Andrea Halland-Arms, a University of Montana student with a double major in journalism and English literature, is the fourth annual winner of the $3,500 Bill Walsh Scholarship, named for the late author of three books and editor of news at The Washington Post.
She is an online and print supervising editor of the Montana Kaimin, which has been the university's student-run newspaper since 1898. In addition, she is a social media intern for Waldorf Publishing.
After winning the Walsh Scholarship, which goes to a student who aspires to a career of editing news, Halland-Arms said: “Ever since middle school, I have wanted to be an editor, specifically a book editor, at first. When I got to college, I decided to study journalism because I read that many people in the publishing field have degrees in journalism. I fell in love with the program and editing journalistic writing … and I hope to continue work as a copy editor after I graduate.”
Finalists for the 2021 scholarship had to write a solution for a newsroom deadline dilemma, correct a news lead, write short summaries for a variety of news reports, take a timed editing test and write briefly regarding the worst thing a news copy editor can do.
The worst, Halland-Arms wrote, is to “allow a factual inaccuracy or a misspelled name to be published.” Doing so would “demonstrate that the copy editor does not have a passion for delivering accurate news to their community.”
Support for the Walsh Scholarship comes from donations from the Walsh family, members of ACES: The Society for Editing, and other contributors. The scholarship competition is administered by the ACES Education Fund, of which Bill Walsh was a board member.
For more information: https://aceseditors.org/awards...
