Raphy Gendler, who won a $1,000 Dow Jones News Fund Scholarship, talks with fellow senior Kirby Goodman concerning the results of a staff
activity. Photo by Lori Keekley
Four Students Win Scholarships
to Pursue Journalism
By Heather Taylor
T
he Dow Jones News Fund will
award $2,500 in scholarships
to four recent high school
graduates who will pursue
journalism in college this fall.
The scholarship recipients were
selected in honor of the 2016
National High School Journalism
Teacher of the Year and three
Distinguished Advisers through
writing contests organized by the
teachers at their high schools in April
and May.
The top scholarship recipient is
Raphael Gendler
of St. Louis Park
(Minnesota) High
School, where
Lori Keekley,
2016 Teacher of
the Year, teaches
and advises The Echo. Gendler will
receive a $1,000 scholarship to
attend Cornell University in the fall.
Gendler covered a presentation
by Abby Simons, Public Safety
Team Leader for the Minneapolis
Star Tribune, whose team of seven
reporters covers crime and courts
in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro
area. She directed coverage in the
aftermath of the police shooting
of Philando Castile. Simons spoke
to students about police shootings
and journalism in the age of Twitter.
Gendler was selected by a panel of
four judges: Simons; Laura Widmer,
executive director of the National
Scholastic Press Association; Charles
Sennott, founder and executive
director of The GroundTruth Project;
and Rick Sennott, a retired Star
Tribune photographer.