James Alan Cox Student Photojournalism Scholarships

High school students applying for these scholarships must have completed one year at an accredited high school (student must therefore be a sophomore or older) and should have taken at least one photography or related art class.

College or technical school students applying for these scholarships must have completed one year at an accredited college, university or professional school (student must therefore be a sophomore or older), and have taken courses in photography or photojournalism.

Graduate students applying for a scholarship should be enrolled in a journalism or photojournalism program.

High school, college and graduate students should have at least one semester remaining at time of award.

Type of Awards:

• Five (5) $2,500 scholarships will be awarded to five (5) college or technical school students, payable to their school. Four awards will be for video work while one will be for still photography.
• One (1) $2,500 scholarship will be awarded to one (1) graduate student, payable to their school, for video work.
• Five (5) Digital SLR Cameras will be awarded to five (5) high school students. (High school applicants should only submit still photographs. The video awards are for college and graduate students only.)

Focus of work and entries: PHOTOJOURNALISM. (Please see the 2023 or previous years’ scholarship recipients to view examples of winning videos and photographs.) Scholarships will be awarded to those students whose work “tells a story”. This is a fairly broad topic and may include a variety of subject matter and approaches (breaking news, sporting events, etc.)  Please keep in mind that, for the still photography submissions, we are NOT looking for “art” photography.

Suggestions for subject matter: As we emerge from the worldwide COVID pandemic, there are still stories to be told about the effects of illness and isolation, but we are at last able to also focus on other things that are unrelated to the virus. For instance, your video submissions or photo images can relate to stories in your community or school – scenes from a graduation, induction into the military, a scientific experiment, police response to an emergency, sporting events … or even an unsolicited act of kindness such as helping an older person or rescuing a pet.  Whichever videos or images you choose, they should be timely, objective, aesthetically interesting and tell a story.  In terms of still photography, you may submit individual images that stand alone, or a series of photos related to one topic or story.  

Again, we are looking for photojournalism. We are asking you to do a lot with this application – write an essay and send us your transcript and letters of reference – so if you are submitting still photos, please don’t ruin your chances of being considered by entering images of flowers, glamour shots or kittens – no matter how adorable they may be.