Peter James Spielmann

Peter James Spielmann is a former reporter in the foreign service of the Associated Press, and is currently an editor and supervisor on AP's North America desk. In addition, he periodically covers human rights stories and the international impasse over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. He has taught at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism since 1989.

Spielmann was the AP news editor and correspondent for the South Pacific, based in Sydney, Australia, from 1993-1999, dispatched on other assignments including Seoul, South Korea, Brussels in 1999 to cover NATO at the end of the Kosovo crisis; and Antarctica. Prior to his assignment in Sydney, Spielmann was an AP correspondent at the United Nations for five years. He contributed chapters to the book "A Global Agenda: Issues before the United Nations" (1993).

He began his career in journalism working for alternative newsweeklies -- the "New Times" in Tucson, Arizona, and "The Bugle-American" in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; he earned a B.A. at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Spielmann then freelanced for magazines and newspapers, and wrote the book "The Life Insurance Conspiracy" (1979). After earning an M.S. from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism in 1984, Spielmann worked as an investigative editor for the CBS Evening News, and joined AP’s International Desk the following year.

Spielmann became an adjunct faculty member for Columbia's Journalism school in 1989, organizing the "U.N. and Diplomatic Reporting" elective, and assisting in the instruction of the International Division students. In 2001, he designed the school's Human Rights Reporting seminar and taught it through 2006. He also serves as a Master's thesis advisor.

In 2008, Spielmann adapted his Human Rights Reporting seminar into a one-month intensive course that he taught at American University of Kuwait: "International Reporting: Special Topics."

In 2002, he was selected as a Pew Gatekeeper Fellow for studies in South Africa, and a Dart Fellow in Journalism and Trauma. In 2008, he was selected to be a Fulbright Senior Specialist in journalism.

He is a member of the editorial board of the quarterly "Journal of Human Rights".