Junior Jack Evans one of 9 Howard reporting contest winners
The Media School Report
February 6, 2017
Junior Jack Evans and eight journalism students from around the country are winners of the Roy W. Howard National Collegiate Reporting Competition. (Courtesy photo)
Junior Jack Evans is one of nine college journalists who have won the Roy W. Howard National Collegiate Reporting Competition, the Scripps Howard Foundation announced last week.
Evans and eight Howard Fellows will travel to Japan in May for a nine-day journalism study tour.
“Being a winner of this award is exciting in the sense that it does feel good to have the quality of my work validated,” said Evans, who submitted a portfolio of his work and an essay to be considered for the prize. “I don’t do this work predominantly for awards or my own gratification — I doubt any good journalists do — but I think it’s a sign that I’m headed in the right direction.”
Evans added that he’s looking forward to traveling abroad, a first for him, because “it’s more important than ever in 2017, as a journalist, an American and a human, to experience other cultures and see how other people live and interact with media.”
The competition, established in 1984 in cooperation with Indiana University Journalism, honors the memory of the journalist who led Scripps Howard Newspapers from 1922‐1953 and United Press from 1912‐1920. This year marks the 12th year that the Scripps Howard Foundation has awarded the study tour to Japan to competition winners.
“The Scripps Howard Foundation develops the next generation of leaders in journalism through programs such as the Roy Howard National Collegiate Reporting Competition,” said Liz Carter, president and CEO of the Scripps Howard Foundation, in the organization’s press release. “This year’s winning applicants represent some of the most talented future journalists, and we look forward to their contributions to the industry.”
IU Media School Roy W. Howard Professor of Practice Joseph Coleman will lead the expenses-paid trip. Coleman has taught undergraduate and graduate courses at IU since 2009. He is the former Associated Press bureau chief in Tokyo and teaches a reporting class that takes IU students on a reporting trip to Okinawa, Japan.
Travel begins May 11 and includes excursions primarily in the Kansai region cities of Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe. Included in the trip is a visit to Hiroshima, the first city in world history to be devastated by the atomic bomb, and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and Park, as well as Tokyo.
“These student journalists — among the best in the country — bring a powerful mix of talents and perspectives to our program,” Coleman said. “Japan’s combination of modernity and tradition will challenge their assumptions and help them develop a nuanced way of looking at the world.”
The nine winners, whose entries represent print, broadcast and online media, were chosen for the high quality of their work, an essay about their interest in international affairs and letters of recommendation. They are:
Jack Evans, a junior studying journalism at Indiana University.
Evans is the city police beat reporter at the Indiana Daily Student, IU’s independent daily student newspaper, where he also covers the opioid epidemic. He previously edited the arts desk and covered news and independent music. He has interned at the Daily Hampshire Gazette, the daily newspaper for western Massachusetts’s Hampshire County, and at the Knoxville Mercury, east Tennessee’s preeminent alt-weekly. He has written daily and breaking news on anarchic antifascist protest, the charged atmosphere of a Donald Trump rally and mourning in the wake of the Orlando massacre, as well as long form stories on haunted houses, the sport of yo-yo and the political and moral tensions shaping the response to the opioid epidemic. He hopes to eventually work on the enterprise desk of a national newspaper. Evans is from Knoxville, Tennessee.
Miela Fetaw, a senior studying global studies, journalism and linguistics with specializations in peace-conflict resolution, and cultures and communities at The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Fetaw is an investigative intern at the NBC-affiliate WTMJ-TV, a multimedia journalist for her journalism department’s online publication Media Milwaukee and a former reporter for her school’s television station, PantherVision. Fetaw currently is working on a documentary that chronicles the lives of 10 Eritrean refugees across the world and the mythology of home. Her special reporting interests include international affairs, social injustice and the intersection of community, culture and womanhood.
Throughout her college career, she has held internships in film, marketing and social work. In the future, she plans to hone her storytelling and become a foreign correspondent, highlighting the lives of the non-Western world. Fetaw is originally from Eritrea and lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Ala’a Ibrahim, a senior studying multimedia journalism and business at the University of Texas at Austin.
As a visual journalist, she focuses on video production, photography, documentary film and reporting. She is a multimedia intern at Austin’s NPR affiliate, KUT. Ibrahim is president of UT Austin’s chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists. She has held positions at NBCUniversal’s “Meet the Press,” KXAN-TV’s Investigative Unit, Revelator, The Daily Texan and TSTV. She has contributed video to The New York Times’ Special Projects unit.
Ibrahim is passionate about leadership, public speaking and entrepreneurship. She plans to use her unique perspective to create influential content throughout her career. Upon return to the United States, Ibrahim will join NBCUniversal as a fellow in New York City. Ibrahim is from Houston, Texas.
Stephanie Murray, a junior studying journalism and English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Murray is the editor in chief of Amherst Wire, the digital-first, student-produced news magazine of the UMass Journalism Department. She is a former news intern and summer staffer at the Daily Hampshire Gazette. She currently works as a correspondent for that paper, where she covered the first murder in Amherst in over a decade. Murray has worked as a news intern at The Lowell Sun. In May, Murray will begin an internship at the Statehouse News Service and MASSterList in Boston, where she will focus on audience engagement and entrepreneurial journalism. Having covered politics, local news, business and crime, Murray is a well-rounded reporter with a passion for finding untold stories. Murray is from Tyngsboro, Massachusetts.
Nishant Mohan, a junior studying journalism at the University of Idaho.
He covers the Idaho State Legislature as the associate producer on “Idaho Reports,” a show on Idaho Public Television covering state government. Nishant spent the last year producing print, web, audio and video stories on state politics and other topics while temping for the Idaho Press-Tribune, interning with the Idaho Statesman and interning with Idaho Public Radio and a group of five small county papers around the state. He has covered student and faculty governments for the University of Idaho’s student paper, the Argonaut. He will spend this summer working for the Street.com in a business reporting internship. Nishant is from Boise, Idaho.
Olivia Richard, a junior studying journalism with an emphasis in the broadcast medium at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.
Richard has interned for several Arizonan news outlets, including Arizona PBS; KJZZ, the local NPR affiliate; CW6, Arizona Capitol Television; and the State Press. She has interned at KNBC, the Los Angeles NBC station, for two consecutive summers and has been invited back for a third. Richard is currently a political broadcast reporting intern at AC-TV, which provides governmental news and coverage state-wide. Richard is looking forward to experiencing and exploring the history, cultures and traditions of Japan.
Emily Scott, a junior studying journalism with a concentration in international communication and a minor in history at Temple University.
She works as the features editor of Temple’s student-run newspaper, The Temple News. Scott has interned for The Key, a Philadelphia music blog run by local radio station 88.5 WXPN. This past summer, she interned with Metro Éireann, a multicultural newspaper in Dublin, Ireland, where she covered refugee and immigrant news in the country. She is currently an intern with the Philadelphia Reentry Reporting Collaborative, a solutions journalism project that covers re-entry after incarceration in Philadelphia. She also is teaching journalism to high school students in the Philadelphia School District this semester and is a freelance reporter for Generocity, a social impact news website in Philadelphia. Scott is from Langhorne, Pennsylvania.
Sarah Grace Taylor, a junior studying journalism and anthropology at Middle Tennessee State University.
She is editor-in-chief of MTSU Sidelines, voted best student news website at the Southeast Journalism Conference and the 2016 AP Broadcast and Media Editors Contest. She was a correspondent for USA Today College in 2015 and a 2016 political intern for the Associated Press in Washington, where she covered legislation and the presidential election. She won a 2016 Society of Professional Journalists Green Eyeshade Award for best administrative coverage and won the 2016 AP Broadcast and Media Editors Contest award for best continued coverage for her reporting of an ongoing protest against a building named for Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest. She is an online journalist who specializes in written coverage of news, politics and social issues. Taylor is from Old Hickory, Tennessee.
Sayra Trejo, a senior studying political science, and communication and media studies at Dominican University of California.
Trejo has interned at KTVU Fox 2 News in Oakland and at NPR-affiliate station KALW in San Francisco. While at KALW, she wrote and produced a story about environmental concerns at Muir Woods National Monument. She was awarded the 2016 Emerging Environmental Award by the Society of Environmental Journalists and was invited to the SEJ’s annual conference in Sacramento. She is a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. Trejo also works for her school’s independent online news journal, The Dominican Beat, where she has been editor-in-chief and is a reporter. Upon returning from Japan, she will return to KALW as a guest reporter. Trejo is from San Rafael, California.
