Ryan Kost, fellow former intern at The Oregonian

Kate is an exceptional young talent in journalism. She has a good grasp of journalism's essentials (reporting, accuracy and fairness), but, more than that, she has one of the most unique voices I've read. She's able to tell a story in a way that draws a reader in. Her prose is beautiful, and yet you can tell that she's not writing to show off -- she's writing for the reader. That's something very rare these days. She has a unique nose for stories, and is generally an all-star journalist. The Los Angeles Times agrees with me -- they've hired her on as an intern for the upcoming summer.

Randy Hagihara, senior editor for recruitment at The Los Angeles Times

I hired Kate Linthicum to be an intern at the Los Angeles Times this summer. Let me tell you what impressed me immediately about her application: the writing. It was vivid and punchy, the words skillfully chosen, the sentences carefully crafted. This was a writer, I thought, who put a lot of thinking and effort into it. "You cannot, no matter how hard you try, escape dust in New Mexico," she wrote in her personal essay. "It's unrelenting and sneaky, and it slinks into your shoes, inside the folds of your newspaper and between your bed sheets. The home I grew up in is made of it."  How could you not want to read further?

Linthicum's clips told yet another story: a reporter who put as much effort into routine assignments as she did for cover features, particularly one about a summer camp held in the Washington mountains for Tibetan children born in the U.S. Her adventurous spirit also impressed me -- her long (and very bumpy) journey to the tiny Himalayan country of Bhutan to document the ways modernization is affecting the ancient kingdom whose motto is "In pursuit of gross national happiness."

I've never met Linthicum in person -- just a few phone conversations. But I could tell from those chats that she's a natural-born storyteller, that she cares deeply about learning all she can about her chosen profession, that she has the curiosity, the skills and the moxie to be a top-flight journalist. Top 100 college journalists? Hell, I reckon if you measure it by potential she's in the top 10.

George Rede, Sunday opinion editor for The Oregonian

She is so well-rounded -- very capable of writing straight-ahead news but even more impressive with features that display her narrative skills and eye for detail. She is intellectually curious, having traveled widely across Asia during a self-designed study abroad semester and later turning a fascination with Polaroids into a senior thesis project.

It's that artistic side that separates her from her peers (she dabbles in poetry and photography) and informs her ability to marry words with visuals. Last summer, I worked with her on a story she pitched involving her experiences in Bhutan. She narrated a slide slow of her own pictures to go along with a thoughtful well-written essay that ran in Sunday Opinion -- the only summer intern to get published in that section. Finally, Kate's sunny personality reflects an appealing blend of self-confidence and humility, forged in New Mexico, that not even four years in New York City can touch. She's the bomb.

Megan Greenwell, staff writer for The Washington Post, former editor-in-chief for The Columbia Daily Spectator

She combines razor-sharp reporting instincts with the writing talent of a top novelist. She was the top reporter at one of the best college newspapers in the country, The Columbia Daily Spectator, and excelled in internships at The Albuquerque Tribune and The Oregonian before heading to The Los Angeles Times this year. She has a nose for breaking news as well as compelling features that invariably lead page one.

Shortly before I left my position as editor-in-chief of the campus paper in 2006, the news editors asked me to help discuss beat assignments for the next fall semester. Without much discussion, we agreed on Kate as our top choice to cover the University President's office. That beat, the most prestigious on the campus news desk, had never been assigned to someone with less than a year on the paper, but we all believed Kate's talent far outweighed her inexperience. Within three weeks of taking the position, she proved us all correct. Working on a tip from a source in the administration, she broke news of a major financial aid policy change that made the pages of The New York Times a day later. Two weeks later, she covered the launch of the biggest capital campaign ever attempted by an American university. In less than a month on the beat, she established herself as the go-to reporter for the biggest stories on campus.

Amanda Erickson, former managing editor for The Columbia Daily Spectator

Kate is the most gifted and thoughtful writer I've worked with at Columbia. Her journalism consistently sparkles with insight, focus, and detail, giving the reader a new perspective on whatever she is writing about. Kate is also an advocate for new media, and has inspired our paper to reconsider the ways we utilize the Internet. She has worked for some of the best newspapers and magazines in the country (including stints at the New Yorker, the Politico, the Oregonian, and soon-to-be the Los Angeles Times), and has brought the wisdom she gained from these experiences back to the Columbia Daily Spectator. She is adventurous, kind, and extraordinarily talented. I have no doubts that she will go on to write pieces that will reshape the debate on some of the most pressing issues facing the world.

Source | The New Yorker
One morning this month, George Hamawy, Columbia University’s director of radiation safety, stood before a group of students crowded into a basement laboratory and delivered a eulogy for one of the university’s most talked-about secrets: a sixty-five-ton magnet with a history.

Source | The Oregonian
Tenzin Seldon turns expectantly toward the roomful of shifting, whispering students, her question hanging in the wet mountain air. "What year is it in the Tibetan calendar?" she asks, and a smattering of skinny arms rise hesitantly.

Source | The Blue and White
On a muggy late September afternoon, Mary Cochran gave her students a set of vague instructions. She asked the women, who stood in pairs among the ballet barres in a Barnard dance studio, to control their partner's movements without using their hands.

Source | The Eye, the magazine of The Columbia Spectator
The two Columbia students strolling home in the cool, early morning of Sept. 2 had a lot to talk about. Reunited after a summer apart, the women were days away from starting their senior year.