2010 Daniel Pearl Intern Chosen
Devin Banerjee |
Devin Banerjee is working toward a bachelor's degree in management science and engineering, with a concentration in technology and policy, which he expects to complete in 2011. He will work in a foreign bureau of The Wall Street Journal this summer.
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, Banerjee noted that Pearl rooted his stories in conversations with everyday people, "for it often was their absence from the larger conversation that yielded a nature of misunderstanding—the failure to connect the dots." Banerjee wrote that he strives in his reporting to learn from everyone: "not just the CEO or executive director, but the Indian teen whose skin peels from her hands due to industrial contamination, the 76-year-old Iranian American still fighting for democracy in his homeland, the Korean mother who forgoes tutoring for her daughter to save money during the recession, the African-American students who accuse a white police chief of racial profiling—and the accomplished 34-year police veteran whose job is put on the line by those very accusations."
Banerjee is from Calabasas, in Southern California, and he has previously had internships at the San Jose Mercury News and JoongAng Daily in Seoul, Korea.
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 Jan. 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.
Devin Banerjee's winning essay: