SOJ alumna selected as one of Online News Association's journalists under-30 to watch

The Online News Association, the world’s largest membership organization of digital journalists, has announced its second class of 2012 MJ Bear Fellows, three journalists under age 30 whose innovative work in independent, community and corporate news represents the best of new media.

The selection committee combed through applications from 12 countries to choose three up-and-coming digital journalists — two in the United States or Canada and one international, in partnership with MSN International — who are making their voices heard in the industry.

Tricia Fulks, 25, a freelance journalist and founding story director of “Hollow,” a startup interactive documentary and community participatory project focused on 10 communities in McDowell County, West Virginia. A graduate of West Virginia University and American University in Washington D.C., where she received a Master’s degree in Interactive Journalism, Fulks has been a city editor and editor at two West Virginia newspapers and was an AmeriCorps VISTA worker in Morgantown, W. Va., where she and another student launched a citizen media initiative. Of her professional goal, she says: “Writing was my first passion, but that’s shifted over the years. I now want to tell people’s stories in the best way I can in the best medium I can. That, I feel, is the only way you can do any story justice.” The selection committee said: “She has hustle and moxie, a passion for storytelling and an understanding of how to tell stories in a non-linear way. She is an inspiration to others.” 
See a description of her project, which will launch in Spring 2013, here.

Hagit Bachrach, a 29-year-old video producer for the Council on Foreign Relations, and Denise Hassanzade Ajiri, a 29-year-old web writer for Radio Farda, a Persian-language news service operated by Radio Free Europe, were also selected for the honor.

Each fellow will be paired with a digital news leader as a career development mentor for one year, and also will receive a free ONA membership and an expense-paid trip to the Online News Association Conference & Awards Banquet (ONA12), Sept. 20-23, in San Francisco, where they’ll be part of a panel presenting their projects. Tricia will work with Chad Stevens, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communication and a web documentarian who chronicled an award-winning web project on West Virginia strip mining (http://www.milesfrommaybe.com/); Hagit with Paul Cheung, Global Interactive Editor for the Associated Press and a Chapter Board Representative of the Asian American Journalists Association, and Denise with Asli Yerdekalmazer, who was a member of MJ’s team as Turkey’s Executive Producer and today is Executive Producer for MEA (Middle East and Africa) as part of the MSN CEEMEA team.

View the official release on the ONA website.