UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A Penn State faculty member earned an award for commentary from the Public Media Journalists Association. Shaheen Pasha, an assistant teaching professor in the Department of Journalism, won first place for a commentary titled “We Have a Language Problem” that aired on New England Public Radio.
Judges reviewed nearly 1,300 entries for the association’s annual competition. Pasha’s piece claimed first place in Division B, for organizations with a news staff of four to seven people.
Pasha joined Penn State for the 2019-20 academic year after previously serving as an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
She is the cofounder of the Prison Journalism Project at Penn State, building on a project she started at the University of Massachusetts and for which she was awarded a Knight Foundation Visiting Fellowship at Harvard University to expand her work, teaching journalism behind bars. She is also the recipient of a Fulbright Specialist designation to advise journalism curriculum internationally.
Pasha is a veteran journalist with 20 years of experience in the field. She worked as an international correspondent, covering legal issues and Islamic finance for Thomson Reuters in Dubai. She was also a staff writer for CNNMoney in New York, where she covered legal issues, the Enron trial and the Supreme Court.
She started her career at Dow Jones Newswires where she had a daily column in the Wall Street Journal and appeared as a daily correspondent for CNBC Asia, covering international stock action. Her freelance work has appeared in Nieman Reports, New England Public Radio, Dallas Morning News, Narratively and USA Today among other publications.