The scholarship competition was open to undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in a journalism or journalism-oriented communications program in the New York City metropolitan area. The winners will be honored at the Annual Awards Dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria on May 19. Congratulations to the four winners. Each winner will receive a $2,500 scholarship.
Click here to learn about the 2013 winners.
The 2014 Scholarship Winners
Yamiche Alcindor, a multimedia journalist based in New York, splits her time covering quickly developing stories and pieces about social issues. A native of Miami, she is a reporter for USA Today and a graduate student at New York University, studying broadcast news and documentary filmmaking. She has covered the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., the Boston Marathon bombing and the trial of George Zimmerman. She has produced written and video packages on human trafficking, wrongful convictions, gun violence and poverty. And she has appeared on MSNBC, Al Jazeera, PBS, C-SPAN and NPR.
Charles Eckert is a photographer and multimedia journalist based in New York. A regular contributor to Newsday, his work has also appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, New York Magazine, Der Spiegel, Portfolio and “Haiti: Tragedy and Hope,” a book on Haiti’s earthquake published by Time. Eckert has traveled extensively in Haiti, documenting political unrest in the lead-up to the 2006 presidential election, the devastation following the 2010 earthquake and the country’s halting efforts at recovery. He has covered Hurricane Katrina, the Virginia Tech shootings, the war in Afghanistan, and the election of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Eckert begins the graduate program at Columbia University this month.
Rachael Levy is a freelance journalist in New York. Her work has appeared in the New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, The Atlantic, The Jewish Daily Forward, Slate, Global Post, and City Limits. At the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, she is focusing on multimedia and business reporting with an expected graduation date of December, 2014. Originally from Florida, she holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in international politics from the American University of Paris. She has also worked in Israel, The Netherlands and El Salvador.
Deepashri Varadharajan is an engineer-turned-journalist from Hyderabad, India, currently pursuing a Master’s degree at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She has worked in print and online media and covered health care, poverty, child abuse and sex trafficking in India. She produced video stories for the multimedia arm of Deccan Herald, a leading English daily in Karnataka, and later worked as a sub-editor for Postnoon, a startup newspaper in Hyderabad. She is currently specializing in documentary filmmaking and business and economics reporting at Columbia with an expected graduation date of September, 2014.