UM Journalism Student Receives Hearst Honor

Clancy Smith honored for profile on U.S. Rep. John Lewis

UM Senior Clancy Smith placed fourth in the 2015 Hearst Personality Profile Competition.

UM Senior Clancy Smith placed fourth in the 2015 Hearst Personality Profile Competition.

OXFORD, Miss. – An article based on an interview with civil rights hero U.S. Rep. John Lewis has won honors in a Hearst competition for University of Mississippi student Clancy Smith and enhanced the reputation of the Meek School of Journalism and New Media.

Smith, a senior from Saltillo, placed fourth out of 99 entries from 56 schools in the Personality Profile category of the annual Hearst Journalism Awards Program writing competition. That’s the highest finish for any UM student has since Ole Miss began entering the contest in the fall of 1975.

“This is a remarkable achievement when you recognize all the outstanding graduates that Ole Miss has produced in the elite media,” said Will Norton Jr., dean of the journalism school. “A Meek student placing this high shows that Ole Miss has outstanding professors who work diligently with students outside the classroom as well as in the classroom.”

The Hearst Foundation describes the program purpose as support, encouragement and assistance to journalism education at the college and university level. The program awards scholarships to students for outstanding performance in college-level journalism, with matching grants to the students’ schools.

Hearst Journalism Awards are considered the “Pulitzers of collegiate journalism.”

Smith cited UM adjunct instructor Bill Rose for his role in the award-winning story. Rose taught the class that produced the Delta Reporting Project on “Land of Broken Dreams,” which included the profile on Lewis, a Democrat from Georgia.

“His guidance allowed me to be competitive in a competition that is usually dominated by much larger schools,” she said.

Rose praised his student’s work on the project.

“Clancy Smith’s perceptive profile of civil rights icon John Lewis was a powerful, multilayered look inside the psyche of a man very nearly martyred for the cause,” Rose said. “In a story laden with symbolism, she told of a man who responded to hate with love, a man who clung to a gospel of hope and forgiveness even when beaten within an inch of his life.

“It was an artful story, taking readers through Lewis’ childhood then into the turbulent civil rights era of the 1960s and finally to the halls of Congress.”

“I’m just so happy that the Meek School of Journalism and New Media is getting recognition for the wonderful program that it is,” Smith said.

Smith graduates in May and plans to attend the University of Alabama to pursue a master’s degree in public relations.

“The one thing I do know is that I want to continue writing in a way that improves the lives of others and helps keep the public knowledgeable about important issues,” she said.