The National Press Club awarded a high school graduate from Georgia, Edna Anne Rutland, its 2019 Diversity Scholarship Award at an even that celebrated the budding talent as well as the best performing professional journalists in a host of categories.
A graduate from Central High School in Macon, Georgia, Edna will use the $ 20,000 scholarship to study journalism at Florida A&M University.
“It’s very affirming, and it lets me know that I am on the right track, and that it’s okay to be different, you know, and it’s okay to pursue things that normally people don’t expect you to” a beaming Edna told Views and News after receiving the coveted scholarship.
Edna’s family was among those who attended the Press Club awards ceremony at the NPC building in Washington D.C.
Before her recognition in the nation’s capital, Edna passionately learnt journalism as a high school student, attending summer journalism programs at George Mason University in Virginia, Wake Forest in North Carolina, and Mercer University in Georgia.
Her work has impressed her seasoned journalists and her teachers alike.
“Edna wowed the judges with the maturity of her writing on issues such as race relations,” Alison Fitzgerald Kodjak, President of the National Press Club, says.
“We expect to see great things from Edna in the years to come,” Kodjak said, according to a statement.
Lyschel Shipp, Chair of the English Department at Central High School, has called Edna an asset.
“Edna Rutland will definitely be an asset to the field of journalism” and stands ready to “challenge the status quo,” Shipp wrote.
Edna Rutland speaks at the NPC after receiving the Diversity Scholarship Award Image: Views and News
Edna told Views and News that she eventually wants to become mayor.
“I believe in the inevitability of her success.” Shipp says.
A National Press Club announcement about the award of the diversity scholarship quotes Edna Rutland as writing: “I have used whatever voice (or pen) I had to bring a diverse perspective to my work,” including asking black or brown faces around her for their opinion on the story she was covering.
“That’s how you ensure that the ENTIRE story is told,” she added.
The Julie School Scholarship for Diversity in Journalism honors the memory of the late Julie Cooper School, who was Executive Director of the National Press Club’s Journalism Institute.
The scholarship provides $5,000 a year over four years and is awarded annually to extraordinary high school students who are considering a career in journalism and can exhibit how they will bring diversity to newsrooms, the Press Club says.
