Published Friday, April 6, 2001
Knight gives $4.8 million to ASNE for high school initiative
BY ANGELIQUE SOENARIE
ASNE Reporter
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has given ASNE a $4.8 million grant to boost the organization’s efforts in attracting minority high school students into journalism.
ASNE, which planned its high school journalism initiative last year with a $500,000 grant from the Knight Foundation, has gathered 27 daily newspapers to pair up with schools to support and develop student newspapers.
In addition, ASNE’s High School Journalism Institutes this summer will offer educational programs to about 200 high school teachers who advise student newspapers.
The institutes will be held at the University of Maryland, College Park; Ball State University, Muncie, Ind.; the University of South Florida, Tampa; Hampton University, Hampton, Va.; the University of Texas, Austin; and Kent State University, Kent, Ohio.
The high school journalism initiative will also expand their Web site, www.highschooljournalism.org, which will offer students and advisers access to professional journalists and other resources.
It’s all part of a long-term recruiting drive to increase diversity in the nation’s newsrooms by giving high school students an early start in journalism, ASNE leaders say.
The Radio and Television News Directors Foundation, meanwhile, will receive a $429,000 grant to develop a project similar to ASNE’s, focusing on radio, television, cable and Internet communication produced by high schools.
In other school-related efforts, the Knight Foundation gave $12,000 to ASNE and the RTNDF to publish 40,000 booklets, “The Principal’s Guide to High School Journalism.”
The booklet, which addresses the consequences of censorship by high school administrations, will be mailed to junior, middle and high school administrators nationwide.
The Knight Foundation also gave a three-year $150,000 grant to establish a journalism camp at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn.
The J-Zone, a multicultural, multimedia camp, will educate high school girls and minorities in the Twin Cities area.
This summer, the foundation is also funding the Media and American Democracy institute, which is operated by Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education and the Shorenstein Center for the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Journalists and academicians will meet with teachers to talk about journalism’s role in a democratic society during Harvard’s weeklong seminar.
