2007 Daniel Pearl Intern Chosen
Niraj Sheth |
Niraj Sheth is a senior who is minoring in philosophy. He will work in the London bureau of the Wall Street Journal next fall.
The internship was established to commemorate the work and ideals of Pearl, a Stanford graduate and Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent who was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan in 2002.
In an essay written as part of the application process, Sheth said that Pearl knew that reporters must sometimes confront intolerance: “…it is a risk inherent to doing the job right. Not only did Pearl accept this risk with courage and determination, he did so for a purpose: to give voice to the untold stories of different peoples — wherever they come from — and to bring an understanding of these individual struggles to distant readers.”
Sheth is a senior staff writer at the Stanford Daily. He has had a previous journalism internship at the Sacramento Valley Mirror in Willows, California. He is from New Jersey.
A committee of Communication Department faculty members evaluated applicants for the internship. The final decision was made by the Wall Street Journal.
Pearl, a 1985 graduate of Stanford’s Department of Communication, was kidnapped in Karachi on January 23, 2002, while working on a story retracing the steps of "shoe bomber" Richard Reid. A month later, on Feb. 21, his captors released a videotape of his slaying. He was 38.Niraj Sheth's winning essay: