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Phillips Foundation Announces Journalism Fellowships for 2004- Six Fellowship Awards Totaling $257,000

POTOMAC, Md., May 12, 2004 -- The Phillips Foundation today announced the winners of its eleventh annual journalism fellowship awards. Jesse DeConto, a reporter and editor at Seacoast Newspapers in New Hampshire for the past three years, Diana Marrero, a staff writer at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and Mollie Ziegler, a staff writer at the Federal Times, captured $50,000 full-time fellowships. Jeff Chu, a staff writer for Time magazine in London, and Rich Trzupek, a columnist and reporter for Examiner Publications in Chicago’s northwest suburbs, won $25,000 part-time fellowships. Megan Basham, senior editor at Christ’s Church of the Valley in Arizona, received a special $7,000 Alumni Fund Award. The full-time and part-time fellowships are for year-long writing projects. The Alumni Fund Award is for one magazine-length article. 

The fellowship winners were introduced during an awards dinner last night at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Tony Snow, host of The Tony Snow Show on Fox News Radio, served as guest speaker, and The Phillips Foundation presented its 2004 Lifetime Achievement Award posthumously to the late Robert L. Bartley, longtime editor of The Wall Street Journal. 

DeConto, 27, will focus on the fastest growing Latino community in the nation in a project titled “Nueva Frontera… the New South: Latino Immigrants in North Carolina.” Marrero, 25, will examine “Thriving Ties: An Exploration of the Connections between People in the United States and Cuba despite a Decades-old Embargo and What These Ties Mean for Future Relations between the Two Countries.” Ziegler, 29, will work on a book-length project titled “Interfaith is No Faith: How Religious Relativism is Destroying the Church.” Chu, 26, will investigate why America has developed a culture of complaint in a project titled “Whine Country: Complaint in American Life.” Trzupek, 44, will devote his fellowship year to “An Examination of the Effect of Environmental Regulatory Excess on Small to Mid-size Businesses, in the Context of 30 Years of Continued Environmental Progress in the United States.” Basham, 28, will write a magazine-length article on the topic: “The Parable Principle: How Liberal Ideologues Use Film to Control Political Discourse.” 

The Phillips Foundation, a non-profit organization founded in 1990, established its journalism fellowship program to advance the cause of objective journalism. The Foundation has awarded 45 fellowships since 1994 for journalism projects supportive of American culture and a free society. The fellowship program is open to working print journalists with less than five years of professional experience.