UM students win prestigious
RFK Journalism Award

UM journalism students have earned a prestigious national award — one often called the “poor people’s Pulitzer.”

Fourteen student reporters and photographers participating in UM’s Native News Honors Project won a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, which honors outstanding reporting on the poor and disadvantaged. Past winners include Diane Sawyer of ABC, the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post, National Public Radio and CBS’s “60 Minutes.”

UM won in the college print category for “Sovereignty,” an in-depth look into Montana’s seven Indian reservations, which highlights the struggle of tribal communities to regain control over the welfare and future of their people. Judge Barbara Hines wrote, “An impressive entry ... the writing was evocative and perfectly humanized the issues. Incredible photography adds to the package."

Carole Simpson of ABC News, who has chaired the judging panel, wrote of the RFK Journalism Award: “This award is one of the most prestigious in the journalism community. It says proudly and boldly that the least of us in society will not be forgotten.”

Journalism Professor Carol Van Valkenburg said she received a phone call from Ethel Kennedy, who personally notified UM of the award.

“This is a wonderful tribute to the excellent work produced by our students,” Van Valkenburg said. “I would put their work alongside the best work of many professionals. It is also significant because it honors those many, many people on Montana’s reservations who for years have opened up their lives and their homes to our students so that their stories could be told.”

Van Valkenburg, photojournalism Professor Teresa Tamura and the winning students will receive the award during a May 24 banquet at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. They’ll be joined by winners from the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and PBS’ Frontline.

The students are Jessica Wambach, Adam Weinacker, Alisha Wyman, Fred Miller, Natalie Storey, Sadie Craig, Joe Friedrichs, Meghan Brown, Adam Bystrom, Mike Cohea, Lisa Hornstein, Chandler Melton, Noelle Teixeira, and Heather Telesca.

Now in its 15th year, the Native News Honors Project is a class that allows students to delve into pressing issues facing Indian Country. Each spring semester a group of young journalists gives up their spring break to visit Montana’s reservations and produce stories and photos, which are then printed in a special publication inserted in Montana’s largest newspapers.

The project is sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and UM’s School of Journalism.

The RFK Journalism Awards were founded in 1968 by a group of journalists who covered Sen. Kennedy’s presidential campaign. Dedicated to his youngest child, Rory, the awards are judged by more than 50 journalists each year. The awards committee consists of six independent journalists who serve as advisers and maintain fairness in the judging.

Today, in its 35th year, the award program has exceeded the expectations of its founders. It is the largest program of its kind and one of the few in which the winners are judged solely by their peers.