Cassidy McDonald ’13 wins New York Times journalism contest

Cassidy McDonald photo from Notre Dame News

Cassidy McDonald ’13, a junior at University of Notre Dame, will be going on assignment with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nick Kristof from the New York Times. As this year’s winner of Kristof’s annual “Win A Trip with Nick” contest, Cassidy’s prize is to travel this summer with the NYT columnist to a developing country to raise awareness about neglected global issues. During the trip, she will report for a blog and may appear in videos that will be published on the Times website.

At Notre Dame, Cassidy is majoring in marketing, with a minor in the John W. Gallivan Program in Journalism, Ethics and Democracy. She is managing editor and writer for Scholastic, the University’s monthly student news magazine. Cassidy also serves as a student video assistant and co-hosts the program ND Top Ten for Fighting Irish Media (FIM) in the University’s athletics department.

During the fall of 2015, Cassidy worked in Washington, D.C., as an intern for the 60 Minutes television program, creating research reports on Russian military weapons, gun death statistics, nuclear capabilities of Middle Eastern countries and more. She also managed a shoot in West Virginia and worked to fact-check the show’s scripts.

Of this most recent honor, Cassidy says, “I’m incredibly honored by the opportunity to travel alongside Mr. Kristof; his reporting is my favorite example of journalism as a force for good. He reports on the world’s most marginalized people, but his work doesn’t discourage—it inspires.”

 Read the full Notre Dame News story and view Cassidy’s application video for the trip accompanied by her attention-grabbing written entry that opens:
I once went viral when I wrote a story about cheese.
…The assignment wasn’t the hardest-hitting piece I’d done, but I decided to have fun with it: “Wisconsin cheesemakers found their whey Friday at the American Cheese Society Competition in Providence, Rhode Island, where they did better than gouda – they did grate.”