Four students in the College of Journalism and Mass Communications have been selected to participate in a 10-week national reporting project this summer as part of the News21 fellowship sponsored by the Carnegie Corp., of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
The students are Rachel Albin of Lincoln, Jenna Gibson of Stillwater, Minn., Teresa Lostroh of Malcolm and Andrew Mach of Aberdeen, S.D. They will join 100 students from 11 other universities in the national project.
News21 is designed to train a new generation of journalists to reshape the news industry. They will produce in-depth news coverage on critical issues facing the nation and experiment with innovative digital methods to distribute the news on multiple platforms.
The News21 program is part of the Carnegie-Knight Initiative for the Future of Journalism Education, which is investing more than $11 million to bolster the journalism curricula at 12 journalism schools. In addition to UNL, participating universities in the initiative are Arizona State University, Columbia University, Harvard University, University of Maryland-College Park, University of Missouri-Columbia, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Northwestern University, University of Southern California, Syracuse University, University of Texas at Austin and University of California, Berkeley.
The UNL students will join a reporting team based at Arizona State. Led by Len Downie Jr., former executive editor of the Washington Post, the team, which also includes students from Maryland, will explore the issue of food safety. The three schools are collaborating this spring to offer joint seminars on each campus to prepare students for reporting on the issue.
The News21 program provides each student with a $7,500 stipend and covers any travel costs.
Albin has split her college years between Nebraska and Mexico. After a summer session and an academic year in central Mexico, she is a fully bilingual reporter and photographer. She traveled to Bolivia in June to report on coca for the college. In 2009, she investigated post-traumatic stress disorder among migrants along the Arizona-Sonora border for the UNL student newspaper, the Daily Nebraskan. She also interned at the Kearney Hub and the Bismarck (N.D.) Tribune. In December, she will travel to Algeria to report on the plight of Sahrawi refugees as part of an in-depth reporting class. Albin, who plans to graduate from UNL in May 2011 with majors in news-editorial and Spanish, is the managing editor of the Daily Nebraskan.
Gibson is a senior news-editorial, French and an international study major who has been interested in reporting since she attended a summer camp about reporting when she was in seventh grade. She has worked for the Daily Nebraskan since her freshman year, and is the paper's editor-in-chief. She has also been an intern at the Stillwater (Minn.) Gazette and the Rochester (Minn.) Post-Bulletin. Although she enjoys writing news, especially breaking news, Gibson said her real passion is for international and investigative reporting. She has traveled to South Africa, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ethiopia, Zambia and Burkina Faso on educational reporting trips. Her dream job would be to work for a wire service in sub-Saharan Africa while working on investigative projects there.
Lostroh is a senior, pursuing a double major in news-editorial and Spanish, with a concentration in history. She works in the college's ABC News on Campus bureau producing text and video content for the network's various online platforms. Last summer, she was a Dow Jones Newspaper Fund copyediting intern at the St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press. Prior to that, she worked as a summer reporting intern at the Norfolk Daily News and as a copyeditor and reporter for the Daily Nebraskan. She has also traveled abroad to Bilbao, Spain, Western Europe and San Jose, Costa Rica, studying Spanish and journalism.
Mach is a senior, pursuing majors in broadcasting, news-editorial and German, with a concentration in history. Since January, he has been a reporter, videographer and producer for ABC News on Campus. In that role, he contributes digital content for ABCNews.com and its various online platforms. Last summer, Mach interned at the Washington Post as a multimedia and video journalist, where he videotaped and edited daily breaking and feature news videos for washingtonpost.com. While in D.C., he also worked on projects for the Newseum and the Freedom Forum. In 2009, Mach interned in Berlin at ZDF, Europe's largest television network, where he aided in the production and planning of "ZDF Morgenmagazin," the network's national morning news program. While in Berlin, Mach also reported for The Local, an online newspaper, offering Germany's news in English. His journalism experience also includes reporting for the Norfolk Daily News and producing multimedia podcasts for the International Quilt Study Center and Museum.
- Marilyn Hahn, Journalism and Mass Communications