Ernie Pyle Scholars

Bright minds thrive together

Every year, The Media School identifies its top incoming journalism students and provides them with enhanced resources to ensure they’ll reach their full potential: faculty mentorship, advanced coursework, and travel and professional development opportunities. We call this group the Ernie Pyle Scholars.

Since the program’s inception in 2006, Ernie Pyle Scholars have distinguished themselves as leaders of campus media organizations and members of academic honor societies. Program alumni work at top media organizations including The Washington Post, NPR, Facebook, CBS's “60 Minutes” and Forbes, and international public relations firms in New York, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.

7alumni work at The Washington Post

44%of Indiana Daily Student editors-in-chief in the last five years have been Ernie Pyle Scholars

4national Hearst writing champions in seven years

A professor speaks with students as they are seated in a circle in a classroom.
A student smiles and poses in front of the Buckingham Palace Gates during a trip in London.
A group of students look at a brochure during a student trip.
Ernie Pyle talks with a man in a suit in front of a doorway and sign to subscribe to the IDS.

A journalism icon’s living legacy

Ernie Pyle was a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist best known for his World War II columns that told the stories of average soldiers. He studied journalism at IU and was editor-in-chief of the Indiana Daily Student.

Pyle was an embedded reporter for Scripps-Howard newspapers, serving time in both the Pacific and European theaters. He was killed by enemy machine gun fire April 17, 1945, in Iejima.

Learn more about Pyle

Regional

Visit media organizations and network with alumni in Chicago during your junior or senior year. Past site visits have included the Chicago Tribune, Edelman Public Relations, WGN, and the Big Ten Network. (Free overnight trip.)

National

Spend spring break of your sophomore year in New York City. You’ll visit media organizations and network with alumni. (Free but mandatory trip as part of the honors program.)

International

Intern at a media or communications organization, take a class on British media, and experience living and working in the U.K. as a student in the Summer in London Honors Program for six weeks in May/June between your sophomore and junior years. (Partially subsidized.)

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