COLLEGE PARK -- Angela Roberts ’21, a senior journalism and criminal justice double major at the University of Maryland, placed second in the Explanatory Reporting Award competition as part of the William Randolph Hearst Foundation’s 61st annual Journalism Awards Program.
Roberts, one of 10 winners in the category, won a $2,000 scholarship for the article, “At UMD, doctoral students depend on their advisers. What can happen when things go wrong?”
The story, published by The Diamondback on Jan. 30, 2020, was a deeply reported dive into the relationship between Ph.D. students and their advisers, and what’s at stake for students working toward their doctorates.
Roberts works as special projects editor for The Diamondback, where she previously covered graduate student life for more than two years and worked as co-news editor with fellow Philip Merrill College of Journalism student Rina Torchinsky. She has held internships at The Baltimore Sun and the Capital Gazette, as well as local newspapers in Northern Virginia and Western Pennsylvania. She said she crochets a mean scarf and hopes to cover education after graduating.
“From the moment Angela walked into Knight Hall her freshman year and volunteered to work on her first investigative reporting project, we knew she would have a bright journalism career dedicated to telling important stories,” said Sean Mussenden, a senior lecturer at Merrill College and data editor at the UMD Howard Center for Investigative Journalism. “Few young journalists display her unique combination of reporting prowess, writing ability and deep empathy for the people whose stories she tells.”
The Hearst Journalism Awards Program is conducted under the auspices of accredited schools of the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication and fully funded and administered by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation.
The program consists of five monthly writing competitions, two photojournalism competitions, one audio and two TV broadcast news competitions, and four multimedia competitions, with Championship Finals in all divisions, with the exception of team multimedia. The program awards up to $700,000 in scholarships, matching grants, stipends and intercollegiate awards annually.
For more information, contact:
Josh Land
joshland@umd.edu
301-405-1321