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March 23, 2015 — Cheryl Hatch, visiting assistant professor of journalism in the public interest at Allegheny College, won second place in column writing in the 2015 Professional Keystone Press Awards competition. Hatch’s columns appear weekly in The Meadville Tribune.

The Keystone Press Awards reinforce excellence by individuals in the newspaper profession by recognizing journalism that consistently provides relevance, integrity and initiative in serving readers and that faithfully fulfills its First Amendment rights and responsibilities.

A longtime photojournalist, Hatch spent time embedded with U.S. troops in Afghanistan. She also spent time in Somalia and has worked at daily newspapers in Florida and Oregon.

Hatch recently visited Liberia to cover the U.S. military’s efforts to help the Liberian government combat Ebola. Hatch and Brian Castner, an Iraqi War veteran and author of “The Long Walk: A Story of War and the Life That Follows,” received funding for their reporting from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Their first story, “‘Let This Ebola End’: Liberians Prepare for 2015 with Parties and Prayer,” served as the headline for the international news organization VICE News on January 5.

Before joining the Allegheny College faculty, Hatch held a Snedden Endowed Chair in journalism at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. At Allegheny, in addition to teaching journalism courses, she serves as the advisor to The Campus newspaper, which in February won two first-place awards and three honorable mentions in the four-year college category from the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association.

Hatch and her fellow Professional Keystone Press Award winners will be honored at an awards banquet on May 30 at the Pennsylvania Press Conference, held this year in Gettysburg.