MetroBeats

Mariah Blake

Anya Bourg

John Boyle

Jacob Goldstein
Before coming to Columbia, Jacob Goldstein worked as a reporter at the Bozeman (Mont.) Daily Chronicle and freelanced for Salon, the Christian Science Monitor and the San Francisco Bay Guardian. He has a BA in English from Stanford University.

Sylvia Gross
Sylvia Maria Gross grew up in Brooklyn, Brazil, and Bethesda, Maryland. She graduated from Yale University and taught middle school in the Bronx for six years.

Oliver Hill
Oliver Hill is a multimedia producer / journalist from the New York Area.

Sandra Hong
Sandra Hong grew up in Michigan. She is a journalism student at Columbia University and plans to return to newspaper-writing after graduating in May.

Mona Iskander
Mona Iskander was born in Cairo, Egypt and grew up in New York. She interned with National Public Radio in the spring of 2003 and before that, co-hosted a show on WBAI-Pacifica Radio. She will receive her MS in May.

John Kearney
John Kearney's writings have appeared in The New York Times, Lingua Franca, The New York Observer, and other, more questionable publications. He studied religion at Oberlin College, and likes to look at buildings.

Shia Levitt
Shia Levitt has worked in radio for 3 years, producing radio pieces on science, environment, and international issues, primarily for public radio. Shia is doing a dual degree program with Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. Shia's background is in interactive television programming.

Joel Meyer
Joel Meyer is a part-time Columbia journalism student who has worked in non-commercial radio since 1996. He is the operations manager of WRHU-FM, a community station based at Hofstra University in Long Island, NY. Previously, he served as program director and morning show host at Radio K (KUOM-AM) in Minneapolis, MN. Joel also worked as a producer for an Internet radio company in Boulder, CO, and he has produced demonstrational pilots for broadcast programs. He lives in Brooklyn and blogs at www.joelmeyer.com.

Joshua Payne
Josh Payne covers New York City's waterfront for MetroBeats. He will earn his Master's degree this May from Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism. While earning his Bachelor's degree at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, Josh decided that he really did not want to be an investment banker...or deal with numbers at all. Reporting suits him much better! For the past five years he has worked as a talent coordinator for "Saturday Night Live." Josh lives with his wife in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Benjamin Shaw
Benjamin Shaw worked as an actor in Los Angeles and a computer programmer for Microsoft, in Seattle before attending Columbia Journalism School. He wrote freelance articles for Sailing and Cruising World Magazine while skippering his 33-foot sailboat through the Caribbean. After school, Benjamin plans to work as a public radio reporter.

Michael Vuolo
Michael Vuolo is a graduate student at Columbia University, where he studies both print and radio journalism. He has written most recently about boxing and religion and, when not reporting, he creates and edits crossword puzzles. He has a bachelor's degree in biology from Brown.

Devi Zinzuvadia
Devi Kane Zinzuvadia was born and raised in San Francisco. She attended the University of Southern California, graduating in 1999 with a degree in English. She lived in Washington, DC for 4 years, where she worked at ABC News and American University.