Nora Magid Mentorship Prize awarded to Penn Seniors Anusha Mathur and Jared Mitovich

The 2025 Nora Magid Mentorship Prize has been awarded to Anusha Mathur and Jared Mitovich.

Anusha Mathur is a Penn senior from Los Angeles, a graduate of Harvard-Westlake School, who is majoring in English and Creative Writing, with minors in Journalism and, at Wharton, Consumer Psychology. She has been a magazine intern at Politico — where she did everything from a playful multi-media report on Trump’s favorite words to a multi-week investigative project in Panama, co-funded by her Crisis Reporting Fellowship from the Pulitzer Center, about the environmental challenges of tourist business development — as well as a digital platforms intern at MSNBC, a reporting intern at the FlatHead Beacon in Montana, and internships at Warner Bros. Discovery Theater Ventures, the News Not Noise platform, and at the LA County District Attorney’s office and the Loyola Project for the Innocent. At Penn she has also been a writer and editor at Penn Appetit, a sports editor and politics reporter at the Daily Pennsylvanian, and was the founding host for College of Arts & Sciences’ podcast College Voices. After graduation, Mathur will be doing a post-grad internship on the Climate and Environment desk of the Washington Post, where she also has been working as a freelance obituary writer.

Jared Mitovich is a Penn senior from Woodcliff Lake, NJ, a graduate of Pascack Hills High School, who is double majoring in Political Science and Communications, with a minor in Data Science. He has been a breaking news intern at Politico during the height of last year’s political race, a data-driven storytelling fellow at the Philadelphia Inquirer, an editorial and breaking news intern at CNBC, and an editorial intern at Yahoo Finance. At Penn he has served as editor-in-chief of the Daily Pennsylvanian, as well as a news editor and senior reporter, doing award-winning coverage of the presidential resignation, national scrutiny of Penn, campus protests and other controversies. He was recently given an Emanuel R. Freedman Scholar Award by the Overseas Press Club Foundation, and is currently working as a news intern at WHYY.

The two winners will split this year’s $5000 prize, and both be mentored by a large web of Penn alums in the media and their colleagues.

The Nora Prize is given in partnership with the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, the Daily Pennsylvanian, and the Kelly Writers House.

Mathur was recommended for the prize by Chris Mustazza, Sr. Director of Academic Computing, Penn’s School of Arts & Sciences Co-Director of PennSound. Mitovich was recommended by Ken Winneg, Managing Director of Survey Research, Annenberg Public Policy Center.

Finalists for this year’s prize were Katie Bartlett (recommended by Dick Polman), Lila Dubois (recommended by Anthony DeCurtis) and Molly Cohen (recommended by Barbie Zelizer, Raymond Williams Professor of Communication, Annenberg School).

About the prize: THE NORA MAGID MENTORSHIP PRIZE has been given each year since 2004 to a senior at the University of Pennsylvania who shows exceptional ability and promise in writing/reporting/editing, and who would benefit most from combined mentorship of Nora’s network of former students and their colleagues in traditional and new media. The prize is now $5000 to be used however the student chooses for their professional development — including being used as a stipend for post-grad internships that require one. The winner also receives unparalleled access to a constantly growing network of Penn alumni — including Nora’s former students and over a decade of Nora Prize-winners — as well as their extensive web of colleagues who can assist in the student’s career. The prize is open to all seniors at Penn, although preference is given to those who expect to attempt to make careers in some form of media.

For more information about the Nora Prize: http://writing.upenn.edu/awards/nora_prize.php

Contact: Stephen Fried, stephenfried@comcast.net 215–287–9392