JOMC student places second in national business reporting competition

A UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media student has won second place in the Society of American Business Editors and Writers national student business reporting contest.

Amy Thomson, who graduated in May 2006, received her award for a story she wrote in August about gun maker Smith & Wesson Holding Corp. while she was interning for Bloomberg News in its Washington bureau.

The story, titled, “Smith & Wesson, `Dirty Harry' Gun Maker, Targets Army,” focused on how the Springfield, Mass., company was looking to boost its operations by going after more Army contracts. Read the story here: www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aFOfLCyGvlJc&refer=home

“My editor noticed the share price had doubled in the past six months or so and asked me to find out why,” said Thomson recently. “I found out that they’d been winning larger and larger contracts with the U.S. government to supply guns to troops in Afghanistan.
 
“They’d been taking advantage of lawmakers wanting to buy guns from ‘American’ companies, frustrations with Baretta’s pistols, which jammed in the desert, and interest in buying deadlier, .45 caliber guns,” she added. “It’s kind of a morbid thing to write about. These guys make a product that kills people, and their stock is up 121% in the past 12 months.”

The SABEW student contest has been held for the past three years as part of its professional Best in Business contest as a way to boost interest among college journalists in business journalism. Each year, a student from UNC-Chapel Hills’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media has placed in the contest.

In 2005, the contest was won by students John Frank and Emily Steel for a story written in the Daily Tar Heel about the resignation of the university’s chief investment officer. In 2006, Steel won the contest for a story in the St. Petersburg Times during an internship about the salaries of executives at local non-profit organizations. As winners, Frank and Steel attended the annual SABEW conference.

Thomson, who received a certificate in business journalism from the School when she graduated, ended her internship last summer and was then hired by Bloomberg to work in its New York office. She currently covers technology companies for the wire service.

This year’s winner of the SABEW student contest was a University of Missouri graduate student who interned for Reuters in Peru.

SABEW will hold its fall conference this year at the Hussman School of Journalism and Media on Oct. 20-21.