Entries have closed for a $10 000 scholarship, being offered by Clubs NSW, to anyone employed in the media for less than six years.

Examples of appropriate job titles of media staffers who might be eligible to apply for the scholarship include:

Associate Producer, Editor, Journalist, Producer, Presenter, Reporter, Researcher, Sub-Editor, Writer.

ClubsNSW wants to broaden the experience of those in the media industry and is offering the scholarship to one person to help achieve this.

The winner of the inaugural scholarship was Deborah Hoolihan, a journalist with the Oberon Review.

Part of Deborah’s application read: “I had about 17 years out of the workforce, raising our six children 40km from Oberon, NSW, on a shearer’s income and in almost unbearable social isolation. I have had no training in journalism apart from one university unit (Communications and the Law) which I completed in 2002 and the reading of a second hand prescribed text for a communications course.”

She started working at the Oberon Review, after answering an ad in that paper to fill in while a journalist was away. That was in 2001, and she now works there permanently.

Working on a small local paper means Deborah not only researches, interviews and writes her own stories, but she also takes the accompanying photographs.