The nonprofit educational foundation affiliated with the American Society of Business Publication Editors (ASBPE) has launched a $5,000 annual scholarship program at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications. The ASBPE Foundation is offering the Medill graduate-school scholarship—designed to encourage students to study business journalism—to one student each year.
ASBPE, a 2,000-member organization of trade-publication editors and others in the business-to-business publishing field, is based at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla. It intends the Medill scholarship to be the first in a planned series of ASBPE Foundation grants to students at other journalism schools as well.
The first $5,000 ASBPE Foundation Business Journalism Scholarship is expected to be awarded in the 2018-19 academic year to a Medill graduate student to be selected by the school. Medill—one of the nation’s leading journalism schools—offers a one-year course of study that results in a Master of Science in Journalism degree. Courses are taught at Northwestern’s Evanston, Ill., and Chicago campuses, as well as in San Francisco and Washington, D.C.
ASBPE and business journalism professors at Medill, including its specific business to business (B2B) instructor, will be available to mentor the scholarship recipient.
Foundation President Amy Fischbach and Immediate Past President Roy Harris say that their organization had long supported the idea of business-journalism education. Together with two of ASBPE’s Lifetime Achievement Award winners, the foundation was finally able to turn its dream into a reality. A generous donation from the awardees and ASBPE to Northwestern created the scholarship for the University to award to a Medill student.
For many years, the ASBPE Foundation has worked to expose students to the work of trade publications. Recently, however, the foundation wanted to turn that support into a financial commitment, Harris says. “With this scholarship, we hope to encourage students to concentrate their studies in areas where ASBPE publications operate,” says Harris, a 1968 graduate of Northwestern’s Medill School.
Fischbach says a four-year scholarship from the Kansas City Press Club made a significant difference in her own life and career, and she hopes the new ASBPE Foundation Business Journalism Scholarship will similarly help the graduate students at Northwestern to reach their goals. “I am thrilled the ASBPE Foundation has the opportunity to support business journalism education,” says Fischbach. “I want to thank our generous donors for their financial support for the scholarship. Also, I want to recognize Medill for partnering with us on this first scholarship program. We hope to change the lives of many journalism students through this initiative.”
“Developing outstanding business journalists is a great point of pride for Medill,” says Charles Whitaker, interim dean of Medill. “We’ve recently launched a new Technology and Business journalism specialization that will allow a number of our graduate students to study business journalism in San Francisco with leading tech companies. We anticipate that many of those students will go on to great careers in the B2B sphere. We are grateful for ASBPE’s support and look forward to exposing more of our students to the wonderful work and opportunities that await them in the world of trade publications.”
For further information about the ASBPE Foundation and its new scholarship, contact Amy Fischbach at amyfischbach@gmail.com. Also, to make a tax-deductible donation to the ASBPE Foundation and its scholarship program, visit www.asbpe.org/asbpe-foundation.