Four years, three countries, and numerous jobs and internships have convinced photojournalist Anna Reed that she is right where she wants to be. Her dream is to work for a big city newspaper and the experience she’s gained at UNL over the past three years is paving the way. Her work has been rewarded nationally with a fourth place finish in the prestigious Hearst Photojournalism competition and an invitation to advance to the semi-final round to compete for more honors.
“I like newspapers because you get to do everything,” says Reed. “You can do feature stories, breaking news, general news, sports. I like the variety.”
Reed is no stranger to working in the newspaper business. In addition to working for the Daily Nebraskan as a photographer for the past three years and recently being hired at the Lincoln Journal Star, she has also worked for the Omaha World-Herald and the Cedar County News in Hartington, Nebraska.
“The Cedar County News is a weekly paper and it is pretty small, but my internship there was a really good experience,” Reed says. “It was good to be able to start small and make a lot of mistakes that not a lot of people were going to see. It was a great way to learn.”
Reed also was accepted into the Omaha World-Herald’s Fellowship Program for the spring 2012 semester. The College of Journalism and Mass Communication offers a class called “The Real World” in which students can get a feel for what working at a newspaper is like. Staff members from different departments at the World-Herald are brought in to speak in the classroom, and at the end of the semester students can apply for their fellowship program. If accepted, the World- Herald pays for the student’s class, gives them a paid semester-long internship, and, if he or she gets an A in the class, they get a stipend when it’s over.
This program allowed Reed to gain valuable experience that she will use throughout her career and the World-Herald liked her so much that she is now doing freelance work for them in Lincoln, shooting high school football games and other local events.
In addition to working at the World-Herald, Reed was selected to attend the Eddie Adams Workshop, a four-day intensive in upstate New York that gives 100 selected students from all over the world the chance to work with top photography professionals, free of charge. Reed’s group worked alongside the Associated Press’s award winning photographer, Emilio Morenatti and the editor for her group was Santiago Lyon, the director of photography at the Associated Press.
These experiences have fine-tuned Reed’s skills, but they aren’t the only things shaping her as a photojournalist. She traveled to Costa Rica her freshman year and in the winter of 2011, Reed went to Kyrgyzstan as part of a photo grant her class received to work on projects about people in need. As part of the same grant, Reed also had the opportunity to visit India, the country with the world’s highest leprosy population.
“I didn’t know anything about leprosy before I started researching it for this trip, but I learned so much. First of all, leprosy is completely curable and the medication is free, but there is such a huge stigma associated with it in India that when people realize they have it, they don’t get help,” Reed says. “Sometimes their families kick them out and they don’t have anywhere to go so they have to resort to begging.”
These photo trips have been a great opportunity for Reed to get experience as a photojournalist, and she hasn’t had to break the bank to go on them. Scholarships and grants have made education abroad affordable for her. She recently placed fourth in the Hearst Photojournalism competition and is a finalist for the semi-final round, which could lead to even more scholarship money. More importantly, the awards provide evidence that she’s receiving a top-notch education.
“I have been really lucky financially because Nebraska has programs that allow me to study abroad basically for free,” Reed says. “I have just had ridiculous opportunities to travel and not have to worry so much about the financial side of it and that has been really beneficial.”
If you would like to learn more about scholarships available for education abroad, go to http://educationabroad.unl.edu/scholarships. To learn more about UNL Photojournalism, go to http://cojmc.unl.edu/photojournalism/ and check out some of Anna Reed’s work at http://annareedphotography.com/.
More details at: http://go.unl.edu/0fg