Student journalists covering G-20 summit

Photo: ComMedia

University Park, Pa. — A team of five journalism students from the College of Communications at Penn State are providing coverage of the opening days of the G-20 Economic Summit in Pittsburgh.

The students traveled to the city Wednesday, Sept. 23, and will file reports through the start of the weekend. Their work will be featured on ComMedia, the showcase site online for work by students in the College of Communications, and available to the Centre Daily Times newspaper in State College, Pa.

All of the students making the trip are seniors. They are Michael Felletter of Pocono Lake, Pa.; Rachid Haoues of Southbury, Conn.; Scott King of Andreas, Pa.; David Reinbold of Lebanon, Pa.; and Natalya Stanko of Havertown, Pa.

Two faculty members -- senior lecturers John Beale and Russ Eshleman -- are accompanying the students on the trip, .

Beale spent 21 years as staff photographer and chief photographer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette before joining the Penn State faculty. A member of the U.S. Senate Press Photographers’ Gallery, his work has been honored with numerous national awards, including two Sigma Delta Chi Awards, the Community Service Photojournalism Award from the American Society of Newspaper Editors and photo of the year by the Pro Football Hall of Fame. His photos have been widely published in numerous magazines and books.

Eshleman’s experience includes 15 years with The Philadelphia Inquirer, where he was Harrisburg bureau chief and state political writer. In 1992, he won a distinguished writing award from the American Society of Newspaper Editors. After leaving the Inquirer, Eshleman wrote a column on Pennsylvania government and politics that appeared in a handful of newspapers across the state. In 2007, his column was awarded a first place in the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association’s annual Keystone Press Awards for newspapers.

The Group of Twenty (G-20), comprised of finance ministers and central bank governors from around the world, was established to bring together important industrialized and developing economies to discuss key issues in the global economy. The inaugural meeting of the G-20 took place in Berlin in December 1999.

The event in Pittsburgh makes the western Pennsylvania city a focal point and gathering place for news media from around the world because participants include world leaders. Also, thousands of people plan to converge on the area to either attend, or protest at, the summit.