54th Annual Competition Fellowship Winners Announced for 2019

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Top journalists will pursue topics ranging from Chinese development in Africa to a trek across the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, the single largest piece of public land in the United States.

The annual fellowships are designed to foster independent in-depth reporting on local, national and international affairs. The Alicia Patterson Foundation fellowship program for journalists was established in 1965 in memory of Alicia Patterson, who was editor and publisher of Newsday for nearly twenty-three years before her death in 1963.

The Fellows are awarded $40,000 for a 12-month grant and $20,000 for a six-month grant.

The new Fellows will spend their fellowship months traveling, researching, and writing articles on their projects for the APF REPORTER, a quarterly web magazine published by the Foundation. Every year, the Fellows’ articles and photo essays are widely distributed through newspapers, news services, magazines, and websites worldwide. Fellows’ work often is published jointly with their “home” news outlet and has resulted in many national awards.

The winners were selected through a highly competitive process of screening by panels of judges, as well as submitting detailed proposals, examples of past work, and references.

More than 358 reporters, editors, and photographers have won Alicia Patterson fellowships since the foundation was established in 1965.

This is the fourth year a fellow will be named for Cissy Patterson, who was Alicia’s aunt and editor of the Washington Times-Herald. The fellowship is given to a journalist pursuing a topic in science or the environment. Ben Goldfarb, a writer from Spokane, was chosen for the honor. He will be examining the environmental impacts of our world’s network of roads.

The trustees of the foundation named one fellow in honor of Josephine Patterson Albright, a former Newsday columnist, sister of Alicia Patterson and a major benefactor of the foundation. The Josephine Patterson Albright fellow is Maria Danilova, a foreign affairs reporter for Associated Press, who is detailing the new situation of women in Russia.

Final Judges for the 54th Annual Competition:

Maud Beelman – executive editor of the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at Arizona State University and APF Fellow ’96.
Sandy Close – founder, Ethnic Media Services, Pacific News Service and New America Media
Robin Henig – contributing writer, The New York Times Magazine, APF Fellow ’01 and APF board member
Alexis Okeowo – staff writer, The New Yorker, and APF Fellow ’12

For program information and applications for the 55th annual competition, contact:

Alicia Patterson Foundation
1100 Vermont Ave. NW, 9th Floor
Washington, DC 20005
Phone: (202) 393-5995
Email: info@aliciapatterson.org
Applications may be downloaded at: www.aliciapatterson.org

Applications must be submitted by October 1, 2019.