Emily Schweich, of the University of Maryland at College Park, is the winner of the NPPF TV News Scholarship.What are your major academic and professional accomplishments?

Among Schweich’s accomplishments are:

  • I have maintained a 4.0 grade point average and have earned academic honors every semester over my five semesters at the University of Maryland.
  • In 2014, I was recognized as an American News Women’s Club Jane Lingo Scholar; Sigma Delta Chi Foundation of Washington, D.C. Scholarship Recipient and Gridiron Fellow; National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences – National Capital Chesapeake Bay Chapter Betty Endicott Scholarship Recipient; and an SPJ Maryland Pro Chapter Student Scholarship Recipient.
  • I work as a producer for Maryland Capital News Service’s evening newscast Maryland Newsline, which is broadcasted three times a week to 400,000 Maryland homes. In this position, I write scripts, create rundowns and graphics for the show and accompany reporters into the field for live shots. From January 2013 to December 2014, I worked as a show director, technical director, video tape recorder operator, audio operator, floor director, teleprompter operator and camera operator for Maryland Newsline. I floor-directed the newscast that in 2014 won both a National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences – National Capital Chesapeake Bay Chapter Student Emmy for Best Newscast and a Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence Award for Best Student Newscast. In November 2014, I directed a portion of our five-hour live coverage of the general election.
  • I also work as a multimedia reporter for The Diamondback, the University of Maryland’s independent student daily newspaper. I pitch, shoot, write and edit weekly natural sound packages for the paper’s website. I contribute articles and reviews about to D.C. Metro Theater Arts, a website that covers the D.C. performing arts scene.
  • In the summer of 2014, I worked as a research assistant for Dorothy Gilliam, a veteran journalist and educator who was the first African-American female reporter to work for The Washington Post. I assisted Gilliam in researching for her memoir and wrote a biographical feature in the process.
  • For six weeks during the summer of 2013, I was an unpaid intern at WUSA9, Washington, D.C.’s CBS affiliate station. I researched, wrote and posted web stories; wrote voiceovers for broadcast; logged raw interviews; and shadowed reporters and photographers. My biggest project was creating a cumulative photo gallery of investigative reporter Russ Ptacek’s restaurant alert reports, which remains one of the most visited pages on the WUSA9 website.
  • From August 2012 to May 2014, I took advanced courses and completed an independent research project through the UMD Honors College’s Honors Humanities Living-Learning Program. I presented my research on the musical representations of Goethe’s Faust and performed excerpts of these musical selections at a lecture-recital in April 2014. I received my Honors Citation in November 2014.
  • I am a member of the Primannum Honor Society, which represents the University of Maryland’s chapters of the Alpha Lambda Delta and Phi Eta Sigma Honor Societies. In 2013, I was recognized with the Primannum Honor Society Mary Ann Rankin New Member Scholarship for my involvement in the chapter through both community service projects and campus events. I was recognized at both the national and campus level with the 2014 Alpha Lambda Delta Jo Anne J. Trow Scholarship for academic achievement and chapter and community involvement. Most recently, I received the Phi Eta Sigma Helen E. Clarke Scholarship in December 2014 in recognition of my academic achievement and service to the chapter.
  • In May 2014, I was inducted into the Triota Women’s Studies Honor Society at the University of Maryland, which promotes egalitarianism, inclusiveness, and the celebration and study of diversity and power structures in society.

Regarding her career, Schweich wrote, “Broadcast journalists face an enormous amount of pressure, especially in the 24/7 news cycle, to bring in more viewers and top ratings. Sometimes, they give in to sensational coverage of news events, focusing on simple, video-ready stories that they know have a shock factor for viewers.

Often, stories about complex issues with unsettling details that lack precedence are not routinely tackled in the broadcast field because they are seen as “print stories.” Topics like homelessness, unemployment, gender equality and struggles of low-income families and returning veterans might not have compelling video and might involve intricate statistics and facts that are difficult to convey through video. Thus, they’re often given a shallow overview or dropped completely. But it’s important to tell these complex stories through the broadcast medium, because it reaches a different audience demographic. My goal as a journalist is to develop my storytelling skills so that I can make these “print stories” engaging and accessible to audiences through graphics and interactive aspects. I want to give a voice to the voiceless through journalism through my work as a television reporter or producer, and it would be my dream to return to Washington, D.C. to work at either a local affiliate station or national bureau.”


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