Thirteen students, including Mia Tanner of Cumming, have been named 2026 McGill Fellows by the University of Georgia’s (UGA) Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. This year’s class includes ten undergraduate students and three graduate students.
Each student was selected by a faculty committee “for their strengths in academics, practical experience and leadership,” according to a university news release.
This is the 17th McGill Fellows class since the honor was introduced in 2007.
The McGill program for journalistic courage grew out of the McGill Lecture which, for more than 40 years, has brought significant figures in journalism to the University of Georgia to help honor Ralph McGill’s courage as an editor.
McGill, while editor and publisher of The Atlanta Constitution, was regarded as the “conscience of the south,” using the newspaper’s editorial pages to challenge segregation in the 1950s and 1960s. McGill was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1958 for “long, courageous and effective leadership.”
The McGill program is funded in part by the McGill Lecture Endowment.