"I usually end up in a bad part of town," says ANTONIN KRATOCHVIL, "because people know I can make do." In three decades as a photojournalist, the Czech native has been assigned to cover some of the world's worst neighborhoods -- from Beirut to the South Bronx -- and has returned with award-winning pictures for Time, Mother Jones and Smithsonian. We sent him to Newark, N.J., to make a portrait of Cory Booker, '91, MA '92, a city council member who is helping turn around one of the nation's tougher cities. The politician and the photographer hit the street and ended up at a construction site. "He's fighting for the renewal of a poor neighborhood," says Kratochvil, 52. "He projected a lot of commitment, a lot of strength."
When TIM GRIEVE sat down to interview Professor William Damon for this issue's cover story on child-rearing, he was trying to survive the "terrible twos" with his son, Pete. Now Grieve, '86, and his wife, Quincey, are gearing up for a second act: John MacManus Grieve arrived on December 17, 1999. When he isn't chasing Pete or cajoling Jack, Grieve practices law in Sacramento and writes. But for the former Stanford Daily editor and Sacramento Bee reporter, the priorities are clear. "Just before Jack was born, we got a note from one of Quincey's aunts, and what she wrote really hit me: 'Raising your kids,' she said, 'is the only important thing you will ever do.' "
As an undergraduate at Wellesley College, EMILY RICHMOND studied Renaissance literature (one senior- seminar paper focused on the influence of female anatomy in Spenser's Faerie Queen) and did a senior thesis in fiction writing. She stumbled into journalism after taking a summer seminar in magazine writing at Radcliffe. "Something just clicked," says the 28-year-old native of Newton, Mass. "Telling true stories was more compelling and ultimately more challenging than writing fiction." Now a reporter for the Palo Alto Daily News, Richmond, MA '97, got the true story behind a convention for Silicon Valley singles. The assignment tested her objectivity. "I was balancing between leaning against the wall, smirking with the other reporters, and looking for a nice Jewish guy I could bring home to mom," she says.
After serving as a fighter pilot in World War II, WILLIAM COUGHLIN returned to Stanford in 1946 and took over the Daily's humor column, "Bull Session." One day, he got a call from Herbert Hoover's campus secretary. "Mr. Hoover asked me to tell you he very much enjoys your column," the secretary said, and then added, "As a matter of fact, he refers to you around here as the Daily's congenial idiot." Coughlin, '44, MA '50, went on to write for the United Press and L.A. Times and to serve as a journalism professor at South Carolina's Francis Marion University. In 1990, he won the Pulitzer prize for public service as editor of the Washington (N.C.) Daily News. Now living in Ireland, Coughlin spent more than a month in Australia researching the article on his late admirer.
