THE DOCUMENTARY SPECIALIZATION

The students selected for this prestigious program are trained to be independent film producers and directors. Under the guidance of Professor Robe Imbriano and a distinguished group of long-form storytellers, including Raney Aronson-Rath, ’95 M.S., the program’s first Editor-at-Large, they undertake courses in journalism production, visual storytelling, camerawork, editing; and receive one-on-one coaching from a faculty advisor. Students also learn the business side of documentaries — negotiating partnerships, rights and clearances, and how to develop a winning production trailer. Their Master's project, the capstone of their studies at Columbia Journalism School, is a short documentary expected to be of professional quality.

THE FACULTY

ROBE IMBRIANO - Director

Robe Imbriano is an award-winning director and showrunner. His animated musical documentary about the injustice of cash bail, “Criminal,” animated by Thomas Curtis with music and lyrics by Stew Stewart and Heidi Rodewald and published by The New Yorker, won Best Animated Short at UrbanWorld. He was the showrunner of the Hulu series, Killing County, with Colin Kaepernick. Imbriano co-created and executive produced the Netflix documentary series Amend, starring Will Smith and featuring Mahershala Ali, Samuel L. Jackson, Sherrilyn Ifill, Bryan Stevenson and a distinguished group of scholars, participants, and actors to tell the story of the 14th Amendment and America’s struggle with equality. He was a showrunner of the launch of Soul of a Nation, the very first major broadcast network series about Black life in America, nominated for 11 Emmy Awards in its very first season. Imbriano has written and produced for everyone from Diane Sawyer and Peter Jennings to Bill Moyers and Oprah Winfrey, winning numerous honors along the way. He created a series of first-person pieces featuring the voices of America’s economically and socially marginalized for ABC News in prime time. He’s profiled Jay-Z and Hank Aaron, explored the lives of scientists with Neil deGrasse Tyson, and compared Jazz to Democracy with Wynton Marsalis and Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. He is a professor at the Columbia Journalism School where he runs the Documentary Specialization and is also Director of the Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights.

RANEY ARONSON-RATH - EDitor-at-large

Raney Aronson-Rath is the editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE, PBS’ flagship investigative journalism documentary series produced at GBH in Boston. She’s a leading voice on the future of journalism and has cemented FRONTLINE’s reputation as a trustworthy source.

Aronson-Rath oversees FRONTLINE’s acclaimed reporting and directs the series’ editorial vision — executive producing more than 20 in-depth documentaries each year on critical issues facing the country and the world. Under her leadership, FRONTLINE has investigated the impact of Russia’s war on Ukraine, the deep historical and regional context behind the Israel-Hamas war, threats to democracy in the U.S. and abroad and the world’s respond to a global coronavirus pandemic.

She has expanded FRONTLINE’s reporting capacity, leading an initiative to bolster local journalism in the news deserts, and guided FRONTLINE’s evolution from a longstanding documentary series to a multi-platform journalism organization committed to uncovering vital stories and telling them in new ways. One such example is the award-winning project Un(re)solved, an examination of a federal effort to grapple with America’s legacy of racist killings.

FRONTLINE has won every major award in broadcast journalism under Aronson-Rath’s leadership, including Peabody Awards, Emmy Awards, and, in 2019, the first Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Gold Baton to be awarded in a decade. FRONTLINE’s reporting has been recognized with myriad journalism honors including Overseas Press Club Awards, Scripps Howard Awards, the Nieman Foundation’s Bingham Prize for Investigative Journalism and the Peabody Institutional Award.

Aronson-Rath has led an ongoing charge for transparency in journalism — including through the FRONTLINE Transparency Project, an effort to open up the source material behind FRONTLINE’s reporting. She served as the sole public media representative on the Knight Commission on Trust, Media, and Democracy.

In addition to increasing FRONTLINE’s digital footprint, Aronson-Rath has spearheaded FRONTLINE’s expansion into the theatrical documentary space. During her tenure, the series won an Academy Award for 20 Days in Mariupol (2024) and received Academy Award nominations for Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (2018) and For Sama (2020). In 2021, Aronson-Rath became a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

Aronson-Rath launched FRONTLINE’s original narrative podcast, The FRONTLINE Dispatch, and was selected to serve as the board chair for the Pulitzer Prizes’ first-ever audio reporting category. The 2024 recipient of New York Women in Film & Television's Enid Roth Award for Excellence in Journalism, 2022 recipient of the New England First Amendment Coalition’s Stephen Hamblett Award and the 2019 Hearst Digital Media Lecturer at Columbia Journalism School, Aronson-Rath has spoken on journalism and filmmaking at the Skoll World Forum, the TV Next Summit, the Power of Narrative Journalism Conference, and at universities including Stanford, UC Berkeley, NYU and MIT. She is a member of the board of visitors for Columbia University’s journalism school, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and serves on the advisory board of Columbia Global Reports.

Aronson-Rath joined FRONTLINE in 2007 as a senior producer. She was named deputy executive producer by David Fanning, the series’ founder, in 2012, and became executive producer in 2015. Before managing FRONTLINE, Aronson-Rath produced a number of notable FRONTLINE documentaries including News War, a four-part investigation into the future of news; The Last Abortion Clinic, an examination of how anti-abortion advocates waged a successful campaign to limit abortion in many places in the country; The Jesus Factor, an examination of then-President George W. Bush’s personal religious journey and the political influence of America’s evangelical Christians; Law & Disorder, an investigation into questionable police shootings in the wake of Hurricane Katrina; and Post Mortem, which uncovered flaws in America’s death investigation system and revealed that autopsies were being carried out by doctors who lacked certification and training.

Prior to FRONTLINE, Aronson-Rath worked at ABC News and The Wall Street Journal. She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin and her master’s from Columbia Journalism School.

June Cross - Director emeritus

June Cross is an award-winning producer and writer with over thirty years of television news and documentary experience. Wilhemina's War, a story about women fighting HIV stigma in South Carolina, aired on PBS' Independent Lens in 2016, and was nominated for an Emmy in Government and Political Affairs Reporting. Her last work, The Old Man and the Storm, which followed a New Orleans family struggling to rebuild post-Katrina, aired on PBS' FRONTLINE in 2009.

June was an executive producer for This Far by Faith, a six-part PBS series on the African-American religious experience, which broadcast in 2003. During her thirty-five year career, she completed eight documentaries for PBS’ FRONTLINE, CBS News, and PBS’ MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. Her reporting for NewsHour on the US invasion of Grenada won the 1983 Emmy for 'Outstanding Coverage of a Single Breaking News Story'. Secret Daughter, an autobiographical film which examined how race and color had affected her family, won an Emmy in 1997 and was honored that same year with a duPont-Columbia Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism. She is also the author of a memoir, Secret Daughter published by Viking in 2006.

June has covered the defense industry, the Middle East, and the intersection of poverty, politics, and race in the US and in Haiti. She received her B.A. from Harvard, and was a fellow at Carnegie-Mellon University's School of Urban and Public Affairs, and the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American Studies at Harvard. She has taught at Columbia Journalism School since 2001.  

THOR NEUREITER - Professor emeritus

Thor Neureiter is a veteran independent documentary producer and director whose work is focused on contemporary issues concerning U.S. foreign policy and domestic politics. He directed, produced, shot, and edited his first independent feature documentary Disaster Capitalism, which was released in 2018. The film was selected to the prestigious Hot Docs Forum and received support from The Bertha Foundation, The Film Collaborative, Documentary Australia Foundation, and Screen Australia.

During the early years of his career, Thor produced films for People & Power on Al Jazeera English, worked extensively as an AP on several films for PBS’ FRONTLINE and HBO, and began his career with Ken Burns/Florentine Films in 1999 as an Assistant Editor on the 10-part series Jazz. His first documentary as a producer, Miracle in New York: The Story of the ’69 Mets, was awarded a 2010 New York Emmy Award.

Thor holds an M.A. Politics degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism where he has held the positions of Director, Video Journalism and Adjunct Faculty teaching the three-semester Documentary Specialization Seminar since 2017.

BETSY WEST - professor emeritus

Betsy West is an award-winning producer and executive with over 30 years of experience in television news and documentaries. Most recently, she was executive producer of MAKERS: Women Who Make America, MAKERS the online video archive, and the PBS documentary about the women’s movement, which aired nationwide in February 2013. 

At ABC News, Betsy was a field producer based first in Chicago, then New York and London, where she traveled extensively covering international stories for Nightline.  Her work at Nightline and as co-creator and executive producer of Turning Point earned her 21 Emmy Awards and two duPont-Columbia Awards. As senior vice president at CBS News from 1998-2005, she oversaw 60 Minutes and 48 Hours and was executive-in-charge of the PrimeTime Emmy award-winning documentary 9/11.  In 2006, Betsy co-produced Oren Jacoby’s theatrical documentary Constantine’s Sword for Storyville Films. She is currently producing The Lavender Scare, a documentary about the origins of the gay rights movement. 

Betsy has a B.A. from Brown and an M.S. from Syracuse University. She has taught video and documentary at Columbia Journalism School since 2007, and was appointed the Fred W. Friendly Professor of Media and Society in 2015.