WASHINGTON — Ten Medill graduate students have been selected as recipients of $7,500 McCormick National Security Journalism Scholarships to participate in an innovative National Security Reporting Project in Fall Quarter 2011 in Washington. The Fifth Quarter Specialization Program in National Security Reporting, part of the Medill National Security Journalism Initiative, gives students the opportunity to showcase new ways to practice in-depth national security storytelling.
The National Security Reporting Project scholarship recipients are: Lauren Everitt, Gina Harkins, Kyle Jahner, Karla Meier, Sridhar Natarajan, Caitlin O’Neil, Gulnaz Saiyed, Robert Spoerl, Phillip Swarts and Andrew Theen. Two students, Kelsey Sheehy and Rema Rahman, have been designated as alternates.
The specialization program is open primarily to students who have completed their four quarters of graduate work and who are interested in national security reporting. They will have the opportunity to gain additional experience working on a long-form investigative and enterprise project and experimenting in new storytelling forms across platforms. Professors Josh Meyer and Ellen Shearer, who selected the winners, said they were pleased with the high caliber of the students and their ideas for a potential project.
The project will be led by Meyer, a 20-year veteran Los Angeles Times reporter who joined the initiative in 2010, and Shearer, who is co-director of the initiative and director of the school’s Washington program. Medill is not disclosing the topic for competitive reasons.
“I’m excited to be working with such an exceptional group of student reporters on a project that has so many possibilities for superb reporting and story-telling,” says Meyer, the NSJI’s director for education and outreach. “In this time of shrinking ambitions by major media outlets, we’re planning to build on our successes from last year’s project and deliver a series of stories of real importance to the American public.”
Shearer noted that the 2010 project, Global Warning, had major impact thanks to partnerships with The Washington Post and McClatchy Newspapers.
“This year, we intend to further strengthen the innovation, creativity and complexity of the reporting by starting our partnership with The Washington Post early,” she said. “Top Post editors and reporters will meet with the new reporting team, Josh and me within a month to help formulate a reporting plan.”
Last year’s project, the initiative’s first, was on the national security implications of climate change, and it attracted worldwide attention, both for its findings and its use of innovative multimedia and interactive story-telling techniques.
The National Security Journalism Initiative is funded by the McCormick Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation.
