Head

Sharon B. Stringer

Lock Haven University

E-mail: sstringe@lhup.edu

Telephone: (570) 484-2092

FAX: (570) 484-2436

Vice-Head, Programming Chair

Jennifer Woodard

Middle Tennessee State University

E-mail: jwoodard@mtsu.edu

Telephone: (615) 898-2766

Second Vice Head/Secretary

Ilia Rodriguez

The University of New Mexico

E-mail: ilia@unm.edu

Telephone: (505) 771-8094

Second Vice-Head Elect

Petra Guerra

University of Texas-Pan American

E-mail: cielito@utpa.edu

Telephone: (956) 318-5330

Faculty Research Chair

Brenda Edgerton-Webster

Mississippi State University

E-mail: bew95@msstate.edu

Telephone: (662) 325-5808 (office)

(662) 617-4375 (mobile)*

Student Research Chair

Yuki Fujioka

Georgia State University

E-mail: jouykf@langate.gsu.edu

Telephone: 

PF&R Chair

Alex Ortiz

Texas Tech University

E-mail: alex.ortiz@ttu.edu

Telephone: (806) 742-6500 Ext. 252

Teaching Standards Chair

Jerry Domatob

Alcorn State University

E-mail: jdomatob@yahoo.com

Telephone: ?????

Coordinators of Mid-Winter Conference

Bradley W. Gorham

Syracuse University

E-mail: bwgorham@syr.edu

Telephone: (315) 443-1950

&

Frances Ward-Johnson

Elon University

E-mail: fward2@elon.edu

Telephone: (336) 278-5738 (office)

(336) 580-1521 (mobile)

Webmaster/Newsletter Editor

James Kiwanuka-Tondo

North Carolina State University

E-mail: jktondo@social.chass.ncsu.edu

Telephone: (919) 515-9736

By Calvin, L. Hall

Department of Communication

Appalachian State University

The staff of the Philadelphia Daily News, along with its editor Michael Days, is the recipient of the 2009 Robert P. Knight Multicultural Recruitment Award because of its significant contribution to promoting diversity through its scholastic media program.

The award is given by the Scholastic Journalism Division and will be presented at the luncheon co-sponsored with the Minorities and Communication Division at the AEJMC Convention in Boston.

Since 1986, the Philadelphia Daily News has co-sponsored the Urban Journalism Workshop, a two-week journalism program for high school students in which the participants work with Daily News reporters, editors, photographers, graphic artists and Temple University professors to produce a newspaper and, more recently, an online publication.

Up to 20 students per year participate in the program in which they receive hands-on experience in interviewing, reporting, and writing. The issues students have reported on include fighting drug dealing, Philadelphia’s mayoral campaigns, police brutality, racial discrimination, as well as the city’s literary, arts, fashion, and music scenes.

“The students learn to look, listen, ask, ask again, write and re-write and re-write again,” Linda Shockley wrote in her letter nominating the staff for the Knight Award.

Shockley, Deputy Director of the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund, singles out Days for special praise. She states that as he rose through the editorial ranks at the Daily News, “Days kept his commitment to keeping the workshop alive”. She adds that during the times when Days could not work with the program himself, he enlisted staffers to help it continue.

The workshop leaders are not simply contented with sponsoring the workshop but are also committed to rewarding student achievement in the program. Shockley states that each summer workshop leaders collect funds in the newsroom so that they can give scholarships to the best writers and photographers among each year’s participants, with their donations often being matched by the publisher. During the workshop’s history, the paper has given about $3,000 per year for student scholarships.

But the scholarship is not given to students unconditionally. In order to collect the award money, the student must first be accepted to college.

For former Urban Journalism Workshop participants like Breea Willingham, who teaches journalism at St. Bonaventure University, the experience was invaluable. “They treated us like real reporters and photographers, and really didn’t cut us any slack just because we were high school students,” she said in Shockley’s nomination letter. “I didn’t appreciate it at the time – I was 17 and full of attitude then – but I learned more about journalism during my two weeks in UJW than I ever learned in college.”

More than 300 high school students have participated in the program since it began. The diversity of students includes African American, Hispanic, Asian students, as well as students from other immigrant groups. “The American polyglot has been taught and mentored,” Shockley states.

In addition to the Philadelphia Daily News, other co-sponsors of the Urban Journalism Workshop include The Dow Jones Newspaper Fund, Temple University, and the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists.

The Robert P. Knight Multicultural Recruitment Award is presented to any individual or media organization making significant contributions to promoting diversity in high school journalism programs. It is named after for Robert P. Knight, a professor at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, who served as director of the Missouri Interscholastic Press Association from 1965 to 1992. He received the award in 1990. June O. Nicholson, an associate professor in the School of Mass Communications at Virginia Commonwealth University, was the recipient of the 2008 award.

By Jennifer Woodard, MAC Programming Chair

I teach a course on Race, Class and Gender in the Media at my university. It is a junior/senior level seminar class. It is not required. I often have only one or two males in a class of 25 to 30 people. My university is predominantly white, but the one or two males in this particular class are usually black. I asked some of my students why men don’t take this class and they said that white males, in particular, are turned off by the name of the class. They told me that white males think that I’m going to bash them and make them feel guilty and they don’t want any part of this.

Wow. They don’t even know anything about my class or me (other than the fact that I am an African American female) and they are making so many assumptions. Is this happening to you at your university? It probably is if you teach diversity classes – required or otherwise. There is so much work to be done in our field in teaching students to avoid bias, yet how can we reach them when their biases keep them out of the very classes that will help them? Part of the answer is to get the diversity message out of the special topics courses and spread it across the curriculum. We must teach that diversity goes beyond black and white. It is so much more than that and so necessary for our students to understand if they are going to improve the state of journalism in all of its forms.

I wanted to know what more I could do in all of my classes so when I found a Poynter Institute seminar on “Teaching Diversity Across the Curriculum,” I signed up. I had no idea what I was getting myself into this May – but let me tell you – it was wonderful. This seminar led by Lillian Dunlap was an intensive week with like-minded individuals who were as devoted to the idea of diversity as an inclusive message of good journalism as I was. It was refreshing. We were in our sessions some days from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., and it was all good. I am re-energized and recommitted to diversity. The instructors at Poynter showed the twelve of us accepted into the program how to re-imagine and re-tool our curriculum. They gave us instructional modules that we could take home and immediately implement into our classes. They gave us strategies on how to reach biased students and engage them in all of our classes not just the special topics. I was tired of teaching Race, class and gender in media and getting depressed because of the students that I didn’t seem to be reaching. Now I have a briefcase full of new assignments and a new way to think about diversity. It has always been that diversity is journalistic excellence, but now I know how to get this across to my students in a more inclusive and less frightening way.

So here’s the good news for our AEJMC divisions – the Poynter Institute is bringing a condensed version of their weeklong seminar to Boston. I encourage everyone to sign up and attend because it will change how you think about diversity, and it will give you new energy in the classroom. They are offering “Teaching Diversity for the Classroom & Accreditation” on Tuesday, August 4 beginning at 5:30 p.m. and ending at 9:15 p.m. My university is in the self-study year of accreditation. I will be encouraging my deans and any colleagues who are attending AEJMC to come a day early and gain some knowledge that will help us with the diversity standard and with our curriculum as a whole. Please take advantage of this opportunity – it will empower you and then you’ll empower your students. The diversity message hasn’t changed, but how we teach it needs to.

Here is the workshop description:

Workshop Title:  “Teaching Diversity for the Classroom & Accreditation”
Cost:  $35.00 per person

5:30-6:45 Session:  “Grounding Diversity in Excellent Journalism”

6:45-7:30 Session:  “Tough Talk: Expertly Leading Diversity Discussions”

7:30-7:45 Break

7:45-8:30 Session:  “Points of Entry: Big and Small Ways to Put Diversity in the Syllabus”

8:30-9:15 Session:  “Teachable Moments: How Professors Have Put Ideas Into Action”

Keith Woods, dean of Poynter faculty, and Lillian Dunlap are leading the workshop.  They will also have some alums from previous seminars to assist them with the ending session.

By Ilia Rodriguez

MAC Secretary/Second Vice Head

Mark your calendars for the 2009 MAC/Scholastic Luncheon

Friday, Aug. 7, 12:15 to 1:30 p.m. at the AEJMC Convention

With guest speaker Juan Gonzalez, New York Daily News

columnist and co-host of Democracy Now with Amy Goodman

"Race and News In America: What Can We Learn from the Past

in this Age of Media Upheaval?"

Juan Gonzalez has been a staff columnist at the New York

Daily News for more than 20 years and co-hosts with Amy

Goodman the nationally syndicated news show Democracy Now.

He is former president of the National Association of

Hispanic Journalists, for which he created the Parity

Project, a program designed to help news organizations

recruit and retain Hispanic reporters and managers and

improve coverage of the Latino community. He was the Belle

Zeller Visiting Professor in Public Policy at Brooklyn

College from 2000 to 2002, where he taught courses in both

media studies and Puerto Rican and Latino history.  He

received the George Polk Award in 1998 for commentary.

 Gonzalez was the first reporter in New York City to write

on the health effects arising from the September 11, 2001,

attacks.  He has published three books: Fallout: The

Environmental Consequences of the World Trade Center

Collapse; Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in

America; and Roll Down Your Window: Stories of a Forgotten

America.  Gonzalez’s forthcoming book, co-authored with

Joe Torres, offers a survey of the many battles that

erupted throughout U.S. history between the African

American, Latino, Asian American and Native American press

and the dominant white press, with discussion of how

federal communications policy has affected the news and

information needs of people of color.  In the book, the

authors uncover a wealth of information about the role of

minorities in the media that has never been collected in

any single volume before.

Luncheon tickets can be purchased when registering for the

AEJMC Convention.  

Mark your calendars for the 2009 MAC/Scholastic Luncheon
Friday, Aug. 7, 12:15 to 1:30 p.m. at the AEJMC Convention

With guest speaker Juan Gonzalez, New York Daily News
columnist and co-host of Democracy Now with Amy Goodman

“Race and News In America: What Can We Learn from the Past
in this Age of Media Upheaval?”

Juan Gonzalez has been a staff columnist at the New York
Daily News for more than 20 years and co-hosts with Amy
Goodman the nationally syndicated news show Democracy Now.
He is former president of the National Association of
Hispanic Journalists, for which he created the Parity
Project, a program designed to help news organizations
recruit and retain Hispanic reporters and managers and
improve coverage of the Latino community. He was the Belle
Zeller Visiting Professor in Public Policy at Brooklyn
College from 2000 to 2002, where he taught courses in both
media studies and Puerto Rican and Latino history. He
received the George Polk Award in 1998 for commentary.
Gonzalez was the first reporter in New York City to write
on the health effects arising from the September 11, 2001,
attacks. He has published three books: Fallout: The
Environmental Consequences of the World Trade Center
Collapse; Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in
America; and Roll Down Your Window: Stories of a Forgotten
America. Gonzalez’s forthcoming book, co-authored with
Joe Torres, offers a survey of the many battles that
erupted throughout U.S. history between the African
American, Latino, Asian American and Native American press
and the dominant white press, with discussion of how
federal communications policy has affected the news and
information needs of people of color. In the book, the
authors uncover a wealth of information about the role of
minorities in the media that has never been collected in
any single volume before.

Luncheon tickets can be purchased when registering for the
AEJMC Convention.