PRINCETON, N.J. — Four teens who attended summer journalism workshops funded by the Dow Jones News Fund in 2022 have been awarded $1,500 college scholarships for the 2023-2024 school year.
With support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Dow Jones News Fund supported 10 high school summer workshops that concentrated on inequities in healthcare, education and other public services.
The workshop directors were asked to nominate a participant who was a rising senior or college freshman and performed well during the workshop. The nominees were asked to write essays about how the goals of diversity and equal justice drive their quests for careers in journalism.
The scholarship recipients are:
Lauren Linh Bui, a freshman at De Anza College in Cupertino, California, attended the Mosaic Journalism Workshop at San Jose State University. Lauren grew up in Vietnam, where she first learned about the injustices Vietnamese women faced, from sexual harassment to gender discrimination to even rape. At the Mosaic Journalism Workshop, Lauren was able to find her voice and pursue her passion for writing about social change. Inspired by The 1619 Project published in The New York Times, Lauren hopes to one day publish an in-depth commentary about the roots of sexual harassment in Vietnamese customs.
Anthony Cruz is a freshman at Florida International University, where he attended the Journalism Jumpstart workshop in 2021 and 2022. According to workshop director Karla Kennedy, Anthony shows an extraordinary enthusiasm for journalism, coming in early and often and always going the extra mile to help his classmates. As a first generation Cuban American, Anthony is inspired to tell the stories of immigrants and those who have struggled.
Christin Fluellen, a freshman at Hampton University in Virginia, attended the Detroit Writing Room Journalism Camp last summer to hone her skills before attending college. “From our camp, she learned the importance of reporting stories focused on race and diversity and the impact those stories can have on people and policies,” wrote Stephanie Steinberg in her recommendation. Inspired by her own experience and the lessons from the camp, Christin wrote about the underfunding of historically black colleges and universities and how that has impacted Black students who are not able to attend their dream schools due to financial difficulties.
Mariam Jabri, a senior at Eden Prairie (Minnesota) High School, attended ThreeSixty Journalism’s News Reporter Academy at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul. In her essay, Mariam shared her own experience in high school reporting on issues impacting immigrants like her and other under-represented groups. During the camp she wrote about the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition. Workshop associate director Theresa Malloy Lemickson wrote, “She is a compassionate leader who wants to make the world better one story at a time.”