McClatchy

Nancy Youssef and Gareth Porter, award-winning journalists acclaimed for international reporting, will headline the Tatarian Symposium on Feb. 26 at California State University, Fresno.

The symposium, which is free and open to the public, starts at 10 a.m. at the Satellite Student Union.

Youssef is chief Pentagon correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers and Porter is an investigative journalist and historian specializing in U.S. national security policy.

Youssef, a former Baghdad bureau chief for McClatchy, spent four years covering the Iraq war. Her stories focused on the everyday Iraqi experience, civilian casualties and how the U.S. military strategy reshaped Iraq’s social and political dynamics.

Previously reporting for the Detroit Free Press and the Baltimore Sun, Youssef won several awards for her work from the Maryland-D.C. Delaware Press Association and the Detroit chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

A Washington, D.C.-area native, she earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Virginia and began her post-graduate studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

Porter, who was in Afghanistan in January, was named one of the 20 top “global media figures” of 2009 by the collaborative political website PULSE.

His articles are published by InterPress Service, a news agency based in Rome, and are carried by a number such Web sites as Huffington Post, Common Dreams, Asia Times, Counterpunch, Truthout and Alternet.

Porter was Saigon bureau chief for Dispatch News Service International in 1971 and later reported on Vietnam and Cambodia in The Asian Wall Street Journal, Pacific News Service, The Observer News Service and The Nation.

The author of four books related to Vietnam and the Vietnam War, Porter received a doctorate at Cornell University in Southeast Asian studies and international politics in 1976.

The Tatarian Symposium honors the late Roger Tatarian, editor-in-chief of United Press International and a longtime journalism professor at Fresno State. The event is sponsored by Fresno State’s College of Arts and Humanities and the Department of Mass Communication and Journalism.

For more information: 559.278.2087.