Journalism senior is 2006 Bolles fellow
University of Arizona senior John D. "Joe" Ferguson will spend spring semester covering the Arizona Legislature while working full time out of the Capitol pressroom as the 2006 Don Bolles Fellow.
The annual fellowship is part of Community News Service, a major public service project sponsored by the UA Journalism Department. The news service provides weekly legislative news aimed at readers of the state's rural and suburban newspapers.
Each Bolles fellow is a UA journalism major dedicated to a career in news; he or she is selected to receive a stipend and live in Phoenix during the spring legislative session. The fellowship is named for former Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles, who was killed in 1976 while investigating organized crime activity.
Community News Service began in 1973, when former UA Journalism Professor Don Carson took a group of students to the Capitol to write stories as part of the department's curriculum in reporting public affairs. The news service evolved into annual legislative coverage, and the Don Bolles Fellowship for a full-time legislative reporter was established in 1978.
The Bolles fellow produces two or more stories a week, which are edited by UA Journalism Professor Susan Knight. The assignment is to cover the stories of interest to readers not living in the state's major urban areas. Past stories have covered environmental concerns, immigration and smuggling in border areas, bilingual education, lack of medical services in rural communities, forest fires, and Native American senior care.
"The quality of our work has been very good, and the response from editors around the state has been phenomenal," Knight said. "We communicate often with editors, everything from hearing their kudos for our work to querying them for their interests and needs."
The fellowship was once funded by the Arizona Republic and the Central Newspapers Foundation, but the Journalism Department has picked up financial responsibility in recent years, using scholarship money donated by alumni and other sources to cover the $4,000 stipend.
Community News Service and the Arizona Daily Wildcat -- the UA student newspaper -- share costs for the fellow to work out of the Capitol pressroom, and the fellow produces stories for the Wildcat as well during the semester.
Ferguson, 30, carries a triple major in journalism, history and political science. He hopes to work as a political reporter after his planned graduation in May 2006. He has done reporting and editing work for the Arizona Daily Wildcat, Aztec Press, Tucson Weekly, The Coffee Times, the Arizona Daily Star, Tucson Citizen, the Arizona Republic and The Associated Press.
In spring 2005, Ferguson won the Kathryn Anne Governal Perseverance Award, the D.C. Gordon Scholarship and was one of 34 James Edward Duncan Scholarship winners. Last summer he worked in Washington at the National Journal's Congress Daily with the Institute on Political Journalism.
A Tucson resident, Ferguson is the father of an 8-year-old son, Draedon. Many past Bolles fellows have found success in news, including recent fellows: Bob Purvis, a news reporter at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ; Eric Swedlund and Andrea Kelly, both reporters at the Arizona Daily Star; and Cyndy Cole, a reporter at the Arizona Daily Sun in Flagstaff.