Santa Cruz Graduate Wins Student-Journalism Award From The Chronicle

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The Chronicle has awarded its fifth annual David W. Miller Award for Student Journalists to Sam Laird, a 2007 graduate of the University of California at Santa Cruz who has been in South America since a newspaper internship in Ecuador fell through in January.

The $2,500 prize was given to Mr. Laird for articles published last year in City on a Hill Press, a weekly student newspaper at the university.

Mr. Laird, 23, who was born and grew up in Berkeley, Calif., majored in American studies and minored in education at Santa Cruz. After graduating he worked at a summer camp and at a restaurant, among other jobs, before he landed an internship at a bilingual newspaper in Quito, Ecuador.

Interviewed by e-mail from Montevideo, Uruguay, Mr. Laird said the job in Ecuador, at the Quito City Paper, seemed to have enough potential that he decided to "roll the dice" and bought only a one-way ticket from California.

"But as it turned out," he said, "I got to Quito on January 7, and by January 20 the paper was bankrupt."

So, like any good journalist, he tried to turn the mishap to his own advantage. He traveled around Ecuador, writing for an online travel guide. "South America is quite cheap," he found, "if you're smart about it." Then he used his savings to continue on to Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, and now Uruguay.

The internship fiasco in Ecuador, he said, "was a blessing in disguise" because it enabled him go places and do things he never would have done otherwise. Among those experiences, he said, were getting food poisoning from chicken-foot soup, trekking to Machu Picchu, and partying with inmates in a Bolivian prison.

When he returns home, in June, he plans to look for a job in journalism, with an eye toward journalism school at some point. In the meantime, he said, he will work at a parks-and-recreation job in Berkeley, in order to "make back some of the money I'm blowing down here."

Mr. Laird won the Miller Award for three articles that appeared last year in City on a Hill Press. All of them took readers inside a public-policy issue prominent in Santa Cruz.

The first article described how the university's enrollment had changed in the decade since California voters approved Proposition 209, a ballot measure that banned affirmative action in admissions, student aid, and other areas. The second article reported on a local vote over whether to raise the minimum wage in Santa Cruz. Both articles gave balanced, in-depth coverage to issues in which strong personal feelings competed with reasoned arguments on all sides. The third article profiled a Santa Cruz resident who gave up his own business in order to dedicate himself to helping victims of Hurricane Katrina.

The Miller Award commemorates David W. Miller, a senior writer at The Chronicle, who in 2002, at the age of 35, was killed by a drunken driver.

With the award, The Chronicle seeks to pay tribute to Mr. Miller's first-rate journalism, insatiable curiosity about people and ideas, and talent and love for great writing. The Chronicle also hopes to identify and recognize future generations of reporters who show promise of reaching the same level of professional achievement that Mr. Miller attained.

About 100 students applied for the 2007 award. The applicants came from 30 states and the District of Columbia.

Undergraduates interested in applying for the 2008 award, based on articles published in the current academic year, should submit their applications by June 2. Information on applying appears on The Chronicle's Web site.