Aspiring journalists win Overseas Press Club Foundation Scholar Awards

Seniors Yi-Ling Liu and Elizabeth Miles were awarded Overseas Press Club Foundation Scholar Awards at the foundation’s 2017 Annual Scholar Awards Luncheon held at the Yale Club in New York City.

Liu and Miles were among 15 aspiring foreign correspondents selected by a panel of leading journalists from a pool of 175 applicants from 50 different colleges and universities. Rebecca Blumenstein, deputy managing editor of the New York Times, was the keynote speaker at the ceremony.

Liu was the recipient of the Fritz Beebe Fellowship. She received the award from Larry Martz, who endowed the award. Born and raised in Hong Kong, a haven of free speech situated next to an authoritarian nation, Liu is fascinated by China, its untapped stories constrained by rigid censorship. With experience in both print and film, she intends to combine rigorous reporting with innovative new forms of media. In her winning essay, she wrote about how a popular Taiwanese bookstore chain had to adapt its product mix after opening its first branch in mainland China. Also proficient in French, she has an OPC Foundation fellowship with the Associated Press in Beijing.

Miles received of the Flora Lewis Fellowship. She received the award from Jackie Albert-Simon, who endowed the award. A central theme of Miles’s reporting so far has been civil conflicts and their legacies. A native speaker in both English and Spanish and proficient in French, she wrote about a funeral in Spain for a mother and son killed in 1948 by Franco’s security forces and how such events remain intensely political nearly seven decades later.  She has an OPC Fellowship in the Reuters bureau in Brussels.

The award winners were also honored with a reception at Reuters the night before the luncheon, hosted by the Reuters’ senior staff.  On Saturday they received risk management and situational awareness training from Global Journalist Secuity at CUNY Graduate School of Journalism in New York City. They also met privately with editors and freelance journalists at a special breakfast held the morning of the awards presentation and at a post-luncheon panel.

The OPC Foundation is the nation’s largest scholarship program encouraging aspiring journalists to pursue careers as international correspondents. Media organizations at the luncheon included AP, Bloomberg, CBS News, GroundTruth Project, Reuters, and The Wall Street Journal.

For more information on the OPC Foundation and its scholarship/fellowship program, visit the website.