Feldman Fellowship Goes to Community-Newspaper Advocate

Bethany Chambers of Greentown, Ohio, is this year's winner of the $5,000 Feldman Fellowship, which she will use toward graduate studies at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in the fall.

The 25-year-old is a graduate of Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. She coordinated the school newspaper's coverage when five basketball players were shot on campus, and the special edition she put out as managing editor won a Pennsylvania Newspaper Association award.

As a professional journalist, Chambers' reporting in Daytona Beach, Fla., for the Hometown News weekly led to a criminal probe and civil suits against a travel-booking operation.

She aims to set up a newspaper in her hometown, saying in her application essay: ``The community newspaper is quickly becoming the only newsprint-to-fingers medium that has a fighting chance in a world of 24-hour status updates."

The Board of Governors selected Chambers at the recommendation of the Scholarship Committee, which considered 78 applications.

The Feldman Fellowship is endowed by the family of the late Dennis Feldman, a Club member, journalist and public relations adviser who put himself through grad school at night, and members of the National Press Club. It is awarded annually to a journalism graduate school student.

-- Andrea Snyder, [email protected]