Business journalism major wins prestigious Overseas Press Club Foundation award

UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media student Wei Zhou was awarded an Overseas Press Club Foundation Scholar Award at the foundation’s 2016 Annual Scholar Awards Luncheon held at the Yale Club in New York City.

Zhou, a junior business journalism and political science major, was among 15 aspiring foreign correspondents selected by a panel of leading journalists from a pool of 175 applicants from 50 different colleges and universities.

She won the S&P Award for Economic and Business Reporting. Dave Guarino, global head of external communications for McGraw Hill Financial, presented the award.

A native of China, Zhou believes that Western audiences need to better understand today’s China, a country rapidly growing into a capitalist state but where the process of industrialization comes at a price. In her essay, she wrote about how China’s stock market plunge last June affected individual investors.

A native Mandarin speaker, she has an OPC Foundation fellowship in The Wall Street Journal bureau in Shanghai.

The award winners were honored with a reception at Reuters, hosted by editor-in-chief Stephen Adler. They also received risk management and situational awareness training from Global Journalist Security at The Associated Press headquarters in New York City, and they met privately with editors from BuzzFeed, AP and Reuters.