ASNE high school journalism training workshops in full swing

• By: ASNE staff
• On: 07/20/2011 10:35:00
• In: Education for Journalism

With the Arizona State and University of Texas at Austin conferences now just a happy memory, the 101 high school teachers participating in the three remaining ASNE High School Journalism Institutes are immersed in their own intensive two-week journalism curricula. In addition to studying core journalism issues, the educators will create an online publication and establish a social media presence specific to their institute.

The entire program, which has become the gold standard of training for high school journalism teachers, is generously funded by the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation.

On July 17, Arnie Robbins (pictured on right), editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, welcomed teachers to the opening dinner of the final 2011 ASNE Reynolds program, at the University of Missouri. You can follow the Mizzou conference on Facebook (ASNE Mizzou 2011) and Twitter (hashtag: #ASNEmo). In addition, the Missouri group will publish its own print magazine, and several of its sessions have been streamed live on the Reynolds Journalism Institute website. Two more presentations will be streamed live next week.

Meanwhile, the workshops at Kent State University and University of Nevada, Reno are well into their second week. Mizell Stewart III (pictured on left), editor of the Evansville (Ind.) Courier & Press and an ASNE board member, set the tone for the Kent State meeting at the opening session on July 11, when he discussed the importance of immediacy, relevance and meeting readers' expectations. After a weekend visit to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, the Kent State group is now working in teams to complete their assigned projects, which will be posted on Kent's Institute Web site. You can also follow their tweets at #ASNEKENT11.

At the University of Nevada, Reno, teachers are writing, blogging and creating videos for the You Bet Gazette online newspaper and their Ning site. On Twitter, they're using the hashtag #ReynoldsReno. Mike Fancher, the school's 2011 Donald W. Reynolds Chair in the Ethics of Entrepreneurial and Innovative Journalism, and the former executive editor of The Seattle Times, opened the Reno conference with a presentation on “The Journalists' Creed for the 21st Century.”

ASNE and First Amendment Center President Ken Paulson also spoke at two workshops — Arizona State and Texas — where he stressed the importance of the First Amendment and a free press, and the special role that journalists play in a democracy. Paulson is also scheduled to speak next week at the Missouri institute.

When the final session at Missouri concludes on July 29, it will mark the end of the eleventh year of this vitally important ASNE program, which has trained over 1,750 high school teachers to help shape tomorrow's journalists.