Master’s Student Ralph Chapoco receives $5,000 Carol Loomis Scholarship for Business Reporting
Columbia, Mo. (Oct. 14, 2019) — Missouri School of Journalism graduate student Ralph Chapoco is the recipient of the $5,000 Carol Loomis Scholarship for Business Reporting for 2019. Chapoco is a second-year graduate student from San Diego, focusing his studies on data journalism and business reporting.
Chapoco said he got interested in business journalism because it is a subject often misunderstood, but plays a vital (and invisible) role in society. “I can’t think of any other subject that touches more people’s lives than business. It has a stake in determining income inequality, poverty, job opportunities, where and when wars are fought, who people vote into office and most of all — privilege,” Chapoco said. “I want to help explain what it is to people and how it can have an impact on them.”
After graduation, Chapoco would like to be a business or economics reporter for a business publication.
“With master’s degrees in both public policy and business, Ralph is soon to have a third master’s degree in journalism,” said Journalism Professor Randy Smith, the Donald W. Reynolds Endowed Chair in Business Journalism. “He understands the big picture and is also at home with the details, including accounting. He’s incredibly gifted and he’ll touch untold numbers with the good work that is in his future.”
Even though he brushes aside considering himself “anything special,” Chapoco is grateful for the scholarship and that “someone thought enough of me to take a chance and bet on my potential to explain an important issue — and for that I am grateful.
Carol Loomis, BJ ’51, started the annual scholarship that bears her name at the Missouri School of Journalism in 2013 for graduate students interested in pursuing a career in business journalism. The scholarship honors Loomis’ 60 years of work at Fortune magazine and her role in blazing the trail for women in journalism. The internship is administered by Randy Smith, the Donald W. Reynolds Endowed Chair in Business Journalism.
Loomis retired in 2014 as senior editor-at-large and Fortune’s longest-tenured employee. She received the Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism in 1978.
Updated: November 10, 2020