For nearly 500 days, Evan Gershkovich had little control over where he went and when he would see his friends and family. But he could still report.
The Wall Street Journal correspondent, arrested in Russia on false espionage charges, reflected on his imprisonment and the dangers facing journalists around the world at Stony Brook University.
“It’s a captivity memoir, but I think it’s something more,” Gershkovich said of his new book about his imprisonment, “This Cursed Beautiful Land.” “It’s a reportage about Russia.”
He was arrested in March 2023 by masked Russian agents while meeting a source in Yekaterinburg. Accused of espionage, he was the first American journalist sent to jail in Russia since the Cold War and he was sentenced to 16 years in prison. He was released in August 2024, after nearly 500 days, as part of a multinational prisoner exchange.
At the Marie Colvin Distinguished Lecture, moderated by former Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Radhika Jones, Gershkovich described his arrest as the culmination of an elaborate sting operation. He said the experience in prison refined his knowledge of how Russian authorities treated detainees differently, and how his own identity as an American journalist made him valuable in negotiations.
The free event was open to the public, and drew a capacity crowd of students, faculty, staff, friends, family and community members. After RSVPs filled, organizers opened a second overflow room, where guests could watch a livestream of the lecture.
In opening remarks, Marie Colvin Center for International Reporting director Sarah Baxter welcomed Gershkovich and remembered the center’s namesake. “Marie Colvin was killed for doing her job as a journalist in Syria in 2012, and we miss her so much,” Baxter said. “We’re so excited to have Evan here to address us as a free man.”
Baxter also emphasized the importance of supporting the profession: “We need to support journalism and journalists, and we can do this through higher education.”
Karin Gwinn Wilkins, dean of Stony Brook University’s School of Communication and Journalism, told the audience that “journalism is essential to our democracy” and helps people “distinguish credibility and understand complexity.” Journalists, she said, “ask the hard questions and hold power accountable” and “offer evidence and bear witness, even when pursuing the truth is difficult and dangerous.”
Gershkovich described how he came to journalism after growing up in New Jersey with Russian-speaking parents who left the Soviet Union in 1979. He said he was initially drawn to writing and to the chance to meet people and go places. A reporting assignment in Thailand helped him see journalism as a way to combine those interests.
After working at The New York Times, he moved to Moscow to report for The Moscow Times. He described a gradual tightening of pressure on Russian media, followed by sweeping censorship after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
In prison, he said, he leaned on his journalistic instincts of observing, asking questions and keeping a diary. He also read books by writers and dissidents who had been imprisoned before him. Reporting, he said, became a way to cope with the experience.
Gershkovich said he hoped readers would engage with his book’s nuanced portrayal of Russia, and was disappointed when some questioned whether he had “Stockholm syndrome.”
“It’s good that you have a high bar for your readers. I appreciate that, and I’m sure this crowd does, too,” Jones countered.
“I haven’t changed my opinion on journalism or the importance of journalism or why we do what we do whatsoever,” he said. “It’s important. It’s vitally important, especially during an authoritarian slide.”
Asked what advice he would give journalists reporting in countries that restrict press freedom, Gershkovich urged them to be cautious and to maintain close communication with colleagues and editors. “Be careful,” he said. “Talk to people doing the work, be in contact with them, be in communication with them.”
For students in attendance, Gershkovich’s account offered a close-up look at the challenges of foreign reporting. Grace D’Acampora, a junior studying journalism, communication and film at Stony Brook, said the lecture strengthened her interest in the field. “This event was an eye-opener. I learned a lot about the risks and triumphs of foreign reporting, and I felt a stronger desire to pursue journalism after hearing Evan’s story.”
Founded in 2013, the Marie Colvin Center for International Reporting prepares students and recent graduates for foreign reporting and supports professional journalists around the world.
Colvin, a Long Island-born war correspondent for The Sunday Times of London, was killed in Syria in 2012 while reporting on the conflict. Her work and legacy provided a fitting backdrop for a lecture on the risks and responsibilities of journalism.
Lily Miller is a reporter with The SBU Media Group, part of Stony Brook University’s School of Communication and Journalism’s Working Newsroom program for students and local media.
