The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma runs a program, Ochberg Fellowships, for journalists, editors and photographers who cover traumatic incidents and violence. I was an Ochberg Fellow last year, and I got to meet Margarita Akhvlediani. She was a perfect fit for our group: Super-nice, smart, accomplished -- and she had seen the world's troubles in her career as a journalist writing about Georgia in the early 1990s. (Other fellows that year include Donna Alvis-Banks, who covered the Virginia Tech massacre, and James MacMillan, who had worked as a photographer in Iraq.) We all met up for several days in Baltimore, and Margarita was especially fun to hang out with. One evening, we went for crab cakes in the neighborhood and talked about Putin, Russia and (my hero) investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot and killed outside her Moscow apartment building in October 2006.
Recently, Margarita was attacked while on a reporting trip. She had been headed towards Gori when she was assaulted, and she has written about her experiences for The Nation. She was not targeted, as many journalists (such as Politkovskaya) have been. It was an ordinary mugging, ending with a robbery (her camera was taken), nothing more.
In the grand scheme of things, a missing camera means little. Still, the attack is a reminder of what things are like for people, especially reporters, in Georgia. This morning, I got an email from a former Ochberg fellow, saying the Dart Society has started a fund, Journalists Helping Journalists, for Margarita. In many ways, she is like any other journalist I know -- out every day trying to explain some small part of the world. Except unlike most of my journalist friends, she lives in a place that is marked by near anarchy – and exists in the shadow of Putin. Her work deserves attention.
--Tara McKelvey
