Class of 2012 student Natalia Osipova, who started her journalism career as a 14-year-old intern at a hyperlocal television station in Moscow, is the winner of the Foreign Press Association’s first place scholarship award of $10,000.
Osipova wants eventually to produce multimedia international stories and to own an international media company. “I would like to stand against biases and deliver the audience the objective view on world events, and resist the influence of government and sponsor control of content,” she said.
In her native Russia, journalism can be a life-endangering pursuit. In her application to the Foreign Press Association, Osipova wrote about the power of social networking in both protest and journalism there.
She said she would use the scholarship money to help fund her studies. She quit her job working for a television station in Moscow to attend the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.
“I feel grateful that the money will help me to continue my professional development, and, hopefully, to come up with ways journalists all over the world could protect themselves and their readers against biases,” Osipova said.
The Foreign Press Association, founded in 1918, is an organization of journalists from other countries who cover the United States. It has more than 400 members from 50 countries. The awards go to students from other countries attending U.S. graduate schools of journalism.
Previous CUNY Journalism School winners have been Adeola Oladele from Nigeria in 2008, Damiano Beltrami from Italy in 2009, and Jennifer Hamblett from Great Britain last year.
Osipova is the School’s first winner of the FPA’s top prize. Osipova will receive the scholarship at the FPA’s May 8 dinner.