Carmel Delshad

Created by Jigar Mehta and Yasmin Elayat, the project aims to to discover the stories that have yet to be told through traditional media. There are thousands of Egyptians walking around with cell phone pictures, videos, and memories from the revolution and beyond — and the 18 Days of Egypt team seeks to find those stories.

Carmel began working with 18 Days in Egypt in mid-January as a reporting fellow, uploading stories from her previous summer interning in Egypt. Shortly after she arrived in Cairo, the team of six fellows (five reporters, one social media expert) fanned out of Tahrir Square on Jan. 25 and collected stories from average Egyptians on the one year anniversary of the uprising.

Stories ranged from a man who was attacked while praying in Alexandria on Jan. 28, 2011, the “Friday of Anger”, to V (of V for Vendetta fame) heading to Tahrir Square.

Powered by GroupStream, a new platform, the website marries virtually every kind of medium in one cohesive site: users can upload pictures and video, connect their Facebook statuses and Tweets, and add videos from YouTube or pictures from Flickr. It’s a one-stop media shop that enriches the tale of the Egyptian revolution.

Carmel says her time at the CUNY J-School prepared her for her role as a reporter at 18 Days in Egypt. Framing video interviews, live Tweeting events, collaborating with a larger team — everything she practiced in her 18 months at CUNY were put to good use in Cairo. Now in her new role as a community manager, overseeing the fellows in Egypt and working on partnerships with local groups, she has built upon the networking and organizational skills taught at CUNY to help this project reach a wider audience.

The group is currently looking to expand its fellowship program for an additional six months, to a total of 20 fellows reporting from all over Egypt. You can find out more on its Kickstarter page.

Matt Draper

The prize is one of five awarded annually to undergraduate or grad students who have demonstrated an interest in and aptitude for copy editing. It includes free registration and travel expenses to the ACES conference in New Orleans in April.

Matt was a Dow Jones sports copy editing intern last summer at the New York Post. Since graduating from the CUNY J-School in December, he has been freelancing full time as a reporter/producer for DNAinfo.com and copy editor for Bloomberg BusinessWeek‘s education resource center.

Filmmaker Sophia Tewa

Tewa, a native of France, is a 2009 alumna of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and a graduate of CUNY’s Lehman College. She has worked with CNN and CBS and teaches multimedia production at the Meridian, Lehman’s student news site.

The People the Rain Forgot is the first documentary she directed and produced. She said she became interested in covering the drought in Kenya and the efforts of people to fight global warming by scouring obscure international and U.S. news outlets for ideas. “I want to paint intimate portraits of regular people in extraordinary circumstances, but whose stories are overlooked or under-told,” she said. She added that she hopes by telling these stories, she gives people in the power the impetus to make change.

Here is her synopsis of the film:

The People the Rain Forgot is the story of how climate change and drought has ravaged the livelihoods of millions in Kenya, home to one of Africa’s most vibrant economies.The documentary follows the country’s farmers and nomadic pastoralists as they grapple with land that will no longer sustain their livestock or feed their families. In this journey, we encountered men and women who never lost hope in the face of a changing world. It’s been four years since many of the country’s Northeastern areas haven’t had sufficient rain to feed their livestock and water their crops. Malnutrition rates there have drastically risen since the drought started, with 2.4 million people in need of food assistance, according to the World Food Program.

Kenya’s economy is largely dependent on agriculture and some of its citizens wonder whether God is punishing them for their failure to properly steward the land. Others contend that the phenomenon of global warming is man-made and that they can help combat the sustained dry seasons they’ve endured. This film will take you from the border of Ethiopia to the margins of Somalia where more and more Africans are experiencing this new climate.

Global warming is often presented as a hypothesis, the effects of which only our grandchildren will have to face. The People That the Rain Forgot shows that its results are manifest in the world right now and that its consequences are dire. Scientists have shown that the warming of the oceans, caused by the increased levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere’s ozone layer, is linked to the irregular rainfall patterns that have inundated the Horn of Africa with sustained droughts.

The film records the despair and desperation of a people in thrall to massive, life-changing alterations to their natural environments. But it’s also the tale of people who have chosen to not give up and fight back against a force they did not create. From the village people who build a water dam with their own hands, to the farmers who create a microclimate in their valley by planting thousands of tree seedlings, this film is the story of people who find the courage and determination to try and make the rain fall again.

Musikilu Mojeed accepts congratulations from Dean Stephen Shepard at the 2010 commencement ceremony

Mojeed received the prize from the Forum for African Investigative Reporters (FAIR) at its African Investigative Journalism Awards ceremony in Johannesburg, South Africa on Nov. 1. Two reporters who work for Mojeed at Next, which combines a traditional newspaper with a service that provides news and information over mobile devices, the Internet, radio, and other broadcast and digital platforms, were also honored for their work on the project.

Mojeed demonstrated rare courage and provided the right kind of leadership to get the stories published in spite of high-level pressures, police harassment, attempted monetary inducement, and threats to his life, according to a story in Next.

Mojeed was a journalist for 10 years before coming to the CUNY J-School in the fall of 2009. “Musikilu really thrived in the program,” said Prue Clarke, an instructor in the International Reporting concentration. “It was a daunting task for him to translate his experience in Nigeria into an American news media setting but he embraced every challenge, worked hard to get to the truth, and taught all of us a thing or two along the way.”

Abdelkader, an assistant producer for the program, contributed to two of the pieces airing the first night: Kate Snow investigating birth tourism in America, and Richard Engel interviewing anti-government activists in Syria. The show will also feature stories on a place in the U.S. with a negative unemployment rate and ways to make the airline boarding process easier.

Ward Room, conceived by the editorial team at NBCChicago.com in early 2010, follows nine political heavyweights in the Windy City, including Mayor Rahm Emanuel, former Mayor Richard M. Daley, and disgraced former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. It won its award in the medium-size site category.

Greiner is managing editor of NBC Local Media in Chicago, which he joined in 2008.

The annual compilation recognizes up-and-comers in government, politics, non-profits, and news who are helping to shape New York City and beyond.

Danny Massey

Juan Manuel Benítez

Aisha Al-Muslim

Aisha Al-Muslim’s enterprise story about noise caused by low-flying airplanes landing on a runway at John F. Kennedy International Airport made the front page of Newsday on July 20. (Airplane_Noise_page_1) This was the first lead story at the Long Island newspaper for Al-Muslim, who is covering the Town of Hempstead as part of a two-year paid internship. The largest township in the U.S., Hempstead comprises 22 villages and 37 hamlets, with a population of 750,000.

In a July 26 follow-up story, Al-Muslim reported that federal and airport officials have begun taking steps to alleviate the jet noise problem.

Al-Muslim graduated from the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism in December 2009 and received a Dean’s Award at the School’s third annual Awards for Excellence in Journalism in May 2010. While a student, she interned at television station WKBW in Buffalo.

Nakia Alford-Saunders

Andrea Swalec’s profile of a lesbian minister at a black gay church in East New York, Brooklyn is the cover story in the July 14, 2011 issue of the New York Press.

“I’m Gay Cuz God Says I’m Gay” is a version of the piece Swalec wrote for Prof. Glenn Lewis’ Narrative Journalism class in the Fall 2010 semester. It tells the story of Nakia Alford-Saunders, a minister at the Unity Fellowship of Christ Church that was founded in 1982 by an ex-disco star.

Swalec, who graduated from the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism last December, is now a reporter/producer for DNAinfo.com, a website that covers news in Manhattan.