A scholarship fund that will benefit print journalism students is in development this month to honor an Arizona Republic editor who died July 7.
Jeff Dozbaba, 58, held various editing positions at The Arizona Republic for 31 years before lung cancer took his life on his birthday.
Nicole Carroll, the executive director of the Republic and azcentral.com, said the scholarship fund was a newsroom effort.
The scholarship was put in place to honor his memory and work with young journalists, and to help students pursue journalism, she said.
“In every job [Jeff] had, he was really interested in developing young people,” Carroll said. “He always wanted to give them opportunity; he wanted to teach them, [and] he wanted to mentor them.”
The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication was chosen because it has a close relationship with the Republic through projects, classes and internships, she said.
Dozbaba worked with journalism students through the Multimedia Reporting Project, an online breaking news class at the Republic, which launched in 2007.
Aric Johnson, the current director of the program, said Dozbaba helped with the class, and they knew each other for seven years. “He gave me the freedom to figure things out and try things and change things,” Johnson said.
Students in the class stayed late one night to cover a story involving a bus rollover in which nine people were killed, Johnson recalled.
“It was a devastating story to report,” Johnson said, and Dozbaba recognized how much the students contributed.
Johnson said Dozbaba’s influence in the breaking news program was critical to making it successful.
Cronkite students will be able to apply for the Jeffrey Dozbaba Memorial Scholarship Fund sometime in November, though details still need to be worked out, said Liz Bernreuter, the director of development at the Cronkite school.
The Republic will donate $2,500 for five years, or $12,500 total, to the scholarship fund, with the goal of reaching a permanent annual scholarship after $25,000 is donated overall.
There are 51 scholarships available only to Cronkite students, ranging from $500 to $5,000, she said.
Kristin Gilger, the associate dean of the Cronkite school, said she worked with Dozbaba for three years when she was a deputy managing editor at the Republic.
“He was one of these people who was deeply committed to journalism,” Gilger said. “He was just sort of this rock-solid core for the newsroom.”
He was “interested in young, new talent coming out of journalism schools…because he was concerned about the quality of the paper and the future of the paper,” he said.
Cronkite Dean Christopher Callahan said he didn’t personally know Dozbaba but heard a lot about him from colleagues. “Through [the scholarship] we’ll help ensure that his journalistic legacy will live on,” he said.
Mary Dozbaba, Jeff’s wife, said the scholarship fund is a “wonderful idea” and was “thrilled” when she heard the news.
“I really would like it to be for print journalists, for those who want to be a reporter, because Jeff always thought that was the foundation of a newspaper,” Mary Dozbaba said.
She will be involved in selecting scholarship recipients.
To Jeff Dozbaba, good reporting was more important than writing, she said.
“He was a strong believer in…old-fashioned reporting,” Dozbaba said, and always had a pencil behind his ear.
She said she found 13 pencils in his glove compartment after he died.
Although he was old-fashioned in some ways, she said he was innovative in his thinking and helped with several programs and sections of the Republic.
Mary Dozbaba met her husband at the student newspaper at Temple University. She later pursued her own career in journalism and is currently a freelance writer focusing on business writing.
As a journalist, Mary Dozbaba would understand if her husband couldn’t go out to dinner or be home on time.
“It helps to understand because it’s a crazy business,” she said. “You never know what your day is going to be. You think it’s going to be an easy day and then you have something like 9/11.”
She thinks her husband loved that fact—that every day was different in journalism.
Before his death, he was hoping to work at a small newspaper in Idaho and “working with young reporters and really getting back to the basics of journalism,” as well as working on a possible screenplay about the Lost Dutchman Mine.
Venita James, the West Valley community editor for the Republic, knew Jeff during her 29 years at the paper.
James had the idea for the scholarship fund in honor of Jeff Dozbaba’s legacy.
“The way I look at it, this is my last project with Jeff,” James said.
She said it’s a shame that new journalists won’t be able to know “Doz” and work with him directly.
“I could tell that he was the sort of person who could…extract journalists’ potential, like someone mining for gold,” James said.
The Cronkite school has honored other employees of The Arizona Republic over the years as well, including the Paul J. Schatt Memorial Lecture Series in honor of the editor and professor who died in 2005.
There is also a scholarship being finalized in honor of Bill Muller, a film critic for the Republic who died in 2007.
Reach the reporter at reweaver@asu.edu
