Club awards Jacqueline Munis its 2025 Lewis Scholarship

The National Press Club has chosen Jacqueline Munis as the recipient of its Lewis Scholarship for 2025. The scholarship provides housing and a $4,000 stipend to support a student journalist of color interning at a news media outlet in Washington, D.C.

Munis graduates from Stanford University next week and has accepted a summer internship with POLITICO. 

The judges were impressed by her exceptional work at The Stanford Daily, where she led the revival of an equity-focused news desk covering underrepresented members of the Stanford community. As an editor, she recently secured a grant from the Solutions Journalism Network’s Student Media Challenge to invest in mental-health coverage on campus.

“I have worked very hard as a newsroom leader to not just focus on problems communities of color are facing on campus but also highlight innovative solutions,” she said in her application essay. “I am committed to equitable and inclusive reporting that requires dedication and time to uncover information that is easily ignored or intentionally hidden from the public.”

In 2023, Munis was selected as a College Journalism Network Fellow at CalMatters, where she covered issues and policies affecting California public universities and private colleges, including campus protests and affordability. She also previously served as a breaking news intern at The Boston Globe. 

“She has a strong sense of how to both find and analyze data, and how to translate that information into a news story,” wrote Cheryl Phillips, founder and co-director of Big Local News and Hearst Professional in Residence at Stanford University, in a recommendation letter. “She is skilled at backgrounding, interviewing, and writing and has a great sense of news.”

The Lewis Scholarship was established in 2022 by the family of former Washington correspondent Robert “Bob” D.G. Lewis. It is awarded to one undergraduate student journalist of color each fall, spring, and summer semester. Students must secure a journalism internship in Washington, D.C., to be eligible, along with other requirements. 

“Jacqueline has an impressive track record of delivering impactful community-focused journalism,” said NPC President Mike Balsamo. “We are excited to welcome her to D.C. as she begins her new role at POLITICO this summer.”

The Lewis Scholarship program furthers Bob and Jacqueline Lewis’s work to improve accessibility to experiential learning opportunities in the nation’s capital for students of color. This partnership, administered through the National Press Club Journalism Institute, extends the Lewis’ commitment to increasing representation in Washington, D.C., to include news media, adding to their work founding and operating the Washington Intern Student Housing program and the HBCU National Center. 

Club scholarships are administered by its nonprofit affiliate, the NPC Journalism Institute. Click here to learn more. 

Scholarship winners are selected by a group of Scholarship Team volunteer judges, led by Team Leads Erin Looney and Caitlin Mullaney. judges for the Lewis Scholarship  were Rohit Sharma, Ufon Umanah, and Pingping Yin.