As a newcomer to the large Bakersfield High School campus, Ashley Owens noticed that not one African-American student was on the staff of the school newspaper staff, the Blue & White. So she decided to add a new voice by joining up.

She never expected that three years later, she would be one of six recipients in the country to be awarded a $1,000 scholarship for journalism excellence from The Dow Jones Newspaper Fund, as a result of her work in the Bakersfield College Summer Multicultural Journalism Workshop.

Her award-winning story was written after an enlightening trip by Owens and fellow workshop students, to the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. She interviewed Holocaust survivor Matilda Pardo at the museum and was inspired by her story of survival in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

“I thought it was amazing how she survived all that,” said Owens when reflecting back on the interview and the woman that led her to write the story. As a part of the Dow Jones Summer Workshop Writing Competition, she also wrote an essay about her interest in journalism.

Her story on Pardo was published in The Scoop, the 2002 BC workshop newspaper. The annual workshop is a free class sponsored by BC, The Bakersfield Californian and The Dow Jones Newspaper Fund to encourage high school students from all ethnic backgrounds to consider newspapers as a career.

After months, Owens had given up on the idea of actually getting the scholarship.

“Then one day out of the blue a letter came from them,” she said. When she opened it, she said “it was pretty exciting,” that she had actually recieved the scholarship.

When she’s not researching a story for journalism, Owens is sitting through one of her advanced placement classes or busy at track practice. When she has free time, she likes to hang out with friends.

When school is out for summer, she enjoys doing volunteer work.

Owens, who will graduate from Bakersfield High School in June, plans to attend Agnes Scott College in Atlanta.

She enjoys expressing opinions through journalism and the impact she makes through her words by, as she puts it, “the response you get back when you put something out there on the table.”