NPR and The John Alexander Project select Katerina Barton for esteemed international reporting fellowship
November 10, 2025; Washington, D.C. – NPR and the John Alexander Project are pleased to announce Katerina Barton as the 13th recipient of their joint international reporting program, the Above the Fray Fellowship. Selected from a competitive pool of applicants, Barton will spend two months in Indonesia reporting on the environment, climate change, and the country's role in the global energy transition.
Since 2010, the Above the Fray fellowship has sent promising journalists abroad to cover important, yet largely untold, stories. Barton begins her fellowship this fall, filing reports on-air and online for NPR.
Indonesia is the fourth-most-populated country in the world and is home to some of the Earth's most biodiverse ecosystems and carbon-rich tropical forests. The country has ambitious climate goals in the coming decades. Barton's reporting will focus on how Indonesia is reaching its climate goals and what its energy future would look like.
Barton currently works as an independent reporter and producer in New York City, previously working with WNYC's On The Media and The Takeaway. She's a graduate of NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, with a dual MA in Global & Joint Program Studies and European & Mediterranean Studies. In 2016, she received a Fulbright Scholarship to Indonesia. Barton graduated from St. Edward's University with a Bachelor of Arts in Global Studies.
About The Above The Fray Fellowship
The Above the Fray Fellowship began in 2010 in memory of John Alexander, a young journalist who once worked for NPR and passed away of sudden heart failure while on assignment for the Koppel On Discovery series in Chongqing, China. Previous recipients have reported from Kiribati, China, Uganda, Cameroon, Réunion, Greenland, Georgia, Papua New Guinea, Mongolia, Japan, the American South and the Aral Sea. Details about the Above the Fray Fellowship can be found at NPR.org. To learn more about John Alexander, visit www.thejohnalexanderproject.org.
About NPR
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