SOJC senior wins prestigious Overseas Press Club Foundation Scholarship

Cory Eldridge. Photo by Sam Karp

Cory Eldridge, a senior majoring in news-editorial at the University of Oregon's School of Journalism and Communication, was one of only two undergraduate students nationwide chosen for an Overseas Press Club Foundation Scholarship.

Eldridge accepted the award on January 28 at a luncheon in New York City hosted by ABC News. Nearly 200 students applied for the $2000 scholarship; a total of 12 students, including 10 graduate students, received the award.

 Eldridge won the award in part for writing and reporting a story on West Bank ophthalmologist Dr. Mutei Asir. His winning article and photographs portray the doctor's midnight surgery to save the barbed-wire-ruptured eye of a child from the Palestinian village of Jenin.

 "Cory Eldridge deserves this extraordinary national recognition for the talent and courage he exhibited in reporting the story," said Julie Newton, associate professor of journalism.

“The OPC scholarship is huge for me,” says Eldridge. “The professional awards they give, like the Robert Capa Award and foreign correspondent of the year, are considered just a step below the Pulitzer prize. So to receive a scholarship from them is something that most editors and reporters will recognize and appreciate.

“But more importantly, the scholarship shows that I'm doing the right kind of reporting and doing it well. Journalism can't be learned in a classroom. Our teachers can tell us how to do interviews and write stories, but until we go out and do it, it's all theory.

“Teachers like Julianne Newton, Dan Morrison, and Mark Blaine understand that journalism can't be just theory and send us out to be journalists,” he says. “I think this scholarship shows that these teachers, among many others, are teaching us right.”

 The Overseas Press Club of America was founded in 1939 in New York City by a group of foreign correspondents. It seeks to encourage the highest standards of professional integrity and skill in the reporting of news.