School has been preparing journalists in programs that stress academic rigor, ethics, journalistic inquiry and professional practice. Founded with a gift from Joseph Pulitzer, the school opened in 1912 and offers Master of Science, Master of Arts, Master of Science in Data Journalism, a joint Master of Science degree in Computer Science and Journalism, The Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in Economics and Business Journalism and a Doctor of Philosophy in Communications. It houses the Columbia Journalism Review, the Brown Institute for Media Innovation, The Tow Center for Digital Journalism, The Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights, The Simon and June Li Center for Global Journalism, the Craig Newmark Center for Journalism Ethics and Security, and the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma. The school also administers many of the leading journalism awards, including the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards, the Maria Moors Cabot Prizes, the John Chancellor Award, the John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism, Dart Awards for Excellence in Coverage of Trauma, Paul Tobenkin Memorial Award, the Mike Berger Awards and the WERT Prize for Women Business Journalists. Journalism.columbia.edu. 

 

PRESS CONTACT: 

Anne Husted, FRONTLINE | Manager, PR & Communications | frontlinemedia@wgbh.org | 617.300.5312