Blog
High School program attracts large pool of applicants
- By: ASNE staff
- On: 04/27/2009 00:00:00
- In: High School Journalism
We have 541 applicants for ASNE Reynolds High School Journalism Institute, a 35.3 percent increase over the 400 who applied in 2008.
We have 541 applicants for ASNE Reynolds High School Journalism Institute, a 35.3 percent increase over the 400 who applied in 2008.
We're delighted with this response. It's a given that the economic recession has spurred professionals to seek new training and skills as they shore up careers or seek new ones.
But in reviewing the applications, there are other factors at play too. There is increasing public awareness that the newspaper business is in deep trouble. It is prompting concern about how standards and ethics fare as the definitions of news/information and journalist change.
The applicants embrace multimedia journalism, but most importantly, express a prevailing need to teach the basics — information gathering, critical thinking and clear writing.
As needed, we are making tweaks with the five universities to balance teaching the tenets of journalism with multimedia, online and paper production. By May 1, ASNE will whittle the applicant pool to 175 teachers.
We are grateful to the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation for its financial support.
Along with our usual news release, direct-mail and e-mail efforts, we advertised on Facebook. One ad targeted j-teachers, another targeted teen journalists, urging them to get their adviser to apply.
The teachers are assigned in groups of 35 to the following accredited j-schools, with a basic curriculum set by ASNE:
- Arizona State University, Tempe, June 14-26
- Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, July 5-17
- University of Nevada, Reno, July 12-24
- University of Missouri,Columbia July 12-24
- University of Texas at Austin, July 19-31