CRAZY HORSE, S.D., Jan. 27 — Native American high school students planning to attend college
and curious about media careers will learn firsthand about higher education opportunities and journalism
during a week-long workshop this April at Crazy Horse Memorial in South Dakota’s Black Hills.

Journalists and educators from around the country will volunteer their time to teach a condensed course about the fundamentals of journalism at the Crazy Horse Journalism Workshop, April 19-23, 2010. Students will attend for free and will be selected through an application process. High school juniors and seniors, regardless of where they live, will be given preference.

Students, under the guidance of experienced mentors, will report and write articles, take photographs
and produce multimedia projects that will be published online and printed in a newspaper. They also
will learn about preparing for success in college and opportunities in the news and information industry.

The conference was created by the South Dakota Newspaper Association and is funded primarily by the
Freedom Forum. Co-sponsors include Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation and journalism programs at South Dakota State University and the University of South Dakota.

The April 2010 workshop will be the 11th annual journalism program held at Crazy Horse Memorial and will replace the Native American Journalism Career Conference, which attracted 1,169 high school and college students since 2000 and was designed to inspire Native American students to dream about the future and consider journalism as a career.

“We are very excited about the workshop and the opportunity these students will have to work one-on-one with journalism professionals,’’ said Randell Beck, publisher of the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, S.D., and chair of SDNA’s Minority Affairs Committee. “Media organizations are adapting to new challenges in journalism — and so are we.’’

This year’s workshop will focus on Native American high school students who want to continue their education and be equipped for success in college and in careers that follow. Students will receive classroom instruction, attend presentations and be put to work in a functioning newsroom, set up temporarily at the Crazy Horse facility.

“More American Indians are needed in journalism to improve the accuracy, breadth and depth of media
coverage about Native people and issues,” said Jack Marsh, vice president of the Freedom Forum.

“The workshop organizers are committed to guiding and inspiring young people to continue their education and pursue journalism as a fulfilling and important career.”

Students interested in attending the workshop, or schools interested in nominating students, should contact Janine Harris at 605/677-5424 or jharris@freedomforum.org by Feb. 26 for application information.

For more information, contact either:
Jack Marsh of the Freedom Forum, 703/966-6615, jmarsh@freedomforum.org;
Dave Bordewyk of the South Dakota Newspaper Association, 800/658-3697, daveb@sdna.com

The two will be honored as champions of newsroom diversity at the Associated Press Managing Editors (APME) convention Oct. 30, 2009, in St. Louis.

The awards are given by the Freedom Forum, which administers the program, in partnership with APME and the American Society of News Editors (ASNE). Each honoree receives $2,500 and a sculpture. Selections are made by a committee, which includes the previous year’s recipients and representatives of APME, ASNE and UNITY: Journalists of Color.

The awards go to individuals, newsrooms or teams of journalists who embody the spirit of McGruder, a former executive editor of the Detroit Free Press and relentless diversity advocate who died in April 2002. Judges singled out Turner and Magnuson for their leadership, intensity and consistency in advancing diversity through content and staff development.

“In their newsrooms, their communities and their profession, Troy Turner and Karen Magnuson have embraced similar qualities that distinguished Bob McGruder,” said Jack Marsh, vice president of the Freedom Forum and Diversity Institute. “They have not lost their focus and enthusiasm, despite the enormous challenges and changes facing the news industry in the past year. Their commitment to diversity is unwavering and an inspiration to others.”

Magnuson, who won in the over-75,000 circulation category, has been editor of the Democrat and Chronicle the past 10 years and was president of APME in 2006-2007. Magnuson made diversity a priority in both roles, the judges noted, promoting diversity in her newsroom and community and on a national level.

Magnuson’s years as editor “are a compendium of diversity achievement, and a review shows she has taken this crusade to heart since her first day here,” said one of her nominators, Linda Baird, vice president for human resources at the Democrat and Chronicle.

In the under-75,000 circulation category, Turner was cited for combating racism and advancing cultural diversity in the remote Four Corners region served by The Daily Times. Despite its limited resources and size, the newsroom has been an effective, courageous and creative advocate for diversity through content and staffing, the judges said.

Turner “encourages all of us to understand our role as a leader in promoting cultural diversity in our community by reporting both the similarities and differences that influence the cultural experiences and backgrounds of individuals and groups in our area,” said his nominator, Cindy Cowan, production director of The Daily Times.

Judges were Calvin Stovall, executive editor, Press & Sun-Bulletin, Binghamton, N.Y., representing APME; Marty Kaiser, editor, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, representing ASNE; Doris Truong, copy editor, The Washington Post, representing UNITY; last year’s winners John Bodette, executive editor, St. Cloud (Minn.) Times, and Charles Pittman, senior vice president for publishing at Schurz Communications; and Marsh, representing the Freedom Forum.

For more information: Contact Jack Marsh, Freedom Forum and Diversity Institute, 555 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, D.C. 20001; jmarsh@freedomforum.org or 605-677-6315.

to receive Al Neuharth Award at University of South Dakota on Oct. 8

VERMILLION, S.D. (Aug. 26, 2009) – Katie Couric, anchor and managing editor of the “CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,” will speak at The University of South Dakota on Thursday evening, Oct. 8, when she is presented with the 2009 Al Neuharth Award for Excellence in the Media.

Couric will be the 22nd individual honored by the university and the Freedom Forum since the Neuharth Award program began in 1989. The award, recognizing lifetime achievement, is named for USA TODAY and Freedom Forum founder Al Neuharth, a South Dakota native and 1950 USD graduate, who will be on campus to make the presentation.

The event, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 7 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 8, at the USD DakotaDome. Doors will open at 6 p.m. No tickets are required for general seating. Free tickets for preferred seating on the DakotaDome floor may be requested until Oct. 1 by calling 605/677-6060 or sending an e-mail to jharris@freedomforum.org. Specify ticket quantity (up to six), name and mailing address.

The 90-minute program will be telecast live on South Dakota Public Broadcasting. SDPB-Television will repeat the program at 1 p.m. CDT, Sunday, Oct. 11.

“Twenty years ago, as we were presenting the first award to Walter Cronkite, a young Katie Couric was making the leap from local TV news to NBC,” Neuharth said. “Millions have watched the evolution of Couric’s career as she has become an accomplished, respected broadcast journalist and earned the prestigious seat Cronkite once held as anchor of the ‘CBS Evening News.’”

Couric is the fifth CBS journalist to receive the Al Neuharth Award for Excellence in the Media. Past recipients include: Walter Cronkite of CBS (1989), Carl T. Rowan (1990), Helen Thomas (1991), Tom Brokaw (1992), Larry King (1993), Charles Kuralt of CBS (1994), Albert R. Hunt and Judy Woodruff (1995), Robert MacNeil (1996), Cokie Roberts (1997), Tim Russert and Louis D. Boccardi (1998), John Seigenthaler (1999), Jim Lehrer (2001), Tom Curley (2002), Don Hewitt of CBS (2004), Garrison Keillor (2005), Bob Schieffer of CBS (2006), John Quinn and Ken Paulson (2007), and Charles Overby (2008).

When the “CBS Evening News with Katie Couric” debuted on Sept. 5, 2006, Couric became the first female solo anchor of a weekday network evening news broadcast. Since then, she has reported and anchored the broadcast from locations as diverse as the California wildfires, the Minneapolis bridge collapse, Iraq, Syria and Jordan. For the “CBS Evening News” and “60 Minutes,” she has interviewed President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, John and Elizabeth Edwards, Israeli Prime Minister Tzipi Livin, Norah Jones and Michael J. Fox, among many others.

Couric led CBS’s coverage of the historic 2008 presidential election. During the campaign, she anchored the “CBS Evening News” and live primetime coverage from the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire and Ohio primaries, as well as Super Tuesday and other primary nights from CBS studios in New York. She also launched a series of Web casts from the Democratic and Republican national conventions, the presidential and vice presidential debates, election night, inauguration night and President Obama’s 100th day in office. USC’s Annenberg School for Communication gave Couric the Walter Cronkite award for Special Achievement for her “National Impact on the 2008 Campaign.”

Couric completed a 15-year run as co-anchor of NBC News’ “Today” on May 31, 2006. While at NBC, Couric also was contributing anchor for “Dateline NBC.” Couric joined NBC News in 1989 as deputy Pentagon reporter before serving as its first national correspondent in June 1990, which included two stints covering the Gulf War.

Couric began her career as a desk assistant at ABC News in Washington, D.C., in 1979. From there, she worked for CNN (1980-84) as an assignment editor, associate producer, producer and political correspondent; WTVJ in Miami (1984-86); and WRC-TV in Washington, D.C., (1987-89) as a general assignment reporter.

Two years after losing her husband, Jay Monahan, to colon cancer in 1998, Couric launched the National Colorectal Cancer Research Alliance in association with the Entertainment Industry Foundation and Lilly Tartikoff, to fund new medical research in colorectal cancer and to conduct educational programs encouraging the prevention and early detection of the disease through proper screening. Following Couric’s on-air colonoscopy in 2000, a scientifically documented 20 percent increase was noted in the number of colonoscopies performed across the country. Researchers at the University of Michigan dubbed this “The Couric Effect.”

Couric received the George Foster Peabody Award for her March 2000 series on colon cancer, which also led to NBC News receiving the 2001 RTNDA-Edward R. Murrow Award for Overall Excellence. She also has won six Emmy Awards, the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi Award, a National Headliner Award, a Matrix Award, two American Women in Radio and Television Gracie Awards, the Harvard University School of Public Health’s Julius B. Richmond Award and UNICEF’s Danny Kaye Humanitarian Award.

About the Al Neuharth Media Center

The Freedom Forum’s Al Neuharth Media Center on The University of South Dakota campus was dedicated in 2003. It houses the Freedom Forum’s South Dakota operations, as well as the media and journalism organizations on campus including South Dakota Public Broadcasting, USD’s Department of Contemporary Media and Journalism, The Volante, which Neuharth edited as a student, campus radio station KAOR and television station KYOT. More information is available at www.freedomforumdiversity.org .

About The University of South Dakota

Founded in 1862, The University of South Dakota is designated as the only public liberal arts university in the state and is home to a large College of Arts and Sciences, a School of Education and the state’s only School of Law, School of Medicine, accredited School of Business and College of Fine Arts. It has an enrollment of approximately 8,100 students taught by 400 faculty members. More information is available at www.usd.edu/press/news .

Media contact: Jack Marsh, executive director, Al Neuharth Media Center

605/677-6315

The Freedom Forum, in partnership with the Associated Press Managing Editors and the American Society of News Editors, is accepting nominations for the eighth annual Robert G. McGruder Awards for Diversity Leadership.

Two awards are given annually: one for newspapers with a circulation up to 75,000; one for newspapers with more than 75,000 circulation.

The awards go to individuals, newsrooms or teams of journalists who embody the spirit of McGruder, a former executive editor of the Detroit Free Press and relentless diversity champion. McGruder died of cancer in April 2002.

Jurors will be looking for nominees who have made a significant contribution during a given year or over a number of years toward furthering diversity in newspaper content and in recruiting, developing and retaining journalists of color. The deadline to make a nomination is Sept. 1.

Announcement of the winners will be made at the annual APME conference, Oct. 28-30 in St. Louis. The recognized honorees each receive $2,500 and a leadership trophy.

Who is eligible? Individuals, newsrooms or teams of journalists from U.S. daily newspapers are eligible. A nominee’s newspaper must participate in the American Society of News Editors’ annual employment census.

The awards recognize achievement for the past 12 months or contributions over a number of years.

What are the criteria? The Diversity Leadership Awards honor an individual, a newsroom or a team of journalists for significant leadership in diversity through:
Recruitment: by providing opportunities for journalists of color to learn about news careers and to enter the newspaper industry in internships and full-time jobs.
Development: by offering opportunities for journalists of color to grow in their current roles and to receive mentoring and training to advance to positions of greater authority, responsibility or expertise.
Retention: by ensuring that journalists of color want to remain in the news industry by providing an inclusive work environment that offers opportunities to contribute and advance.
Content: by reflecting a diverse community accurately and in a way that demonstrates community and industry leadership. The definition of diversity in content includes ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, religious background, political bent and physical ability.
Nominations can be made by individuals, newspapers, professional organizations, schools of journalism and others.

Rules for entries: Send a letter (of no more than three pages) outlining specific information about the achievements and how they benefited the community, the industry and journalists of color. The letter should include the name of the person making the nomination and his/her signature and telephone number.

You may supplement an entry with clips, but please send no more than four. Send copies no larger than 11 by 17 inches.

Send material to:

Jack Marsh, jmarsh@freedomforum.org
Freedom Forum Diversity Institute
555 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, D.C. 20001

Deadline: Materials must be received in the Freedom Forum’s Washington office by Tuesday, Sept. 1.

Nominations will be judged by a committee that includes representatives of APME, ASNE, the Freedom Forum and UNITY: Journalists of Color.

Past winners of the McGruder awards

2008
John Bodette, executive editor of the St. Cloud (Minn.) Times; and Charles Pittman, senior vice president for publishing at Schurz Communications

2007
Wanda Lloyd, executive editor, Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser; and Joe Grimm, recruiting and development editor, Detroit Free Press

2006
Sharon Rosenhause, managing editor, Sun-Sentinel, Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; and the Pacific Daily News on Guam

2005
Argus Leader, Sioux Falls, S.D.; and The Honolulu (Hawaii) Advertiser

2004
Bennie Ivory, executive editor and vice president for news at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky.; and Susan Ihne, then executive editor, St. Cloud (Minn.) Times

2003
Charlotte Hall, then vice president/planning, Newsday, Long Island; and the Greeley (Colo.) Tribune

2002
Don Flores, executive vice president and editor, El Paso (Texas) Times; and Jim Strauss, publisher, Great Falls (Mont.) Tribune

High schoolers get training in changing media field

Editorial Board
Argus Leader

News operations that accurately reflect the diverse communities they cover are the most effective.

In places such as South Dakota, that demographic mix includes Native Americans as well as other minority groups.

That’s why it’s important for news organizations to employ diverse reporting staffs. And that’s why an annual training conference this week in the Black Hills is so valuable.

The Native American Journalism Career Conference invites high school students from across the country to Crazy Horse Memorial near Custer. They spend a few days working with experienced journalists and educators to learn about reporting, writing, editing, photography and design.

Dozens of students attend each year, and this session is no exception.

That’s a rather remarkable statement given the trying economic times media organizations face. The combination of a severe recession and changing consumer habits is challenging news outlets and directing a changing news delivery system in this country. That’s all the more reason to applaud the companies and individuals who are so dedicated to conferences such as the one at Crazy Horse.

Investing in a diverse work force is important any time - but it requires a special effort in hard economic periods.

The Freedom Forum funds the conference, and co-sponsors include the South Dakota Newspaper Association, the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation and the South Dakota State University and University of South Dakota journalism programs.

The career conference is helping young Native Americans find their way in this shifting media landscape. The efforts of those who volunteer to train the young participants will pay off over time as these intelligent, skilled and enthused young people enter the work force.

You can read this editorial and others at Argusleader.com.

The report covers two years of Freedom Forum activities tied to its three priorities: Newsroom diversity, the First Amendment and the Newseum:

• The Freedom Forum Diversity Institute and its journalism classes and programs conducted at the John Seigenthaler Center in Nashville, Tenn., at the Al Neuharth Media Center in Vermillion, S.D., at Freedom Forum headquarters in Washington, D.C.

• The Freedom Forum First Amendment Center and its activities and programs at the John Seigenthaler Center and Freedom Forum headquarters.

• The Newseum, the world’s most interactive museum, which opened in April 2008 on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, mid-way between the Capitol and the White House.

For information and application, go to
www.MinorityWritersSeminar.org

NASHVILLE TN — Mary A. Mitchell, editorial board member and columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, will be the keynote speaker for the 14th annual Minority Writers Seminar to be held April 30-May 3 at the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute.

The co-host of a weekly two-hour public affairs radio program and a frequent guest on national news program, the award-winning columnist will address the group of experienced minority journalists at the dinner meeting on May 2.

March 9 is the deadline to apply to attend the seminar sponsored by the National Conference of Editorial Writers Foundation in partnership with the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute at Vanderbilt University, said seminar director Doug Lyons, senior editorial writer for South Florida Sun-Sentinel and a 1999 graduate of the seminar.

The program’s purpose is to give experienced minority journalists an opportunity to explore the nuts-and-bolts of opinion writing and encourage them to consider making a career move.

Enrollment is limited to 15 and includes those who have been writing opinion less than two years. Lodging and food at the seminar are covered and participants will be reimbursed up to $200 for their transportation to and from Nashville.

“We are fortunate to have experienced opinion writers donate their time and expertise to work closely with participants in small groups as they attend simulated editorial board meetings and write editorials that are critiqued,” said John Taylor, Foundation president and retired editorial page editor of The News Journal in Wilmington, Delaware.

An interactive presentation by Rick Horowitz, a writing coach and syndicated columnist based in Milwaukee, and a panel discussion on “Moving Opinion Online and into New Media” are also scheduled.

Major supporters of the 2009 seminar include John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, McCormick/Tribune Foundation, Scripps Howard Foundation, Sigma Delta Chi Foundation, and New York Times Company Foundation.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:

Doug Lyons Joan Armour
Seminar Director Seminar Coordinator
954/356-4638 615/330-8739
dlyons@ sun-sentinel.com joan@armour-armour.com

Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.

The Rocky published its final edition Feb. 27, 2009, after 149 years and 311 days. The newspaper, owned by E.W. Scripps Company, was put up for sale Dec. 4, 2008, due to challenging economic times and the failure of the traditional newspaper business model.

There is much to admire about the way Matthew Roberts and the Rocky photo staff shot and produced this piece. It is a tribute to the dedication of the journalists who worked there and the community that  supported the newspaper for 149 years.

“Final Edition” is a compelling and sad story, similar to what we as journalists have told about other people for years and now tell about ourselves.

According to his message board, Joe Mahoney, former assistant director of multimedia/Rocky Mountain News, said the project began Dec. 4th, when E.W. Scripps announced that the paper was for sale. It was shot and edited during the intervening months, but a great deal of final editing was done in the past week and well into last night by Matthew Roberts.

MULTIMEDIA CLASSES IN 2010:
• Advanced Multimedia Boot Camp: Jan. 6-10, 2010. To apply for this class, registrants must have basic proficiency in multimedia storytelling through audio, still photography and video. Past participants in Freedom Forum multimedia training are strongly encouraged to sign up.
• Multimedia Boot Camp: Feb. 24-28, 2010
• Multimedia Boot Camp: Aug. 2-6, 2010
• Multimedia Boot Camp: Aug. 11-15, 2010
• Multimedia Boot Camp: Nov. 17-21, 2010