| By Thad Ogburn
A senior at Iowa State University
and a recent graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University are the winners
of the second annual ACES copy editing scholarship awards.
Sara Ziegler of Iowa State and Elana Patrice Simms,
who graduated in May from Virginia Commonwealth University, will each receive
$1,000. Through the awards, ACES hope to honor student editors for their
achievements and to encourage them to pursue careers in copy editing.
Ziegler, who is attending the ACES conference in
Baltimore, will graduate from Iowa State in December. A native of South
Dakota, Ziegler worked over the summer as a Dow Jones Newspaper Fund intern
at the Westchester County Journal News in New York. In previous summers,
she was a copy editing intern and a reporting intern at The Des Moines
Register.
"I kind of fell into copy editing by accident,"
Ziegler said. "Reporting didn't fit my personality."
Now, she is sure that copy editing is the career
for her.
"I just love it. It's like putting together a puzzle,"
Ziegler said of copy editing a big story.
Ziegler has held a number of positions on the Iowa State
Daily, including editor and chief, managing editor, opinion editor and
copy editor. This semester, |
Sara Ziegler of Iowa State.
though, she's not working on the paper. She's getting caught up on her
classes, preparing for graduation and looking for that first full-time
copy editing job.
Simms just got her first full-time job. She was unable
to attend the Baltimore conference because she is in the process of moving
to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where she'll be a copy editor on the features
desk of The Sun-Sentinel.
Simms interned last summer at The Richmond Times-Dispatch,
but as a reporter, not as a copy editor. She wanted to make sure that reporting
was not the life for her.
After a summer of what she called the "fires and festivals"
beat, Simms said she now knows copy editing is the right fit.
"I am really interested in getting back to editing,"
she said.
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Simms also has her eye on
graduate school at some point. She's already looked into the master's in
journalism program at Florida International University. With an undergrad
minor in Spanish, she is particularly interested in news coverage and editing
in the Latin American community.
"I want to keep editing and get into a management
position with that specialty," Simms said. "Spanish as a second language
is just practical these days."
Simms, a Virginia native, was a Dow Jones Newspaper Fund
copy editing intern at Newsday in 1999.
She also has served as executive editor and news editor
and the Commonwealth Times, VCU's campus paper, and as an editor at Hard
Times, a publication of the Virginia Coalition for the Homeless.
Ziegler and Simms were chosen from 30 student applicants.
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Thad Ogburn is editor and general manager of The News
& Observer's North Raleigh News section. He can be reached at togburn@nando.com.
Scholarship judges:
Courtney Barrett, St. Louis Post-Dispatch; Anne Glover,
St. Petersburg Times; Thad Ogburn, The [Raleigh] News & Observer; Jerry
Sass, The [Portland] Oregonian; and Vince Tuss, Omaha World-Herald.
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