For Immediate Release
April 30, 2026

FOI Foundation announces 2026-27 journalism and law school scholarship recipients

 AUSTIN – Journalism student William Fry of Texas Tech University has been selected to receive this year’s Ralph Langer Scholarship awarded by the nonprofit Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas.

The FOI Foundation also has selected Casey McKee of the University of Houston Law Center as the recipient of the Joel White Scholarship for law school students in Texas.

“Both students have demonstrated a strong commitment to journalism and protecting free speech and free press rights. We salute their important work and their desire for careers that ensure the public is well informed,” said Kelley Shannon, executive director of the FOI Foundation of Texas.

Fry, who is majoring in creative media industries and political journalism at Texas Tech, will receive a $6,000 scholarship for the 2026-27 academic year.

Fry is currently working as an investigative reporter and managing editor for West Texas Watchdogs News Service. It was created as an answer to the growing issue of news deserts in the Texas Panhandle. He also has served as director of public relations and digital media for the university’s Student Government Association and has interned at The Canadian Record.

He is part of the Honor’s College Undergraduate Research Scholar Program at Texas Tech. His research has culminated in a project called “Scrolling into Adulthood: How Media Habits Shape the Social and Political Identity of Gen-Z,” which examines how social media and the internet in childhood influence someone’s life and identity as an adult.

McKee, who earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and is currently a first-year law student at the University of Houston Law Center, will receive a $1,000 scholarship for the coming academic year.

Throughout her studies and her work, she has developed a strong interest in the intersection of media and the law. As part of the Moody College Honors Program at UT-Austin she wrote her thesis on artificial intelligence and its tensions with the modern U.S. defamation law framework.

At the University of Houston, McKee serves as secretary of the Intellectual Property Student Organization. This summer she will join Jackson Walker as a summer associate in the litigation group, where she looks forward to learning from the firm’s media and entertainment team.

The Ralph Langer Scholarship is for undergraduate journalism and photojournalism students. Langer, a guiding light as the FOI Foundation established itself as the state’s leading voice on transparency and the First Amendment, was executive editor and vice president of The Dallas Morning News before his retirement in the late 1990s. He led the newspaper to six Pulitzer Prizes. After his death in 2021, his wife of 61 years, Kathy Langer, provided a generous contribution to launch the scholarship honoring him.

The Joel White Scholarship for law students honors White, an attorney who passed away in 2018. White was an FOI Foundation of Texas board member and past president. He championed open government and the First Amendment liberties of free press and free speech during his legal career and in his volunteerism. FOI Foundation board members, supporters and White’s friends and family helped create the scholarship.

Contributions continue to be accepted from the public for both the Langer and White scholarship funds.

The nonprofit FOI Foundation of Texas, founded in 1978, is dedicated to protecting the rights of free speech and free press and to enhancing the public’s right to know about government through access to records and meetings. For more information on the FOIFT’s scholarships and other programs go to www.foift.org.

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Contact: Kelley Shannon, Executive Director
Phone: 512-377-1575
Email: [email protected]