Mary D’Ambrosio’s decades of experience and new course offerings connect students with the important international stories of their generation

Mary D'Ambrosio interviews a Syrian refugee
Mary D'Ambrosio interviews a Syrian refugee who fled her home city of Damascus after her home was firebombed and her husband killed. 
Photo: Ali Riza Celebi

"International reporting is challenging, calling upon our talents in diplomacy, foreign language and analysis. We must search for ways to sustain global reporting. We can’t give that up."
 
– Mary D’Ambrosio, assistant professor with the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at the School of Communication and Information

Mary D’Ambrosio was a college student studying in Italy in the early ’80s when she realized her view of the country was warped.

“I thought it was all rolling hills and olive oil,” she said. “But there were tanks in the streets, high inflation and an assassination attempt on the Pope. This was news to me in my 20-year-old bubble.”

The Syracuse University journalism student wondered how many other international stories were escaping the attention of American audiences – and dedicated her career to telling them.

“The journalists of my generation went into journalism to right wrongs and to uncover the truth,” said D’Ambrosio, who joined Rutgers’ Department of Journalism and Media Studies at the School of Communication and Informatio last semester as an assistant professor of professional practice. “It sounds a little corny, but we felt the truth was being hidden from the public.”

More than three decades later, the respected international journalists’ search for the truth continues.

D’Ambrosio has probed some of the globe’s darkest corners to expose social injustices and analyze political upheavals, including Latin America’s transition from dictatorship to neoliberalism, Russia’s emergence from the collapsing Soviet Union, the Mexican debt crisis, and, most recently, the struggles of Syrian refugees.

The Brooklyn resident spent her summer in Sicily and coastal Turkey speaking to refugees hoping to access Western Europe via the Mediterranean Sea.

“Hordes At The Gates? Look Again,” is a collection of vignettes detailing the horrors D’Ambrosio’s interview subjects have experienced in their search for safe haven.  The series, a "humanizing migration" project partially funded by a Rutgers faculty research grant, was featured in The Huffington Post.

“My goal was for readers to see migrants in human terms. The footage of them coming in boats to shores is a very threatening narrative to Americans and Western Europeans. It seems like these refugees are coming with scary diseases and intentions,” she said. “I’m not after a sexy headline but how life really is for migrants. I want readers to really get to know people through journalism.”

As the story arrives on our shores along with the first wave of refugees, D’Ambrosio saw an opportunity for Rutgers students to experience international reporting on their home turf.

The centerpiece of her new spring course, “Writing about Social Issues" – which focuses on media coverage of income inequality, immigration and climate change – is a project that pairs Syrian refugee families in New Jersey with students chronicling their lives. The assignment promises to immerse the dozen young writers in subject being hotly debated locally and globally. Gov. Chris Christie told President Obama in November that New Jersey will not accept any Syrian refugees, and on the presidential campaign trail Donald Trump decreed that Muslims should be barred from entering the country.

“We’ve lived this history,” she said. “We’re better than that.”

D’Ambrosio’s new course offering – and other projects in the pipeline – promise to infuse the curriculum with a more global focus, said associate professor Jack Bratich, chair of the Department of Journalism and Media Studies.

“One of the things Mary knows so well is how the world is connected,” said Bratich. “The stories that seem to be happening at a distance are impactful at home and in these students lives.”

Since arriving on campus, Bratich said D’Ambrosio has been a “dynamo,” proposing courses, suggesting new writing abroad programs and developing a digital magazine that will feature top undergraduate student work.

“It’s rare to find that combination of brimming enthusiasm meets worldly experience, knowledge and highly developed skills,” said Bratich. “That combination is a powerful one that students benefit from greatly.”

As a professor, D’Ambrosio – who previously taught at New York, Columbia and Central Connecticut State universities – is passionate about preparing the next generation of journalists to report from a global perspective. 

“International reporting is challenging, calling upon our talents in diplomacy, foreign language and analysis,” she said. “We must search for ways to sustain global reporting. We can’t give that up.”

Today there is no shortage of world news, but amid mass layoffs and crumbling publications there is a dearth of jobs for new and seasoned journalists alike.

“Now I tell young journalists not to do what we did,” she said. “Don’t go to Iowa or Tacoma. You go there and there’s a layoff or buy out and you’re stuck there.”

Instead of trying to climb a defunct industry ladder, D’Ambrosio encourages her students to narrow their focus.

“I think niche journalism is much more important now,” she said. Today’s high-demand beats include finance and economics, health, climate change and, in international news, Asia and the Middle East.

Specialized training or education in a niche fields – especially fluency in Arabic or Mandarin – will increase a journalism graduate’s chances of finding – and keeping – a job in this increasingly volatile industry.

It’s not far off from the advice D’Ambrosio received from an Associated Press editor back when she was 24 and set on becoming a Latin American correspondent during the Nicaraguan revolution.

The editor outlined a seven-year plan that included stints in Nowheresville, slogging on a slot desk and eventually applying for a foreign assignment that would not likely land her in Latin American. To D’Ambrosio, that career arc sounded worse than being caught in a Sandinista-Contra crossfire.

“Or, you could just go,” the editor – Nate Polowetzky, a Rutgers journalism graduate – told her.

And she did. After reporting from Nicaragua for her paper, she quit her job, relocated to Caracas, Venezuela, as a stringer and never looked back.

“That advice changed my life,” she said. “He taught me what you do in journalism is seize your story.”