Funnel 40/2, Inhalt - Fulbright-Kommission

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ALUMNI PROFILES
Lucian Kim
The Fulbright Program,
springboard to a dream career
When I first heard about it, I thought
the Fulbright grant for young journalists
had been designed just for me. Although
I was only halfway into my second semester
of a two-year master’s program in journalism,
I was itching to return to the
world beyond the arcane province of
Berkeley, California. I had already squandered
several years after college on
bohemian pursuits in east central Europe.
Now I was ready to turn my wanderlust
into a profession.
It was spring 1996—the Bosnian war
had just ended but Slobodan Milosevic was
still firmly in power. The eastward expansion
of NATO and the EU was not yet a
foregone conclusion. The project of German
reunification was sputtering along.
And then a classmate told me that the
Fulbright Commission was seeking applicants
for a brand new scholarship that
would take five young American journalists
to Germany for a year. Fulfilling the
basic qualifications—but not yet feeling
like a bona fide journalist—I sent in my
application and crossed my fingers.
Half a year later I was attending the Fulbright
orientation at the Atlantic Hotel in
Bremen. It happened to be my birthday,
and I was sure that I had not received this
kind of present before: a monthly allowance
I could only have dreamed of as a student;
complete license to travel where I wanted;
and no pressure whatsoever to publish.
A couple of days later I took the train
to Berlin and soon was ensconced in a oneroom
apartment overlooking a dim courtyard
in the heart of Kreuzberg. The shower
was in the kitchen, the toilet was in a
THE FUNNEL • VOLUME 40 • NUMBER 2 • SUMMER 2004
Kim interviewing Ahmed Shah Massoud, the late leader of the Northern Alliance, in northern
Afghanistan in summer 2000. Massoud was assassinated 2 days before September 11, 2001, in what
many people say was a connected hit.
closet, and the heating came from a huge
tiled oven fired by coal briquettes I kept
stacked in one corner. With my first
stipend I bought a fax machine and subscribed
to an internet service provider.
What more did an aspiring reporter need?
A bar and someone to drink with. By
another stroke of luck, a fellow young journalist,
Melissa Eddy, lived just down the
street above an all-night watering hole
called the Haifischbar. Melissa would
become one of several dear friends I made
during my Fulbright year.
Getting started in the rough-and-tumble
world of freelance journalism is a risky
undertaking. But thanks to my grant I had
the freedom to fail. During the boisterous
student demonstrations against Milosevic
that winter, I flew down to Belgrade. I
reported, I wrote, I filed—but I didn’t get
a single story published. It didn’t matter. I
learned a great deal and made several
friends among Belgrade’s student activists.
The experience would serve me well in later
reporting trips to the Balkans.
The only requirement of my Fulbright
grant was to complete an internship at a
German media outlet. So during the second
half of the year I moved to Hamburg
for a couple of months to intern at Die Zeit.
The paper was my choice, but it was the
Fulbright Commission that had landed me
a spot on the business desk. Surprisingly I
managed to get a couple of articles into the
paper—one story was on how the German
vending machine industry was dreading
the switch from deutsche marks to euros.
I found Hamburg’s legendary coolness
too chilly, however, and was happy to
return to the relative chaos of Berlin. The
city was beginning to feel like home. The
Fulbright Commission extended my grant
by several months, just as my stories were
starting to get into print with increasing
regularity.
By the time my grant expired, I was supporting
myself in my dream job of foreign
correspondent. I would end up keeping
Berlin as my base for the following five
years, covering events in Germany and
Central Europe, the Balkans, the Baltics,
Central Asia, Afghanistan, and North
Korea. I contributed to a number of papers,
including US News & World Report, the
Boston Globe and the Christian Science
Monitor.
Today I work as an editor at the Moscow
Times, Russia’s English-language daily.
There has been nothing logical or predictable
about my career path so far. But I
am convinced that my Fulbright grant was
the starting point that made it possible.