Student's Reporting Earns Military Salute
01/19/2001
NEW PALTZ -- Desiree Grand, a May 2000 SUNY New Paltz journalism graduate and Bronx native, recently received the Marguerite Higgins Journalism Prize for a story she wrote while doing an internship at the Legislative Gazette in Albany during the spring 2000 semester.
Grand turned a routine press-release assignment about the National Guard's new anti-terrorism and civil support unit into an exciting story. The article caught the eye of the Militia Association, a group that recognizes New York's working news media with the Marguerite Higgins Prize. The association is a defense advocacy, public education, non-profit organization that represents officers, warrants and retirees of the Army and Air National Guard.
Grand won in the student- reporting category. The award is named after "Maggie" Higgins, one of the first women to report from the combat zone. She was a correspondent during World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.
"I honestly didn't know about Marguerite Higgins," said Grand. " Then when I found out - wow- I was really honored."
The Militia Association described Grand's reporting as accurate and balanced - truly in the Higgins' style.
Grand said the award is now at her mother's house in the Bronx while she continues to progress in journalism as the city hall reporter for The Herald in New Britain, Conn.
Desiree Grand, a May 2000 SUNY New Paltz journalism graduate and Bronx native, recently received the Marguerite Higgins Journalism Prize for a story she wrote while doing an internship at the Legislative Gazette in Albany during the spring 2000 semester.
Grand turned a routine press-release assignment about the National Guard's new anti-terrorism and civil support unit into an exciting story. The article caught the eye of the Militia Association, a group that recognizes New York's working news media with the Marguerite Higgins Prize. The association is a defense advocacy, public education, non-profit organization that represents officers, warrants and retirees of the Army and Air National Guard.
Grand won in the student- reporting category. The award is named after "Maggie" Higgins, one of the first women to report from the combat zone. She was a correspondent during World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.
"I honestly didn't know about Marguerite Higgins," said Grand. " Then when I found out - wow- I was really honored."
The Militia Association described Grand's reporting as accurate and balanced - truly in the Higgins' style.
Grand said the award is now at her mother's house in the Bronx while she continues to progress in journalism as the city hall reporter for The Herald in New Britain, Conn.
Located in the heart of a dynamic college town, 90 minutes from metropolitan New York City, the State University of New York at New Paltz is a highly selective college of about 8,000 undergraduate and graduate students.
One of the most well-regarded public colleges in the nation, New Paltz delivers an extraordinary number of majors in Business, Liberal Arts, Sciences, Engineering, Fine and Performing Arts and Education.
New Paltz embraces its culture as a community where talented and independent minded people from around the world create close personal links with real scholars and artists who love to teach.
