FRONTLINE and Newmark J-School Announce First Tow Journalism Fellow

FRONTLINE, PBS’s flagship investigative documentary series, and the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY are pleased to announce that Rahima Nasa has been selected as the first candidate for a new, yearlong enterprise journalism fellowship launched with funding from The Tow Foundation.

Nasa, a 2017 graduate of the Newmark J-School, started this week working alongside FRONTLINE’s dedicated cadre of reporters, producers and digital makers. She will  contribute reporting across platforms — from the documentary and podcast series, to transmedia projects combining text and visual elements, including video, photography and graphics.

“We are so pleased to kick off the first year of our enterprise journalism fellowship with the Newmark J-School with such a talented, up-and-coming reporter,” said Raney Aronson-Rath, FRONTLINE’s executive producer. “We’re very grateful to The Tow Foundation for their continued support of hard-hitting investigative journalism.”

“We couldn’t be prouder of Rahima and more grateful to FRONTLINE and The Tow Foundation for making this opportunity happen,” said Sarah Bartlett, dean of the Newmark J-School.

Rahima Nasa

At the J-School, based in New York City, Nasa focused on international reporting and the use of data for storytelling. She distinguished herself as a Knight Foundation Diversity Fellow and a Hearst Scholar. For the past year, Nasa has been a reporting fellow at ProPublica, covering hate crimes and the ways law enforcement fails to document them, for which she filed more than 300 FOIA requests to produce a mix of longform investigative pieces and shorter enterprise stories. Some of those pieces were published with FRONTLINE as part of its collaboration with ProPublica on the rise of violent white supremacists in the U.S.

Nasa, who is fluent in English and Bengali, has also covered police and courts for the New York Daily News, and served as an assistant producer for The Brian Lehrer Show. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Syracuse where she graduated cum laude.

About FRONTLINE

FRONTLINE, U.S. television’s longest running investigative documentary series, explores the issues of our times through powerful storytelling. The series has won every major journalism and broadcasting award, including 89 Emmy Awards and 20 Peabody Awards. Visit pbs.org/frontline and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, and Google+ to learn more. FRONTLINE is produced by WGBH 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. Major funding for FRONTLINE is provided by John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and Ford Foundation. Additional funding is provided by the Abrams Foundation, Park Foundation, The John and Helen Glessner Family Trust, Wyncote Foundation, and the FRONTLINE Journalism Fund with major support from Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation.

 About The Tow Foundation

The Tow Foundation, established in 1988 by Leonard and Claire Tow, funds projects that offer transformative experiences to individuals and create collaborative ventures in fields where they see opportunities for breakthroughs, reform, and benefits for underserved populations. Investments focus on the support of innovative programs and system reform in the areas of juvenile and criminal justice, groundbreaking medical research, higher education, and cultural institutions. For more information, visit www.towfoundation.org.

About the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY

The Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, founded in 2006, is the only public graduate journalism school in the northeastern U.S. With affordable tuition and extensive scholarship support, it prepares students from diverse economic, racial and cultural backgrounds to produce high-quality journalism. The school offers three master’s degree programs: a Master of Arts in Journalism, an M.A. in Entrepreneurial Journalism and an M.A. in Social Journalism. In Fall 2016, it launched a unique Spanish-language program to train bilingual students interested in covering Latino and Hispanic communities in the U.S. and abroad. For more information, visit https://www.journalism.cuny.edu/.