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Two readers win trips to report with Nicholas Kristof in Africa

The New York Times has selected two readers to join New York Times Op-Ed and TimesSelect columnist,Nicholas D. Kristof, on a reporting trip to Africa this summer. The three will travel to Rwanda, Congo and Burundi, with all expenses covered by The Times, and will chronicle their experiences during the trip through blogs and vlogs for NYTimes.com.

Winners’ video reports and excerpts from their essays will also be featured on MySpace at www.myspace.com/winatrip. MySpace created a custom “Win a Trip With Nick” community during the application period, which attracted more than 1,300 “friends” of the “Win a Trip” program and enabled applicants to submit their essays and applications through MySpace, as well as NYTimes.com.

Additionally, winners’ video reports will air on mtvU, MTV’s 24-hour college channel, as well as on mtvU.com.

PRESS RELEASE

THE NEW YORK TIMES ANNOUNCES WINNERS OF THE SECOND
“WIN A TRIP WITH NICK” ESSAY CONTEST

Two Winners Will Accompany New York Times Op-Ed and TimesSelect Columnist,
Nicholas D. Kristof, to Africa; Winners’ and Finalists’ Essays Can Be Read
at NYTimes.com/WinATrip

MySpace to Feature Winners’ Videos in Custom Community

NEW YORK, April 30, 2007 - The New York Times announced today that two
winners of The Times’s second “Win a Trip With Nick” essay contest have
been selected to join New York Times Op-Ed and TimesSelect columnist,
Nicholas D. Kristof, on a reporting trip to Africa this summer. While
exact dates of the trip have not yet been determined, the destinations are
confirmed: the three will travel to Rwanda, Congo and Burundi, with all
expenses covered by The Times.

This year’s winners are Will Okun, who teaches at Westside Alternative High
School in Chicago, Ill., and Leana Wen, a medical student at Washington
University in St. Louis, Mo. Both will chronicle their experiences during
the trip through blogs and vlogs for TimesSelect, a paid online service of
NYTimes.com.

Winners’ video reports and excerpts from their essays will also be featured
on MySpace at www.myspace.com/winatrip. MySpace created a custom “Win a
Trip With Nick” community during the application period, which attracted
more than 1,300 “friends” of the “Win a Trip” program and enabled
applicants to submit their essays and applications through MySpace, as well
as NYTimes.com.

Additionally, winners’ video reports will air on mtvU, MTV’s 24-hour
college channel, as well as on mtvU.com.

Mr. Kristof, winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for commentary for his
writings about Darfur, chose the winners from more than 2,000 applicants
who sent in essays to The Times discussing why they wanted to participate
in a reporting trip to Africa. From the essays received, 24 finalists,
including the eventual winners, were selected. All 24 essays can be read
in their entirety at NYTimes.com/WinATrip.

The winning teacher, Mr. Okun, teaches English and physical education to
11th and 12th graders in a low-income community in Chicago. He is also a
photographer, who tries to capture “the happiness and joy that can occur in
everyday moments and the beauty that exists within every person (regardless
of their income).” Mr. Okun, who offers as an example of his resilience
the fact that he was shot in the arm and only missed four days of school,
hopes, through his participation in the trip, to bring young Americans a
broader understanding of Africa and Africans that goes beyond the poverty
and misery that has become familiar to many of us.

Ms. Wen, the student winner and Rhodes Scholar-elect, was raised in a
dissident family in China and found political asylum in the United States
following the Tiananmen Square massacre. As a future physician in
international health who has worked in underserved communities to fight
H.I.V./AIDS, she is committed not only to alleviating patients’ immediate
problems, but to addressing the underlying issues that cause many of their
problems. Critical to this effort, she believes, is communicating people’s
stories to the public as a first step in effecting change. As she writes
in her essay, “Global change requires more than pills and individual-level
change: it hinges on concerted education and mobilization.”

“Will and Leana will bring very different perspectives to this trip,” says
Mr. Kristof. “He is an experienced teacher who wants to share the beauty
of Africa with American young people, and she is a medical student who
wants to change the world. I am eager to see what they discover on this
trip and how it affects them, and to sharing that with our readers.”

The essay competition ran from March 13 through April 6 of this year and
was open to any student enrolled in an American college or graduate school
and to any middle- or high-school teacher in the United States. At the
beginning of the contest, The Times began offering complimentary
TimesSelect subscriptions to college and university students and faculty.
Since then, more than 55,000 new subscribers have signed up, for a total of
more than 62,000. TimesSelect has averaged more than 1,250 new signups per
day from this community since the launch of “Win a Trip.”

Apr 30, 2007 | E-MAIL | SAVE | PRINT | PERMALINK | DISCUSS(0)

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