McGill Fellows chosen for upcoming symposium
Twelve undergraduate and graduate students have been named McGill Fellows by the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.
They were selected by a faculty committee “for their strengths in academics, practical experience and leadership,” said Diane Murray, public service faculty and Director of the McGill program in Journalistic Courage, who chaired the committee.
The 2015 McGill Fellows are:
• Lauren Blais (Athens, Ga.) Senior, Publication Management
• Syndey Devine (Valdosta, Ga.) Graduate student, Health and Medical Journalism
• Grace Donnelly (Clarkesville, Ga.) Senior, Magazines
• Rachel Eubanks (Marietta, Ga.) Senior, Publication Management — Visual Journalism
• Daniel Funke (Alpharetta, Ga.) Junior, Public Affairs Journalism
• Jamari Jordan (Lawrenceville, Ga.) Senior, Mass Media Arts
• Macey Kessler (Suwanee, Ga.) Senior, Digital and Broadcast Journalism
• Sam Lack (Atlanta, Ga.) Senior, Digital and Broadcast Journalism
• Brittney Laryea (Lawrenceville, Ga.) Senior, Digital and Broadcast Journalism
• Lauren McDonald (Vidalia, Ga.) Senior, Public Affairs Journalism
• Nick Suss (Cumming, Ga.) Senior, Magazines
• Kendall Trammell (Newnan, Ga.) Senior, Digital and Broadcast News
As a McGill Fellow, the students will participate in the McGill Symposium, which brings together students, faculty and leading journalists to consider what journalistic courage means and how it is exemplified by reporters and editors. The McGill Symposium will be held from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2015, in the Peyton Anderson Forum at the Grady College.
Later Wednesday, the McGill Fellows will attend the McGill Lecture, which will be presented by Kathy Gannon, special regional correspondent for Afghanistan and Pakistan for The Associated Press. She is the recipient of the 2015 McGill Medal for Journalistic Courage. The Lecture will be held at 4 p.m. in Room 148 of the Miller Learning Center.
Following the symposium, the McGill Fellows will help select the eighth recipient of the McGill Medal, awarded annually to a U.S. journalist whose career has exemplified journalistic courage.
Finally, the McGill Fellows will have first priority to enroll in a one-hour, independent study on journalistic courage, to be taught by Murray next spring.
This is the ninth class of McGill Fellows.
Joining Murray on the selection committee were Grady faculty Valerie Boyd, John Greenman, Keith Herndon, Janice Hume, Mark Johnson, Vicki Michaelis, Chris Shumway and Patricia Thomas.
For more than 30 years, the McGill Lecture has brought significant figures in journalism to the University of Georgia to help us honor Ralph McGill’s courage as an editor.
McGill, while editor and publisher of The Atlanta Constitution, was regarded as the “conscience of the south,” using the newspaper’s editorial pages to challenge segregation in the 1950s and 1960s. McGill was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1958 for “long, courageous and effective leadership.”
Established in 1978, this University of Georgia annual lecture series addresses major issues impacting the American press.
The McGill Symposium is funded by the McGill Lecture Endowment.
Date: October 26, 2015Author: Diane Murray, murrayd@uga.edu