Scholarships

About the Scholarship

Journalists Harvey Aronson and Irene Virag established this scholarship in 2013 to inspire students to recognize and respect the special place narrative writing has in the world of journalism and to nurture their writing and story-telling talents. It is awarded to a junior or senior student who excels in long-from narrative writing and who shows exceptional talent, dedication and promise. It is open to journalism majors and minors. 

The winner will receive an award toward tuition at Stony Brook University. Graduating seniors also are eligible for this award. Aronson and Virag taught in the School of Communication and Journalism from its founding in 2006 until Aronson's retirement in 2018. Virag continues to teach and serves as the SoCJ's associate dean and undergraduate program director.

The pair worked together for more than 30 years, and met and married while working at Newsday. Aronson was a feature writer, columnist, editor and writing coach, and Virag was a feature writer, garden writer and Home and Garden Editor. He edited five Newsday books and shepherded a package on the Baby Jane Doe case that was the centerpiece of Newsday’s 1986 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting. Virag won that Pulitzer Prize as a member of the team that covered Baby Jane Doe, an infant with spina bifida, and the political struggle over her treatment.  Both have written several books as well as for a range of magazines.

About the Scholarship

The purpose of the Herman Klurfeld Memorial Scholarship is to identify and reward an outstanding junior journalism major, one who best represents the goals and mission of the School of Communication and Journalism and who demonstrates great potential to succeed as a professional journalist upon graduation.

The scholarship is made possible by the generosity of the Klurfeld family. Professor James Klurfeld is a member of the School of Journalism faculty, a Newsday columnist and a former editorial page editor at Newsday.

For more than two decades Herman Klurfeld was one of the most influential newspapermen in America, although his name was largely invisible to the public.

Klurfeld was the chief writer for Walter Winchell, whose column appeared in more than 2,000 newspapers in the 1930s and 1940s and whose Sunday radio broadcast was heard by millions of Americans. In his role as Winchell’s assistant, Klurfeld wrote several columns a week peppered with items ranging from the colorful exploits of Broadway personalities to the emerging threat of Adolph Hitler. He later wrote biographies of Winchell and journalist Drew Pearson.

Long into his eighties, Herman Klurfeld was still a compelling storyteller, regaling friends, family and visitors with his accounts of the famous, the powerful and of the power of words.

About the Scholarship

This scholarship was endowed in 2015 by Marcy McGinnis, an accomplished broadcast news journalist and executive and former associate dean in Stony Brook University’s School of Communication and Journalism. It should inspire students to recognize and respect the special place broadcast writing, reporting and producing has in the work of journalism and to nurture their visual storytelling talents.

Selection will be based on a body of work that demonstrates dedication and excellence in broadcast journalism in the areas of reporting, writing, producing, shooting and editing video, and on-air performance for class and special projects.  Video work produced in related on or off campus programs sponsored by the School of Communication and Journalism may be considered part of the overall body of work. Internships at broadcast news outlets and extracurricular work in the School of Communication and Journalism newsroom, studio and control room may also be considered part of the overall body of work.

Marcy McGinnis started her career at CBS News in 1970 as a secretary in the Special Events Unit and rose to fill several key executive roles, including senior vice president of news coverage from 1997-2005. In that role, McGinnis managed the network’s worldwide news gathering and news coverage operation. She was at the helm of the network’s coverage of the attacks of September 11th, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and Hurricane Katrina.

After leaving CBS, McGinnis joined Stony Brook University in 2006 to help start the School of Journalism. She established the broadcast journalism program and served as the school’s Associate Dean from 2007-2013.

After Stony Brook, McGinnis returned to broadcast news to help start Al Jazeera America.

Over the course of her career, McGinnis received numerous journalism honors including three national Emmy Awards for news coverage of Princess Diana’s death, selection to serve a three-year term as a judge for the prestigious Alfred I. DuPont Columbia University Awards, and selection as a judge for the Overseas Press Club Excellence Awards and the Overseas Press Club Foundation Scholarship Awards. She was awarded honorary doctorate degrees from Marymount University (2005) and from Hofstra University’s School of Communication (2002). Having graduated from Marymount College of Virginia in 1970 with an associate degree, she was proud to earn her bachelor’s degree in History from the State University of New York in 2009. 

About the Scholarship

The Paul A. Schreiber scholarship aims to encourage and reward outstanding student journalism. The overall criteria include a student journalist’s excellence in reporting, writing and multimedia; leadership; desire to pursue a career in journalism and being in good academic standing. Internship and extracurricular journalism work may be considered  as part of the overall body of work. Demonstrated leadership qualities as an editor, news director or producer  in terms of editorial policies, activities and impact. 

Paul Schreiber, the School of Communication and Journalism’s former Undergraduate Director, is a journalist and teacher who brought newsroom reality into the classroom. As a reporter and columnist during his 33 years at Newsday, Schreiber wrote about thousands of interesting people.  As an editor at Newsday, he oversaw the work of staff and freelance journalists spread all over the world. As a long-time instructor at Stony Brook University, he helped student journalists learn how to report and write clearly and effectively.

After graduating from the University of Miami, Schreiber was hired as a reporter by the Miami Herald. Schreiber joined Newsday in 1968 as a general assignment reporter. As Newsday grew, he become a national desk reporter, copy editor, assistant national editor, night national editor, day national editor, chief of the copy desk, editorial writer, news editor and business columnist. In his last role at Newsday, Schreiber wrote more than 500 columns giving readers an inside look at people “Doing Business.”

Between 1987 and 2000, Schreiber taught feature journalism at Stony Brook and was director of the journalism minor. In 2002, the Press Club of Long Island named him “Outstanding Long Island Journalist.”

He returned to Stony Brook in 2004.

He co-founded the School and co-created its news literacy program, taught and advised journalism students. He helped secure ACEJMC accreditation in 2015. In 2014, he was inducted into the Press Club of Long Island’s Journalism Hall of Fame. He retired in 2017.