WASHINGTON – Denise Sawyer, a broadcast news senior, spent this year’s winter break anchoring the news and preparing features for a  local Arizona television station as a national Meredith-Cronkite fellow.

Each year, the Meredith Corporation and its Phoenix television station, KPHO CBS 5, sponsor a week-long multimedia fellowship for top minority broadcast journalism students at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Sawyer was one of 10 students nationally selected for the fellowship.

The goal of the Meredith-Cronkite fellowship is to provide students hands-on experience and direct access to working news professionals. At the station, Sawyer anchored a live on-air newscast and shot and edited video news segments. In one story, she chronicled individuals who participate in HIV vaccine studies although they don’t carry the virus.

“Sometimes I had less than two hours to produce a story,” Sawyer said, a native of Miami. “I had to race around a city that I didn’t know very well and produce content that was good enough to be aired on TV. It was very enlightening. It helped to propel my career as I transition to the real world.”

Sawyer, who is also pursuing a minor in political science, said her career goal is to become a multimedia journalist.