FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contacts:
Carolyn Wheeler
NABJ Marketing Manager
(301) 445-7100 ext. 110
carolyn@nabj.org

Betty Anne Williams
Black College Wire
(703) 479-3087
bccanews@yahoo.com

June 10, 2004

GRANT TO NABJ SUPPORTS BLACK COLLEGE NEWS SERVICE

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has awarded a $200,000 grant to NABJ to support Black College Wire, an online news service for and about students at historically black colleges and universities, NABJ President Herbert Lowe announced today.

The one-year award will enable Black College Wire to continue its current operation and add new features to its Web site (www.blackcollegewire.org), including audio streaming and First Amendment Watch, a new student project that will monitor and report on censorship at black colleges, Lowe said. The grant also will fund summer internships at black-owned community newspapers, he said.

The Web site was launched in September 2002 with a previous grant from Knight Foundation.

“NABJ is happy to support Black College Wire and link prominently to it from our association’s Web site,” said Lowe, a courts reporter at Newsday in New York. “Anything NABJ can do to augment its own services and programs for aspiring black journalists, we must and will do. My thanks to Knight Foundation and Black College Wire for helping us do more for students.”

Black College Wire was founded by Pearl Stewart, former chairperson of the Black College Communication Association (BCCA), an organization of journalism faculty at historically black institutions. The grant represents a partnership between NABJ and BCCA and is designed to increase the number of African Americans being hired as journalists, Stewart said.

“Students at HBCUs are understanding more about journalism and news because of Black College Wire,” Stewart said. “With the addition of the internship program and other projects, we can do even more to help African American journalism students get started in the business.”

Black College Wire contains news, opinion, feature and sports stories from HBCU student newspapers. Other publications may use the stories if the news service is credited, Stewart said.

Portions of the grant will go to Hampton University for First Amendment Watch, Howard University for audio streaming and The Maynard Institute for Journalism Education for Web management. Black College Wire also receives in-kind support from Washington Post-Newsweek Interactive.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation promotes excellence in journalism worldwide and invests in the vitality of 26 U.S. communities.

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