News

Five students win scholarships from Overseas Press Club

March 04, 2009

Stephen Nessen, Haley Sweetland Edwards, Jeff Horwitz, Emily Witt & Simon Akam

Five Journalism School students were each recently awarded a $2,000 scholarship by the Overseas Press Club Foundation at an annual scholarship luncheon held at the Yale Club in New York City.  Michael Oreskes, senior managing editor of The Associated Press, was the guest speaker. 

The Columbia journalism students were among 13 aspiring foreign correspondents selected by a panel of leading journalists from a pool of 200 applicants from 50 different colleges and universities. 

Simon Akam '09 won the Emanuel R. Freedman Scholarship, named for the former foreign editor of The New York Times.  In his essay, Akam wrote about of land mines and other incendiary devices that remain in parts of Egypt 65 years after the North African campaigns of World War II.  Akam is also the recipient of an OPC Foundation internship and will travel to Turkey to work in the Reuters bureau in Istanbul. Visit www.simonakam.com

Haley Sweetland Edwards, M.A.'09, was the recipient of the Irene Corbally Kuhn Scholarship, endowed by the Scripps Howard Foundation.  Her winning essay discussed how new media technologies can give voices to people in unstable regions divided along ethnic, racial or religious lines. 

Jeff Horwitz, M.A.'09, was the first recipient of an OPC Foundation Scholarship honoring Fred Wiegold, a former New York bureau chief for Bloomberg News.  Horwitz wrote about business in Eastern Congo’s North Kivu province, a region devoid of passable roads and government infrastructure, where beer delivery men have no problem getting around. 

Stephen Nessen '10 is the recipient of the Roy Rowan Scholarship, named for the legendary Time bureau chief and foreign correspondent. His essay described his visit with one of the last nomadic Ewenki families in northern China, who earn their living selling reindeer antlers. During the fall semester, Nessen, a part-time student, will intern at the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong.

Emily Witt '09 won the Flora Lewis Scholarship, honoring the Paris-based bureau chief of The New York Times.  Witt’s essay was about Beira, Mozambique, still recovering from war and harmed by the economic collapse of neighboring Zimbabwe.

The OPC Foundation is the nation’s largest and most visible scholarship program encouraging aspiring journalists to pursue careers as foreign correspondents.