Grady College students named McGill Fellows
Twelve undergraduate and graduate students have been named 2016 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.
The 2016 McGill Fellows are:
Michelle Baruchman (Woodstock, Georgia) senior, digital and broadcast news
Leigh Beeson (Martinez, Georgia) graduate student, Health and Medical Journalism
Cory Cole (Alpharetta, Georgia) senior, journalism
Elizabeth Fite (Athens, Georgia) graduate student, Health and Medical Journalism
Erica Hensley (Atlanta, Georgia) graduate student, Health and Medical Journalism
Lauren Herbert (Canton, Georgia) senior, digital and broadcast news
Jordan Hill (Jasper, Georgia) senior, journalism
Joshua Jones (Cornelia, Georgia) senior, journalism
William Robinson (Cumming, Georgia) senior, journalism
Jaylon Thompson (Hampton, Georgia) senior, digital and broadcast journalism
Katelyn Umholtz (Hinesville, Georgia) senior, journalism
Kaitlyn Yarborough (Albany, Georgia) senior, journalism
The requirements of a McGill Fellow are:
• 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 2016 McGill Symposium will be held from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Oct., 5 in the Peyton Anderson Forum at the Grady College.
• That same day, the McGill Fellows will attend and be introduced at the McGill Lecture, which will be presented by David Armstrong, senior enterprise reporter for STAT, a national publication focused on health, medicine and science. The Lecture will be held at 4 p.m. in Room 148 of the Miller Learning Center.
• The McGill Fellows also will help select the ninth recipient of the McGill Medal, awarded annually to a U.S. journalist whose career has exemplified journalistic courage.
• Finally, the McGill Fellows have first priority to enroll in a one-hour, Spring semester, independent study on journalistic courage, to be taught by Murray.
This is the tenth class of McGill Fellows. The first class was selected in 2007.
Joining Murray on the selection committee were Grady faculty Valerie Boyd, Keith Herndon, Barry Hollander, Janice Hume, Mark Johnson, Vicki Michaelis and Patricia Thomas.
For more than 30 years, the McGill Lecture has brought significant figures in journalism to the University of Georgia to 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. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1958 for “long, courageous and effective leadership.”
Established in 1978, the UGA annual lecture series addresses major issues impacting the American press.
The McGill Symposium is funded by the McGill Lecture Endowment.
Date: September 19, 2016Author: Diane Murray, murrayd@uga.edu
Contact: Diane Murray, murrayd@uga.edu