Scholarships presented at Crazy Horse Journalism Workshop
Three South Dakota students won top awards Thursday at the conclusion of the 12th annual Crazy Horse Journalism Workshop.
Seniors Loni McComber of Sioux Falls Lincoln High School, and Dylan Geuther and Ashton Swift Hawk of T.F. Riggs High School at Pierre, each received $1,000 scholarships.
The awards are in memory of Peggy Sagen, a workshop mentor and executive editor of the Rapid City Journal; Robb DeWall, veteran news broadcaster and communications director at Crazy Horse Memorial; and Lem Price, a workshop student from Montana who died in a traffic accident on the way to his first journalism job.
The Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation Scholarship Fund provides the workshop prizes and other awards. Memorial sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski began the scholarship program with $250 in 1978, and more than $1.5 million has since been disbursed, mostly to American Indian students attending schools in South Dakota.
The five-day workshop at Crazy Horse Memorial drew 37 high school-age students from 17 schools in six states (Arizona, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma and Wyoming.)
The free introductory training session prepares select students, especially American Indian students, for pursuing college degrees and careers in journalism. The goal is to improve journalism by making news organizations more diverse and more reflective of their communities.
Speakers encouraging students to take action included Hattie Kauffman, a Nez Perce and the first Native national broadcast news reporter, and South Dakota’s state Secretary of Tribal Relations J.R. LaPlante, a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and a Crazy Horse scholarship recipient.
The students also worked with educators and journalists from around the country. Their multimedia projects were printed in the Native Journal newspaper and published online at www.nativejournal.org.
The workshop is co-sponsored by the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute, Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation, the South Dakota Newspaper Association, South Dakota State University and The University of South Dakota.
