(News release)
EVANSTON, IL – The Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications and the Center for Public Integrity have named Rebecca LaFlure as the first recipient of a $15,000 McCormick National Security Reporting Fellowship at the Center. She will receive $15,000, plus benefits, and spend five months working at the nonprofit investigative newsroom’s Washington headquarters, starting immediately.
LaFlure will work under the supervision of R. Jeffrey Smith, the managing editor for national security at CPI and a Pulitzer Prize-winning former writer and editor at The Washington Post. She will contribute to the center’s “Up in Arms” blog and also write short and long-term investigative projects. She was selected by a Medill committee led by Josh Meyer, director of education and outreach of the Medill National Security Journalism Initiative.
“We’re very excited to be able to give one of our students the opportunity to work at such a storied Washington institution as the Center For Public Integrity,” said Meyer. “Rebecca is a talented journalist with tremendous promise, and we can’t wait to see what kind of important national security stories she’ll find while working with an editor of Jeff’s stature.”
“Rebecca will have many opportunities to help us hold national security decisionmakers and lawmakers accountable for their work, and to probe government waste, fraud and abuse,” said Smith. “We’re thrilled to get one of Medill’s best. She joins our growing national security reporting team at a moment when all these accountability issues have moved higher on the national agenda.”
The National Security Reporting Fellowship at the Center is funded by the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
The Medill National Security Journalism Initiative, also funded by the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, has been working since 2009 to find better ways of teaching, and covering, national security topics in this changing and challenging media environment.
