Media contact: Noelle Lemoine, communications assistant; tele: (413) 597-4277; email: [email protected]
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., May 20, 2014—Williams College senior Julia Davis has been awarded the Jeffrey Owen Jones ’66 Fellowship in Journalism. The $10,000 grant is intended to assist a graduating senior in starting a career in journalism, either in traditional or new media.
The Jones Fellowship was established in 2009 to honor the memory of Jeffrey Owen Jones, a 1966 Williams graduate who passed away from lung cancer in 2007. Jones was an Emmy Award-winning writer, producer, and film professor at Rochester Institute of Technology. While a student at Williams, Jones was editor of the school newspaper, The Williams Record.
A fellowship committee gathers each spring to assess a range of project proposals. The committee aims to select a student who displays the qualities for which Jones was admired: “integrity, talent, independence of mind, wit, strength of character, skepticism of authority, and concern for others.” This year’s committee members were Angela Schaeffer, director of communications; John Kleiner, professor of English; and Liz Rappaport (Williams ’94), who works for the Wall Street Journal.
Davis, a history and Spanish major from Danville, Pa., will use the fellowship to work in Spain for six months this fall, where she will serve as a Spain-based reporter for Mental Floss magazine, as well as freelance and build her portfolio. Afterwards, she hopes to find a full-time job at an international reporting agency in Spain or Latin America. Ultimately, she aims to create her own humor magazine specializing in international issues.
Davis has interned for Mental Floss; El País, Spain’s largest-circulating daily newspaper; InMadrid Magazine; and TheCelebrityCafe.com. She was also an editor of The Williams Record.
“I can’t wait to go back to Spain and continue writing,” Davis said. “I’d like to thank Jeffrey Jones’ family and friends for founding the fellowship, my mom and dad for being heartless editors in so many of my writing projects, my professor Soledad Fox for her support, my colleagues at El País for teaching me the art of translation, and my boss at Mental Floss, Jason English, for giving me tons of creative liberty as an intern.”
Davis has worked at Williams as an after-school Spanish tutor at Mt. Greylock High School, as a teaching assistant at Williamstown Elementary School, and as an admission tour guide. In the summer of 2013, she was granted a Robert G. Wilmers Jr. 1990 Memorial Student Travel Abroad Fellowship to conduct an independent research project on sex workers in Spain.
When asked to give advice to aspiring journalists, Davis said, “Read things that make you happy or pique your interest. While it’s important to keep up with what’s going on in the world, it’s also valuable to keep up with people and topics that interest you. I think happy readers make for happy writers, and happy writers produce engaging, thought-provoking articles that people want to read.”
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Founded in 1793, Williams College is the second-oldest institution of higher learning in Massachusetts. The college’s 2,000 students are taught by a faculty noted for the quality of their teaching and research, and the achievement of academic goals includes active participation of students with faculty in their research. Students’ educational experience is enriched by the residential campus environment in Williamstown, Mass., which provides a host of opportunities for interaction with one another and with faculty beyond the classroom. Admission decisions on U.S. applicants are made regardless of a student’s financial ability, and the college provides grants and other assistance to meet the demonstrated needs of all who are admitted.
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Published May 20, 2014
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