Student Kudos

May 2008

Dozens of students were honored at the department's annual Just Desserts celebration May 8. See the full list of winners here.

April 2008

April 2008

Two journalism majors were featured in the May/June 2008 issue of Arizona Foothills Magazine for an article titled "Tucson's Tremendous Moms, Dads and Grads." Mike Ritter will be covering the Arizona Diamondbacks this summer for MLB.com, and Nicole Fagin is Arizona's representative for MTV's "Choose or Lose Street Team 2008."

Three journalism students were winners in the Mark Finley Gold Pen Newswriting Competition for Spring 2008. Aly Van Dyke finished first, winning $750. Jessica Befort took second place and $350, and Claire Engelken placed third, winning $250. The competitors, recognized by J205 instructors as being among the promising beginning newswriters of the department, received an engraved pen commemorating the event April 14.

The competitors listened to a presentation by Mike Hein, the Tucson city manager. He spoke about downtown redevelopment and tax financing of new community projects. After the presentation and a question-and-answer session, the competitors had one hour to write a news story. The contest was blind-judged by journalism faculty Jane See White, Jim Patten and Sarah Gassen.

The contest is named for the late Mark Finley, who established the award. Finley, a graduate of The University of Arizona, was a journalist and assistant for the publisher of Hearst's Boston newspaper for 17 years.

Members of the Society of Professional Journalists UA chapter hosted a Region 11 conference April 11-12 on campus. The gathering drew more than 100 journalists and journalism students from a four-state region to listen to experts on topics like religion coverage, public records access and the future of journalism. Members of the group's executive board who took the lead on organizing the conference were: Lorena Barraza, Ashlee Cain, Claire Conrad, Samantha Easter, Krystle Epum, Stephanie Jerzy, Katie Ryan, Meaghan Wallace and Henry Weber. The group's faculty adviser is Susan Knight.

Journalism students Amelia Quiroga and Ethan Williams were accepted into the 2008 summer American Indian Journalism Institute June 1-20. Students take courses at the Freedom Forum's Al Neuharth Media Center on the University of South Dakota's Vermillion campus. Top AIJI graduates are hired for six-week paid internships as reporters, copy editors, photographers and multimedia journalists at daily newspapers and with The Associated Press beginning about July 1. Last summer, 16 AIJI graduates worked in paid news internships, according to the Institute's Web site. Quiroga and Williams are founding members of the UA student chapter of the Native American Journalists Association.

Lauren LePage won a $1,000 scholarship from the Arizona Press Club in the reporting category. She'll pick up the award at a May 10 ceremony.

Two journalism majors won awards at the SPJ Mark of Excellence luncheon April 12. In the sports-column writing category, Michael Schwartz took first place and Lance Madden placed second. Journalism graduate Nina Conrad placed second in sports writing. And the Arizona Daily Wildcat, whose editor in chief is journalism major Alison Hornick, won second place for the best all-around daily student newspaper.

Jennifer Tramm will compete in the 48th annual National Writing Championships of the Hearst Journalism Awards Program June 2-6 in San Francisco. Tramm was one of eight journalism students nationally selected to participate. She will join students participating in various assignments -- competing for additional awards ranging from $1,000 to $5,000 in the Program's National Championships.

Judging the writing competition this year are: Arthur S. Brisbane, Former Senior Vice President, Knight Ridder, Inc., Monte Sereno, CA; Stephen Buckley, Managing Editor, The St. Petersburg Times, FL; and Jeff Cohen, Executive Vice President and Editor, Houston Chronicle, TX.

Presently, 108 colleges and universities with accredited undergraduate journalism schools participate in the program, often called the Pulitzers of college journalism. Funded and administered for 48 years by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, the Journalism Program awards more than $500,000 a year in scholarships, grants and stipends annually. Fayana Richards has been awarded an AAAS Minority Science Writers Internship. She will spend 10 weeks this summer in Washington, D.C., as an intern with Science magazine, a journal published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She is working this semester as an apprentice at the Arizona Daily Star.

Alyson Van Dyke was awarded a summer internship at the Scranton Times-Tribune.

March 2008

Nathan Olivarez-Giles was accepted into the Los Angeles Metpro program that begins in the fall. Metpro is a two-year diversity program designed to help beginning journalists launch careers in Tribune newsrooms. Each participant can expect formal mentoring, frequent performance evaluations and coaching, a thorough grounding in journalism ethics and relevant laws pertaining to libel and privacy, an opportunity to cover communities, including cops, courts and city councils, a thorough understanding of public records and research tools and an opportunity to prepare stories for the Web. Olivarez-Giles will work at the Los Angeles Times.

February 2008

The following students have landed summer internships:
Candace Begody was awarded a Chips Quinn internship at the Detroit News.
Jeffrey Javier was awarded a Pulliam internship at The Arizona Republic.
Lauren LePage will intern as a copy editor at The Press Democrat in Santa Rosa, Calif.
Nathan Olivarez-Giles was selected for a video internship at The New York Times.
Carrie Sherman was selected as a broadcast intern at CBS 2 in New York City.
Ari Wasserman will cover minor league baseball for MLB.com.

The two UA students covering the Arizona Legislature for Community News Service are receiving clips from around the state. Stories by Nicole Santa Cruz and Michael Rich have appeared in the Holbrook Tribune-News, the Arizona Republic and the Tucson Citizen.

Michael Schwartz scored a 14th-place finish in the sports writing category of the 48th annual William Randolph Hearst Foundation's Journalism Awards Program. The Hearst Journalism Awards are held in member colleges and universities of the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication with accredited undergraduate journalism programs.

January 2008

Nicole Santa Cruz, one of the department's Don Bolles fellows covering the legislature in Phoenix, had an article printed in the Jan. 27 issue of the Arizona Republic on the governor's plan to move some inmates.

Journalism students Michael Ritter and Michael Schwartz have both been awarded paid internships with MLB.com for summer 2008. Ritter will cover the Arizona Diamondbacks and Schwartz, who interned for MLB.com last summer with the Diamondbacks, will be covering the L.A. Dodgers. They were offered two of the 33 spots nationwide.

Nicole Fagin is representing the state of Arizona as MTV's election correspondent for 2008. The "Choose or Lose" campaign comprises a specially recruited group of 51 citizen journalists Ð one from every state and Washington, D.C. Ð who will cover the 2008 elections from a youth perspective and tailor their reports for mobile devices. Members will contribute weekly, multi-media reports (short form videos, blogs, animation, photos, podcasts) that will be distributed via a soon-to-launch WAP site, MTV Mobile, Think.MTV.com and to the more than 1,800 sites in the Associated Press Online Video Network. The "Street Team '08" program is made possible by a $700,000 Knight News Challenge grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Nicole Santa Cruz was selected to be a summer intern at The Oregonian.

December 2007

The Hearst Journalism Awards Program is conducted under the auspices of accredited schools of the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication, and fully funded and administered by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation. It consists of six monthly writing, three photojournalism, four broadcast news competitions and one multimedia competition, with championship finals in all divisions except multimedia. The program awards more than $500,000 in scholarships, grants, and stipends annually.

November 2007

Allison Slater has been hired for a spring internship with the Memphis Redbirds.

Matt Andazola had his story on five UA students who have written a book on "man laws" featured on the front page of the Arizona Daily Star Oct. 29. Several of the student authors who were the subject of the article also are UA journalism majors.

Krystle Hart has been named the first recipient of the UA Foundation Board of Directors Scholarship for 2007-08.

Meredith Severino wrote a story on her role in the Study Cairo program that ran in the Fall 2007 issue of Arizona Alumnus magazine. Severino was among 12 students from across the country who learned Arabic and posted reports, photos and blogs during their two-month stay in Cairo. Maggy Zanger led the trip.

October 2007

Jennifer Tramm had her first Page One Accent feature story published in the Arizona Daily Star Oct. 10. The story was on "The Joy of Java."

A journalism student also did well at the ANA competition. Candace Begody placed second in the best sports beat coverage category for a story she wrote while working at the Navajo Times in Window Rock.

September 2007

June 2007

Djamila Grossman was featured in the June issue of the National Edition of the Tombstone Epitaph as the first recipient of the Dean Prichard Scholarship. Other student winners mentioned in the article were Nina Conrad, Jeffrey Javier, Courtney Johnson, Meghan Martin, Colin Moore, Ernesto Romero, Nicole Santa Cruz and Allison Winters, who all won William Hattich Awards (named for the former owner of the Epitaph and the Tombstone Daily Prospector). Also cited were Jacqueline Kuder, William Kaner, Robert Watkins and Valarie Potell, winners of the John P. Clum Award (named for the Epitaph's founder).

May 2007

Jeanie Bergen will do the traffic report for KOLD 13 May 25 -June 5.

Abby Hood, who graduated in May 2007, has taken a job as a reporter with the Beverly Hills Weekly and will start right away.

Several Feature Writing students had work published this semester. They are Morgan O'Crotty and Neil Critchley, Arizona Daily Star; and Jake Hanes and Stephanie Hall, Inside Tucson Business. The latter two also were asked to freelance for the publication.

Other students also are earning impressive clips. They include: Robert Fonorow, Tucson Weekly; Berenice Rosales, La Estrella; and Krissy Sauter, Nina Padula, Lauren LePage, Allison Hamila, Michelle Jakoby and Joe Pangburn, who provided all the content for Inside Tucson Business' Women of Influence tab.

Alex Lau, Lauren Biskind and Michael Skow all had their stories air the week of May 7 on KUAT-TV's Arizona Illustrated.

March 2007

January 2007

Leslie Newell reports that the Arizona Daily Star staff has been similarly impressed with the performance of apprentices. She sent this link to Ashley Houk's story on her very first day: http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/165914.php. Another Star apprentice, Eric Schwartz, had a column on "nerdiness" published Feb. 2.

Two UA journalism majors were named Chips Quinn Scholars by the Freedom Forum, an Arlington, Va.-based nonpartisan foundation dedicated to free press.

The program is designed to help provide support to emerging print news reporters and to foster diversity in U.S. newspaper newsrooms. The scholars work in internships at daily newspapers throughout the country.

Senior Shawn Smith starts this summer as a sports reporter for the Observer-Dispatch in Utica, N.Y. The journalism major has also held internships at KOLD-TV and KCUB-AM, both of Tucson. He's a native of the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation in upstate New York, but grew up in Tucson.

Junior Jeffrey Javier will work as a general assignment reporter with a focus on government and city issues at the Asheville Citizen-Times in North Carolina. He is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the Pride of Arizona Marching Band and Elevation: Ski and Snowboard Club. Javier also writes for the Arizona Daily Wildcat.

The program is named for John "Chips" Quinn Jr. who was editor of the Poughkeepsie (N.Y.) Journal before he died at age 34; he was the son of John Quinn, former deputy chairman of the Freedom Forum, and Loie Quinn.

The Chips Quinn Scholars program has a minimum salary of $500 a week, according to Karen Catone, director of the Chips Quinn Scholars Program.

The Freedom Forum provides each scholar a one-time $500 housing subsidy. Students can use this however they choose. Scholars receive an additional $1,100 upon successful completion of the internship.

The following students were elected officers of the UA student chapter of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists: Victoria Tinajero and Nathan Robert Olivarez-Giles, co-presidents; Matthew Scot Andazola, vice president; Ernesto Abel Romero, secretary; and Lorena Barraza, treasurer.

Olivarez-Giles had his story on Tucson's wacky winter weather featured on Page One of the Arizona Daily Star Jan. 22.

Valarie Potell had her feature story on a Tucson gelato shop operated by two UA graduates featured in the Winter 2007 issue of Arizona Alumnus magazine.

November 2006

Robert Ford had his story "Keeping Vinyl Alive" published in the Nov. 11 issue of Inside Tucson Business. He is a member of Jay Rochlin's feature's class. Read it at: http://azbiz.com/articles/2006/11/20/news/news06.txt

FINLEY WINNERS SELECTED FOR FALL 2006

First place, Chelsea Hodson, winning $750;
Second place, Juli Louttit, winning $350;
Third place, Claire Conrad, winning $250.

Each of the 19 competitors, recognized by J205 instructors as being among the promising beginning newswriters of the department, received an engraved pen commemorating the event on Nov. 20.

The competitors researched and interviewed hydrologist Peter Griffiths of the U.S. Geological Survey and interpretative specialist and public affairs officer Heidi Schewel of the U.S. Forest Service, who discussed recent flooding and related issues in Sabino Canyon. They then wrote articles on deadline, which were blind judged by J205 faculty members.

The contest is named for the late Mark Finley, who established the award. Finley, a graduate of The University of Arizona, was a journalist and assistant for the publisher of Hearst's Boston newspaper for 17 years.

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Student Joyanna Jones, wrote an op-ed piece for the Arizona Daily Star Oct. 27 titled "Disparaging my generation unfair." She's a student in Steve Auslander's Opinion Writing class.

Student Brian Goldsmith wrote a story on the growth of a local church that ran in the Foothills Neighbors section of the Arizona Daily Star Oct. 26. Fellow student Chris Coduto shot the photos for the piece. Goldsmith is a student in Professor Jay Rochlin's feature writing class.

Several students attended the California Chicano News Media Association conference Oct. 27-28 in Los Angeles. They were: Victoria Tinajero, Lorena Barraza, Dalina Castellanos, Valarie Potell, Justin Stock and John deDios. The department received a $300 grant from Xerox Corp. to offset expenses. Professor Bill Greer accompanied the students.

October 2006

The Tombstone Epitaph took home several awards from the Oct. 14 Arizona Newspapers Association contest in Scottsdale. The Epitaph, whose faculty advisor is Bill Greer, earned an honorable mention for departmental news and copy editing excellence. Three 2006 alumni also earned awards: Dana Crudo took third place in features; Emily Kraft won third place in features and photo layout; and James Patrick earned a second place for feature photos.

Dave Hatfield, editor of Inside Tucson Business, recently enlisted the help of three UA Journalism students to write for their annual Tucson "Up and Comers" feature that hit newsstands Oct. 9. Katie Klein, Valerie Potell and Mitra Taj of Jay Rochlin's Feature Writing course interviewed five up-and- coming business leaders in the Tucson community. Hatfield mentioned the opportunity to write the "Up and Comers" articles while speaking in Rochlin's 411 class. The opportunity has helped build a relationship between Inside Tucson Business and the journalism department, and Hatfield has subsequently accepted several freelance story proposals from students.

Senior journalism major Mitra Taj wrote a story on a native seeds program started by the Tohono O'odham that ran in the Oct. 11 Neighbors section of the Arizona Daily Star. Taj had written a version of the article for Tom Beal's RPA class. He encouraged her to submit it to the Star. Read it here.

September 2006

Victoria Harben had a guest column on airport safety published in the Sept. 22 issue of the Arizona Daily Star. Read it here.

Senior Kari Shaffer, a student in Steve Auslander's Opinion Writing class, had an opinion piece published on Labor Day in the Tucson Citizen. It was titled, "For those who toil in retail, it truly is Labor Day."

Student Heather Raftery had two stories and a two-page photo spread published in the September 2006 issue of Cutting Horse Chatter, the official publication of the National Cutting Horse Association. Raftery is a writer, photographer and cutting horse rider.

The UA chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists earned the Outstanding Campus Chapter award for its region at the organization's Aug. 23-25 conference in Chicago. This is the second straight year the UA has earned the top chapter honor in the region that includes Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii and California. Susan Knight is the group's advisor. Members of the executive board are: Mika Mandelbaum, president; Anthony Avila, vice president; and David Kemper, treasurer.

April 2006

Journalism Student Named a Chips Quinn Scholar

Journalism major Andrea Rivera has been named a 2006 Chips Quinn Scholar. Rivera, who is set to graduate in May 2006, will work for 10-12 weeks this summer as a general assignment reporter at the Statesman Journal in Salem, Ore.

Rivera is a Pueblo High School graduate. She is a part-time sports reporter for the Arizona Daily Star and works on the staff of The Tombstone Epitaph, a capstone course in the department that allows students to produce a community newspaper for the town of Tombstone, Ariz.

The Chips Quinn program helps provide support to emerging print news reporters and to foster diversity in U.S. newspaper newsrooms. The program is named for John "Chips" Quinn Jr. who was editor of the Poughkeepsie (N.Y.) Journal before he died at age 34. He was the son of John Quinn, former deputy chairman of the Freedom Forum, and Loie Quinn.

Two win Dow Jones internships

A University of Arizona journalism major and a recent graduate have earned summer internships through the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund. The summer 2006 positions include free pre-internship training seminars on college campuses and weekly salaries starting at $350 for a minimum of 10 weeks.

Alex Chihak, who graduated in December 2005 with a journalism degree, will work this summer at the Denver Post. UA junior Anthony Avila will edit copy at the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Chihak said experience in and out of the classroom helped him land his internship. He spent four semesters as a copy editor for the Arizona Daily Wildcat, the UA student newspaper. Maintaining the marshal's log, similar to the police beat, for The Tombstone Epitaph "helped me learn how to work on a deadline," said Chihak.

But he says his Reporting Public Affairs class with Susan Knight, assistant professor of practice, gave him the best preparation for a possible career in newspapers.

"The intense deadline writing and constantly attending city meetings really helped me learn how to work on a deadline," he said.

A newspaper career would certainly be in keeping for the Chihak family, says Alex, who hails from Kayenta, Ariz., on the Navajo Reservation. His uncle Michael Chihak is the publisher of the Tucson Citizen. His daughter -- Alex's cousin -- was a copy editor at the Arizona Republic. Both are University of Arizona journalism graduates.

Anthony Avila realizes it's no hardship to spend a summer in San Diego, so he's grateful for his opportunity to work on the night desk at the San Diego Union-Tribune. "I'll have the mornings to surf before I go into work in the afternoon," he says with a smile.

Avila says he was encouraged to pursue editing by Professor Bill Greer, who taught his editing class. "That prepared me in terms of editing a publication," he says, and and was a helpful addition when he began reporting -- and eventually became assistant news editor -- at the Wildcat.

A 2003 graduate of Tucson's Arizona College Preparatory Academy, Avila says he wrote on his Dow Jones editing application that reporting, editing and class work all helped shape his experience.

"You're constantly editing, no matter what you're doing," he says. "You have a copy editor and a desk editor, but your first editor is you."

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