$1.5 million Grant to Anniston Star, University Experiment
It is official, the Knight Foundation is helping underwrite the new Master’s Degree in community journalism program at the Anniston Star in Alabama.
Nice part is that students who get accepted when the program begins in 2006 get a free ride.
The story is below, unfortunately, it costs $4 a month to get into the Star’s online newspaper, but I have permission to copy the story here, probably because I am included in it:
Teaching program at The Star a step nearer
By Charlotte Tubbs
Star Staff Writer
09-22-2004
The promise to preserve The Anniston Stars home-owned status while teaching students the craft of community journalism is taking shape.
A five-year, $1.5 million grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and $750,000 from Consolidated Publishing, the Stars parent company, will fund a masters degree in community journalism program to be taught at The Anniston Star.
The first-of-its-kind program, scheduled to begin with a class of six students in 2006, is a partnership between the Ayers Family Institute for Community Journalism, the Knight Foundation and the University of Alabamas College of Communication and Information Sciences.
The Star will serve as a teaching hospital of sorts, where students will attend classes, participate in problem-solving seminars called grand rounds, and work as interns. University of Alabama faculty and Star staff members with masters degrees will teach classes at the newspaper. Other staff members will function as teaching professionals, like lab instructors on college campuses.
Working journalists can offer students a course in life as it is lived, but the partnership with scholars holds out the exciting promise of new discoveries about the intimate relationship of a local paper with its people, said H. Brandt Ayers, chairman and publisher of The Star.
Directors of the program will conduct a highly competitive national selection process to recruit a diverse group of students that will eventually grow to 12.
Our interest is in choosing a student body that has a great interest in being close to a community, said The Stars Chris Waddle, president of the Ayers Family Institute and Vice President for News.
There are two types of journalists, those who talk down to their readers and those who talk with readers, Waddle said. We want those with a genuine community interest, not those who lecture readers.
Students, who will be known as Knight Fellows, will receive full-tuition scholarships and receive a stipend, currently set at $1,000 a month. When students complete the three-semester, one-year program, they will receive another $1,500 as they begin a job search. When they find a job, they will receive an additional $1,500 stipend to cover moving expenses, Waddle said
With three stipends and tuition-free education, I think well be inundated with applications, Waddle said. The real task is how were going to decide to turn people away.
Although the program will be based at The Star, students may work at other Consolidated newspapers or local television or radio stations, depending on their interests, Waddle said.
These students are not captives of our newspaper, Waddle said. Were trying to tailor a program to their interests.
Waddle said the programs funding is significant in several ways.
First, it means the readers of The Anniston Star and other (Consolidated newspapers) will never have to read a newspaper owned by out-of-towners, he said.
Second, journalism education has an ideal classroom, a real live working newspaper, Waddle said. Third, it means professional community journalism has a high-quality source of recruits (that will go) into the heartland media dedicated to that purpose.
The program will hold annual conferences on community journalism, beginning in 2005, host a Web site, and publish an academic journal.
The grant from the Miami-based Knight Foundation, a private organization dedicated to supporting the highest standards of journalistic excellence in addition to other ideals, could be renewed at the end of the five years, but it will depend on the results of the project.
At this point we do not know if a teaching newspaper can successfully be created, said Eric Newton, Director of Journalism Initiatives for the Knight Foundation.
The foundation also will evaluate whether newspapers hire the programs graduates, how the annual conference promotes the issues of community journalism, and the popularity of the programs Web site, Newton said.
We need to get answers to all of those questions before considering the future of the project.
Bridging the gap
Ayers and others see the program as an opportunity to bridge the gap that exists between newspapers and their readers across the country.
Those rifts have only grown in recent years after reporters at national newspapers have admitted to making up sources and CBS recently apologized for using documents that it could not verify in a report questioning President George Bushs National Guard Service, said Ed Mullins, professor and chair of the University of Alabamas Department of Journalism.
The place to reform it is at the grass roots, at the local level, Mullins said.
Its not necessary (for a newspaper) to be loved, but to be respected because you really did something that helped the community, he said.
Evaluating community journalism can only help the profession, said Esther Thorson, associate dean for graduate studies at the University of Missouri Columbia School of Journalism.
Thinking about the news and how to make it more resonating with readers can give it the bite that can save journalism from the pressures it is under, including profit motive and lack of interest among young Americans, she said.
Ayers said The Star does a better job than some papers of keeping in touch with the community through staffers such as columnist George Smith and retired editor Basil Penny, but the masters program will improve the relationship.
The addition of more talented interns and scholars with the support of the Knight Foundation will give us a chance to explore more deeply the intimate relationship between a newspaper and the people, Ayers said.
One of the strong impressions Ive had over my whole career is the big story every day is the one we cant get our arms around, he said. Thats the story that gives context to every aberration we put out on our front page.
Ayers envisions the Knight Fellows examining issues starting at the neighborhood level.
If the black middle class is not putting their children in the city school system, where are they going or living? Ayers said, giving a hypothetical example.
Another project could involve developing a map of Calhoun Countys community gathering places and leaders, including churches, volunteer fire departments and community stores. The contacts on the map could give reporters an accurate pulse of the communitys opinions, Ayers said.
Ayers expects the fellows to give The Star staff new perspectives.
They will see things that we dont see, Ayers said. Its like the new sofa or old draperies. They disappear from our view when we see them every day.
They see things and ask questions and will teach us, he said.
Arranging the marriage
The University of Alabama and The Anniston Star have been discussing and shaping the program for the past three years.
All of us who have labored in the past three years in developing this program have laughed, and occasionally wept, over the difficulties of bringing two different cultures, one academic, the other professional, under one roof, Clark said. The next step will involve meshing a student culture with the day-to-day routines of putting out a paper.
Clark doesnt expect the future step to be an easy one, but will work and make those involved proud to be a part of it.
Clark said he and others at the university liked the practical and theoretical approach of basing a masters degree program at a newspaper.
Journalism, like medicine, is both practice and theory, Clark said.
Mullins hopes the experience at a newspaper will teach students more than the nuts and bolts of reporting news stories.
Creating a buzz
The idea of educating journalism students at a teaching newspaper has drawn interest from journalism educators and journalists across the country. Educators have taken an interest in community journalism in recent years.
The University of Missouris School of Journalism at Columbia began offering a specialization in community journalism four or five years ago. The program is sponsored by the Missouri Press Association.
At the University of North Carolina, Jock Lauterer teaches a course in community journalism. He is preparing to publish the third edition of his textbook on the subject, titled Relentlessly Local.
Lauterer said he couldnt see a down side to the partnership between The Star and the University of Alabama.
Its a bold and brand new way to think about community journalism higher education, Lauterer said.
Its inspiring for any educator, he said.
While many community newspapers view themselves as teaching newspapers, adding a degree program formalizes the education, he said.
It will be in such a way that things wont fall through the gaps, Lauterer said. So often at smaller newspapers, the emphasis has to be so much on just getting the paper out, feedback and education is slim to none.
The program should help ensure that not just the elites, but everyday people are represented in the newspaper, said Leonard Witt, the Robert D. Fowler Distinguished Chair and assistant professor of media studies at Kennesaw State University in Georgia.
Its an important moment for the nation and world of journalism, Witt said.
The teaching-hospital approach to education should guarantee that reporters learn the basics of covering a community, said Melvin Mencher, professor emeritus of the Columbia Universitys Graduate School of Journalism and author of the textbook, News Reporting and Writing.
Mencher left the newsroom for the classroom after he saw too many reporters who had no idea how to cover courts, police and local governments, he said.
Journalism education has steadily wandered from its origins as the incubator of public service journalists, Mencher said. Journalism education is now overly concerned with technology and writing style, and the result is the scanting of instruction in how communities work the systems and processes that affect the way we work and play, raise families, send our children to school.
Quality journalism directly affects community quality of life, he said.
A newspaper whose staff understands how to interpret a city budget and that discerns the influence of the various constituencies in the making of those budgets works on behalf of community awareness and influence, Mencher said.
