Photo student shares winnings with J-School

By Brad Fjeldheim
J-School Web reporter

photo by Kathryn Stevens

Photojournalism student Lisa Hornstein will graduate in May with a load of prizes and awards

A University of Montana photojournalism student has won a scholarship to study in London and a grant for a picture story that will be part of the J-School’s Native News Honors Project.

Lisa Hornstein, a senior from Missoula, will receive a $4,100 scholarship as a winner of the Alexia Foundation Competition, as well as a $500 grant she plans to give to the J-School. The grant will go to the photo portion of the Native News project, Hornstein said.

“I’m excited for the photography aspect of Native News to have a little money to help further the project,” she said.

The Alexia Foundation Competition accepts picture story proposals from students and gives scholarships to study photojournalism at Syracuse University in London, England. It also awards a cash grant to help students produce the picture story.

Professor Teresa Tamura, photo adviser for Native News, said she is figuring out what the money will go toward. It could go toward film, research or photo books or frames to showcase the project.

Journalism students in the Native News Honors Project work in pairs, covering issues affecting the seven Montana Indian reservations. In the 13 years since the class started, students have covered an array of subjects, including health, housing, justice and education. This year the topic is sovereignty.

Hornstein’s work will examine water pollution on the Fort Belknap Reservation in north-central Montana where the Zortman-Landusky mines, in the Little Rocky Mountains south of the reservation, have contaminated the water supply.

She is one of 14 students in the class who will visit reservations over spring break to report and photograph stories for publication in Montana newspapers.

In the past, the Missoulian and the Great Falls Tribune have rotated publishing the project each year, but this year class members hope to see it in the Missoulian, the Great Falls Tribune and the Billings Gazette, said Native News professor Carol Van Valkenburg.

The Native News project has consistently won awards for the J-School.

“There has not been a year that a photo or story has not won a national award,” said Van Valkenburg, who has been teaching the class since its conception in 1991.

Hornstein felt fortunate to receive the award because the story she proposed faced stiff competition. Other student winners proposed stories about bi-racial African residents of the Kalahari desert, illegal Cuban immigrants and homeless California teens.

The Alexia Foundation was created by the family of Alexia Tsairis, a victim of the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. Tsairis was an honors photojournalism student at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and an advocate of world peace. The foundation’s goal is to provide students and professionals the means to advance peace.

The scholarship is the most recent of Hornstein’s many accomplishments.
She most recently won a merit award in the Photo District News contest for a picture she took in Missoula. Photo District News touts itself as the magazine for emerging photojournalists.

She also finished 15th place in the latest round of the Hearst Photojournalism Competition and was selected for the Poynter Institute’s Visual Journalism Fellowship for College Graduates this summer.

“I have been overwhelmed with all of the awards I have been winning,” Hornstein said.

Last semester she was selected to attend the Eddie Adams Photojournalism Workshop in New York State, and won a gold award in the Spot News category of the College Photographer of the Year awards.

Hornstein will graduate in May with a degree in photojournalism and will be busy with fellowships and scholarships until she finishes her semester in London next fall.

“I’m really excited to graduate and start my professional career,” she said. She plans to work in Yellowstone National Park for the winter and save money for a six-month hike of the Appalachian Trail next year with her best friend. She's hoping to photograph the hike from Georgia to Maine and write a book about it.

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