Hard work brings a profit.
Tony Gonzalez ‘08 and Jillian Melchior ‘09 certainly proved this true. The two Hillsdale alumni each received a part in the Robert Novak Journalism Fellowship.
This grant is awarded to journalists by the Phillips Foundation with less than 10 years of professional journalism experience who value constitutional principles, a democratic society, and the free enterprise system. Full-time fellows receive $50,000 and part-time fellows receive $25,000 to pursue their research. There is also an Alumni Fund Fellowship, which is funded by a former Phillips fellow.
Melchior was awarded a full-time fellowship, and her research project, titled “Cross-Cultural China,” has taken her to Hong Kong. From there she plans to go to Beijing and continue to travel across China. Traveling on a tourism visa, she has to leave the country once every month but plans to visit bordering countries.
“China has more borders than any other country in the world,” she said.
This is not the first time Melchior has been in China. In 2009, she was a Bartley Editorial Page Fellow with the Wall Street Journal and covered rigged elections.
“That made me want to come back and get to know Mainland China a bit,” she said.
Since then, Melchior has been working with The Daily in New York City as an opinion writer, where she still works part time.
Melchior said the Phillips Foundation fellowship was something she had been thinking about for a couple of years. The foundation sends out notes about it every year to journalists they know might be interested. Melchior said it was also something she had seen circulated at Hillsdale.
“Last year I decided to go for it and apply,” she said.
Melchior’s fellowship ends Sept. 30, and by that point, she will have spent nine months in China. Until then, she said she plans to experience as much Chinese culture as possible.
“It’s incredible,” she said. “There’s so much to see, and it’s so fascinating and diverse.”
Gonzalez received the Alumni Fund Fellowship, which gives him $7,000 in addition to a little bit of travel money. Gonzalez said he conducts most of his interviews over the phone but has gone on a road trip through states such as North Carolina and Virginia.
Gonzalez said his project, titled “Buying Barbecue Sauce by the Truckload: How Entrepreneurs Find Profit in the Uncertain World of Lost and Unclaimed Freight,” is related to the free market economy.
“About one percent of everything that moves by truck either gets damaged or sent to the wrong place or when it gets delivered, that business refuses to accept it,” he said.
From there, whatever is left on the truck goes to auctions. Gonzalez is researching and reporting on the people that go to these auctions and then try and resell those items for profit.
“It actually is sort of an unknown industry,” he said. “There’s been a lot of small articles about this, but there hasn’t been a broader story that gathers the expertise of all the people. I think I can bring something relevant to the project.”
Gonzalez said he first came across the idea when he met a man who ran one of these discount stores. That man has helped Gonzalez find sources anywhere from the auctioneers to the trucking companies.
Gonzalez has also received help from Hillsdale College economics professor Robert Steele. Gonzalez worked closely with him while building his proposal, and Steele suggested some themes to look for when Gonzalez was reporting.
It was another Hillsdale source, former Assistant to the Director of the Dow Journalism Program Ingrid Jacques, who brought the Phillip’s foundation grant to Gonzalez’s attention.
“It’s pretty impressive they both got an award in the same year,” Jacques said. “It doesn’t surprise me, but nonetheless I’m very impressed.”
Jacques said she sent out the Phillips Foundation information for several years hoping someone would apply.
Both Gonzalez and Melchior said they had thought about it in earlier years, but this past year was the right time for them to apply.
“At that point, I wasn’t looking to write a bigger article, but I thought this topic could be something much bigger and better, and I thought, ‘This is the one I want to propose,’” he said. “The grant does encourage me to work on it. If I didn’t have backing it would be hard for me to chip away at it.”
Melchior said she is excited about building her credibility for writing about Asia in the future.
“It’s giving me a great opportunity to become an expert on a foreign country, which is rare for a young journalist,” Melchior said. “I think what they do is very special and it’s giving young people an opportunity and putting a lot of trust in them and treating them like adults. I think they’re building a community of thinkers.”
sleitner@hillsdale.edu
