Prue Clarke is an award winning journalist and media development specialist. Her reporting has appeared in Newsweek, the Guardian, the Financial Times, The Times of London, and on public television and radio in the U.S., Canada, the UK and Australia.
Since 2004 Prue’s reporting has focused on Africa where she has covered war-torn eastern Congo and AIDS-ravaged communities of central and eastern Africa. In west Africa Prue has covered issues related to development and mining in Ghana and elections and reconstruction in post-war Liberia. She has won numerous reporting awards including a national Edward R. Murrow and a UN Gold Medal.
The idea for New Narratives came on a reporting trip to eastern Congo where Prue interviewed victims of the war that has killed more than 5 million people there. One woman after the other told her the cause of their troubles was “witchcraft”. They knew nothing of the candidates for president or of the warlords terrorizing their villages for minerals. Prue’s audiences in the West knew more about what was happening to these people than the people themselves. Prue realized without truthful information these women could do nothing to stand up for themselves and demand change. Helping Africans give truthful information to each other was critical. In 2010 Prue enlisted the help of long time friend from the media and non-profit worlds Susan Marcinek, and New Narratives was born.
Until her 2012 move to London Prue was also a Visiting Associate Professor at the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism where she taught International Reporting, the Craft of Journalism, and Radio. She has trained journalists in Ghana, Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo and has consulted to Journalists for Human Rights and the Revenue Watch Institute on media training programs in Africa.
Prue was a reporter with the Financial Times New York bureau from 2001–2003 and a television news correspondent with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Sydney and New York from 1997–2003. She led the ABC’s coverage of the September 11th attacks from Ground Zero.
Prue holds a master’s degree in Journalism from Columbia University where she was an “International Fellow” at the School of International and Public Affairs. She also holds a master’s degree in International Relations from the University of Sydney where she studied economics as an undergraduate.