Two master’s students named recipients of the C. Zoe Smith scholarship in photojournalism
Scholarship awards are helping Missouri School of Journalism graduate students complete their degrees.
Columbia, Mo. (Sept. 16, 2019) — Zhihan Huang and Yehyun Kim are the latest recipients of the C. Zoe Smith Photojournalism Scholarship. Each student will receive $1,000.
Kim is conducting research for her thesis into the ways photojournalists and photo editors use social media in their news routines. She’s mainly focused on how the potential social media usage might impact the routines photographers and editors use in their daily work and the selection of photographs to present to the public.
Kim is conducting her research by spending time in a newsroom where she can observe the process and interview photographers and editors. “The research will help to update gatekeeping theory and offer an idea of how social media are influencing what we see in news,” Kim said.
Huang’s project explores life in Sweet Springs, Missouri. Huang said a visit to the village where her grandmother was born and raised sparked an interest in rural communities. On a visit to Sweet Springs she saw “some broken houses and empty streets there, which made me wonder where the people had gone.” Huang said she thought the town was dying after the departure of the International Shoe Company, but then she met people who lived there and learned there are people trying to revitalize Sweet Springs.
Both students plan to complete their work by the end of the year.
The scholarship was established in 2015 by School of Journalism professor emerita C. Zoe Smith to support the work of photojournalism master’s students in completing their degrees. The funding from the scholarship helps students cover travel and other research costs as they work on the thesis or professional project required for graduation. “Master’s students can make that final push because of this endowment,” Smith said.
Updated: November 10, 2020