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James B. Baxter, Class of 1987

After receiving an AB in International Relations and a Newhouse MA in 1987 from Syracuse University, James started his career as an Associated Press sportswriter in New York state before returning to Canada, where he worked in news and sports. In 1998, Baxter joined the Ottawa bureau of Southam News, now the CanWest News Service, covering trade and economics. James moved to the The Edmonton Journal in late 2003 as legislature bureau chief,  later joining the editorial board.

 In 2007, Baxter was awarded one of the top journalism fellowships in the world: the prestigious Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University.  First created in 1937 by a $1-million grant to Harvard by the widow of Lucius W. Nieman, founder of the Milwaukee Journal, the Nieman Fellowships are the oldest and best-known mid-career program for journalists in the world.  Baxter, the lone Canadian of 15 international journalists invited to attend Harvard for the coming academic year,  will receive the Martin Wise Goodman Fellowship, named in honor of the late president of the Toronto Star and himself a former Nieman recipient.
 

The program offers Baxter considerable leeway to explore a wide range of academic disciplines during his year, but he expects to devote much of his attention to the emerging conflict between environmental concerns and current international and trade law. "There is growing acceptance worldwide that pollution and environmental degradation do not respect traditional borders, but most law, especially trade law, is fundamentally built around it," said Baxter, noting that "as pressure mounts to do better by the environment, there is real potential that our accepted views of sovereignty will be obsolete."    --Edmonton Journal, 5/22/2007


As profiled in The Toronto Star, May 22, 2007 by Nicolaas van Rijn:

James Baxter, an Edmonton Journal editorial writer selected for the 19th Martin Wise Goodman Canadian Nieman Fellowship, will study the inherent conflicts between growing environmental awareness and existing trade law.

Baxter, 42, was chosen by a seven-member selection committee for the fellowship, which covers tuition, living expenses, travel costs and a stipend paid in lieu of salary during a year of study at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass.

The fellowship, funded by a publicly subscribed permanent endowment, is awarded annually in memory of Goodman, late president and editor-in-chief of the Toronto Star, who died in 1981 at the age of 46.

Goodman studied at Harvard as a Nieman fellow in 1961 and, shortly before his death, established the trust fund for the Canadian Nieman fellows. The Nieman fellowship program was established for American journalists in 1938 in memory of Lucius W. Nieman, founder of the Milwaukee Journal.

Baxter, born in Ottawa and a graduate of New York's Syracuse University, has worked as a sports writer, covered trade and economics, and was Alberta Legislature bureau chief for the Edmonton Journal and Calgary Herald.

For the past year he has been a member of the Edmonton Journal's editorial board.

Baxter will join 15 foreign journalists and 15 U.S. journalists in the 70th class of Nieman fellows at Harvard for a year of seminars and informal study.


The trust established to fund the Canadian Nieman program has so far received some $350,000 in donations from both Canadians and Americans.