2010 Scholarship Winners

Bob Baxter Scholarship

Jessey Dearing

Jessey Dearing is a senior majoring in photojournalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Dearing received an A.A.S. degree in Photography with a concentration in photojournalism from Randolph Community College in August 2008. While at Randolph, he completed two photography internships: one at The Charleston Post & Courier in South Carolina and the other at The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Little Rock, Arkansas.

After transferring the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Dearing began working for The Daily Tar Heel as a photographer. This past summer he participated in the Carolina Photojournalism Workshop in Asheville, N.C., and in the Galapagos Islands Multimedia Storytelling project. Both experiences provided him with invaluable experiences in multimedia storytelling. Dearing was hired as the assistant photo editor at The Daily Tar Heel. He was also recently selected as a fellow for News21 provided through the Carnegie and Knight Foundations.

Tom Blanks, left, and David DeMent, painters for Army of Painters, coat the future NAPA Auto Parts store, which was renovated after the building caught fire in August 2009 in Carrboro.

Goals

"After graduation I am very interested in doing daily newspaper work for three to five years. While I do not plan to be in the newspaper industry long-term, I do feel there is invaluable experiences to gain from working on daily assignments and in community journalism. I would like to do some freelance and long-term documentary work during this time and build a name for myself. I then want to work solely in freelance and possibly do projects internationally for non-profit and non-governmental organizations. I'd really like to work with humanitarian based organizations during this time. After working for five to eight years, I will return to education to obtain a masters degree. I am interested in education and journalism in the long-term so I'd like to focus in one or both of those areas. I'd also like to go on to get my doctorate after that as well. I'd then like to return to the workforce and continue working on documentary projects for at least another five years. I would really like to become a professor in multimedia storytelling (or whatever direction visual journalism has taken at that point) at the college level after that."