Apr 15

ONA Seeks Applicants for MJ Bear Fellowships

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From the Online News Association announcement:

The Online News Association, the world’s largest membership organization of digital journalists, invites applications for the 2011 MJ Bear Fellowships for early-career digital journalists, in honor of founding member MJ Bear.

For this inaugural year, the search committee will select three promising, up-and-coming digital journalists—two in the United States or Canada and one internationally, in partnership with MSN International—who are just beginning to make their voices heard in the industry.

Selected Fellows will be paired with a digital news leader as a mentor; receive an expense-paid trip to the Online News Association Conference & Awards Banquet (ONA11), Sept. 22-24, in Boston, where they’ll have a chance to share their fresh perspectives; and a free, one-year ONA membership.

The goal of the Fellowship, in Bear’s own words, is “to promote the voices of young professionals working in or training to work in the field of online news by presenting programs at ONA’s annual conference, or in other venues. The programs will be designed to explore and showcase innovations, developments and new ideas in the field.”

Applicants must be working journalists between the ages of 23 and 30 and fluent in English. They will be asked to describe their recent concepts, experiments or projects that move digital journalism forward or resulted in valuable lessons or outcomes, and also provide a recommendation and a personal statement.

“We see the Fellowship program as a great way to help the next generation of journalists innovate and succeed in the industry,” said ONA Board President Christine Montgomery, Managing Editor, PBS.org. “We’re looking for young people as eager to lead as they are to learn, who have demonstrated their commitment to pushing the boundaries in creating digital news.”

Bear, whose wide-ranging career took her to pivotal roles at Microsoft’s MSN Portals and MSN International, NPR and American University, was renowned for her kindness and digital know-how. She played a vital role in ONA’s history as a member of the original Board of Directors, helping to incorporate the organization in 1999 and serving on the Education, Fundraising, Conference and Legal Affairs committees until 2003.

So far, friends of MJ Bear and ONA have contributed nearly $40,000 to the fellowship fund. The MJ Bear Fellowship Committee will continue planning both short- and long-term goals to realize the letter and spirit of her wishes, and to build fundraising campaigns to expand the fellowships and shape the future of young journalists.

Tax-deductible donations to the MJ Bear Fellowship Fund can be made at journalists.org.

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Feb 20

Molding Young Journalists

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Student Newsroom
Virginia State University professor Carol Wilcox works with her student, Patrice Rivers. (Photo courtesy of HBCU Journal)

At the invitation of Brian Henderson, of the Baltimore Sun, I joined the print/online newsroom at the National HBCU Media Conference in Baltimore as its managing editor. With only a week’s notice, I had to pull together a staff, determine the publishing platforms we would use, obtain a server and a domain name, and build a Web site. Doing this from scratch in less than a week is a lot of work.

Let’s just say, I was sleep deprived for several days. But the effort was well worth it.

I, along with a dedicated staff of professionals — Madia Brown, of The Washington Post; Amy Adkins, of washingtonpost.com; Kasey Jones and Bebeto Matthews, of The Associated Press; Gary Kirskey, of Ohio University; Karlayne Parker, Steve Bien-Aime and Laura McClandlish, of The Baltimore Sun; Joe Smith, of WJZ 13; and Will McKinley, a student at Morgan State University, who ran the radio program for us — coached and pushed the young journalists beyond what many of them thought they were capable of.

Cara Anthony, a student at Tennessee University, came back to thank me on the last night of the student newsroom operation. Cara said she found the experience invaluable and learned so much. “I never thought I would be able to produce three articles in less than 48 hours,” Cara said.

Aimena Lipscomb, a student at Morgan State University, landed the hottest news story during the conference. The workers at the hotel we were staying at were protesting by slipping fliers under hotel room doors, urging guests to check out. Aimena approach the topic with lots of trepidation and lots of questions for me and her other mentors, but in the end, she overcame her fears and delivered a solid article.

I asked Aimena to write an essay about her reporting experience. I thought it would help other students who had a fear of writing and reporting understand that they, too, could overcome their fears. This paragraph from Aimena’s essay made my time in the newsroom more than worth it:

Sitting at a roundtable meeting with writers, editors and managing editor Ju-Don Roberts, who saw something in me I didn’t see in myself, I heard the words: “Aimena, we want you to cover the hotel boycott story.” It was the phrase heard ‘round the newsroom.

Aimena and Cara were just two of the talented students I had the pleasure of working with during the conference. I would be remiss in not naming each and every one of them. So I’ll just point to the staff list, so you can see for yourself who the students are.

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