By Tim Underhill—
MUNCIE, IN—The Ball State University Department of Media presents the National Press Photographers Foundation, Hutchison/Wheeler Lecture series.
Wednesday, April 16th at 6:30 p.m. in the Art and Journalism Building room 175, John Sharify will discuss and share his award-winning storytelling.
Tim Underhill, Senior Lecturer in Media at Ball State is facilitating the presentation. Underhill says, “I have known John Sharify for more than ten years and he is a wonderful person and amazing storyteller.”
John Sharify is one of the most honored broadcast journalists and documentary filmmakers in the country. He is the proud recipient of the Silver Circle award from the National Association of Television Arts and Sciences. He is a 79-time Emmy award winner with nine National Edward R. Murrow awards, including the National Murrow for top news writer in the country in 2004, 2007, 2008, and 2020. John is also the recipient of the 2021 DuPont Columbia award, the broadcast equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize, for his ‘death with dignity’ documentary “Bob’s Choice”. John was selected as the 2019 and 2015 National Press Photographer Association (NPPA) Reporter of the Year for his work at NBC affiliate, KING 5 News.
Award-winning broadcast journalist John Sharfiy spends a great deal of time crafting stories at his laptop after the video has been recorded. He pays special attention to weaving images and sound together with his words to engage viewers. Photo by by Adam Vance.
He was runner up Reporter of the Year in 2013 and 2017. John Sharify served as the Atwood Chair of Journalism at the University of Alaska in Anchorage, from the fall of 2022 to the spring of 2024. From the classroom to the newsroom, John mentored reporters for Scripps Media from May 2024 through February of 2025. John, also known as Shahab, started his career in broadcast journalism in N.Y.C. where he worked as a reporter at WPIX TV. In 1989, he headed to Seattle to ABC affiliate KOMO TV where he worked as a general assignment news reporter for the next eighteen years. For nearly a dozen years, John Sharify was the General Manager of Seattle Colleges Cable Television (SCCTV) and Seattle Community Media, the city of Seattle’s public access station. He has also worked as a Communications Manager for Western Governors University, an online, non-profit University.
John Sharify’s passion for storytelling has taken him around the world as he presents workshops in newsrooms on the craft of video storytelling. He has led storytelling workshops in Denmark and Norway. He has taught and coached journalists in newsrooms in Seattle, Chicago, Boston, Dallas, Anchorage, West Palm, Tampa, Las Vegas and Missoula. From 2014 to 2022, John Sharify has volunteered his time as a faculty member at the NPPA video storytelling workshop at the University of Oklahoma, in Norman, Ok.
In 2012, John Sharify gave a Ted x Talk about his National Murrow award winning documentary “Climb of a Lifetime”, which chronicled the lives of recovering addicts who were training and eventually climbed Mt. Rainier. His 2010 documentary about the holocaust, “The Boys of Terezin,” has been shown in film festivals in Sydney, Melbourne, Toronto, West Palm, Miami, New Jersey and Seattle. He is a past President of the N.W. chapter of the National Association of Television Arts and Sciences. He is also a proud graduate of Princeton University. John ( Shahab) has a Master of Fine Arts degree in film directing from Columbia University. He was a student of two-time Academy award winning film director Milos Forman.
“John has a way of connecting real people to viewers through his interviewing, writing and producing.” Underhill continued, “His stories stand the test of time as examples of what great broadcast journalism can be.”
Sharify’s presentation is free and open to the public.
