VERMILLION, S.D. — The Freedom Forum is accepting applications until March 1 for the 12th American Indian Journalism Institute summer session, the premier journalism training, scholarship and internship program for Native American college students, June 13-22.

Students attend AIJI for free and receive other financial assistance. Applications are welcome from any Native American college student preparing to become a journalist. Instructions and application forms are available at www.freedomforumdiversity.org or by emailing a request to jharris@freedomforum.org.

Click here to download the application

AIJI students will be eligible for college credit by taking a multimedia journalism course taught at the Freedom Forum’s Al Neuharth Media Center, on the University of South Dakota’s Vermillion campus.
AIJI graduates compete to be hired for six-week paid internships as reporters, copy editors, photographers and multimedia journalists in daily newsrooms beginning about July 1. Interns must be licensed drivers with access to reliable, legally registered vehicles.

“The intent of AIJI is to recruit, train, mentor and retain Native Americans for journalism careers,” said Jack Marsh, AIJI founding director, and president and COO of the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute. “AIJI is an intense and demanding academic and internship program that opens doors for those who have the passion and the potential to succeed as professional journalists.”

The Freedom Forum administers and funds AIJI, including tuition, fees, books, room and board. To be eligible for AIJI, Native students must have completed at least one year of college. Applications for the program will be accepted from new participants and from returning AIJI students who want more training.

Program graduates will earn three hours of college credit from the University of South Dakota that students may transfer to their current school.

Students must be able to provide their own transportation to and from Vermillion, S.D., and must attend the full program beginning Wednesday, June 13, and ending Friday afternoon, June 22. Each student will have a room in an apartment-style dormitory. Meals will be provided on campus. AIJI forbids the use of alcohol, other intoxicants and illegal drugs at any time during the program. Violators will be dismissed from the institute.

The American Indian Journalism Institute is part of the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute’s commitment to increase employment diversity in daily newsrooms.

“Having even one Native American working in a newsroom makes the organization more aware of American Indians in its community, and more sensitive and intelligent in reporting stories about them,” Marsh said. “American Indians are by far the most underrepresented people of color in the news media, and this often results in stereotypical and erroneous coverage of Indian issues and Indian people.”

The American Society of Newspaper Editors’ annual employment census identified about 200 Natives among the industry’s 41,600 journalists working in daily newsrooms.
AIJI also offers a semester-long Visiting Scholars Program at the University of South Dakota every fall and spring. Students are mentored by a journalist in residence and take a full load of college courses in journalism and related subjects. The program was created for students from schools that don’t offer journalism courses. Fellowships are available to visiting scholars to cover the cost of tuition, fees, room and board.

In addition to journalism diversity programs at the University of South Dakota and at the John Seigenthaler Center in Nashville, Tenn., the Freedom Forum funds and helps organize the Crazy Horse Journalism Workshop at Crazy Horse Memorial in South Dakota’s Black Hills. The workshop, April 15-19, 2012, introduces Native high school students to journalism career options.

The Freedom Forum, based in Washington, D.C., is a nonpartisan foundation dedicated to free press, free speech and free spirit for all people. The foundation focuses on three priorities: the Newseum, an interactive museum of news in Washington, D.C.; the First Amendment and newsroom diversity.

By Joe Grimm

TABOR, S.D. – Communications and community have the same root and 15 college-age journalists at the American Indian Journalism Institute felt that keenly on Saturday.

Their 10-day training program, which began last week, had just turned the corner from fundamentals to multimedia when the group packed up, drove from the University of South Dakota and headed to the town of Tabor, S.D., population 400 — give or take. The goal was to shoot photos and gather audio to communicate what Tabor’s annual Czech Days festival is all about.

And that’s where the lessons about community began.

People at Czech Days, which AIJI has covered for a few years now, said they had been anticipating the arrival of the AIJI journalists. Even one of the carnies, member of a traveling community, asked about an instructor he had met before.

The AIJI journalists explored the town, asking questions, and the people obliged.

You can see stories about traditional Czech dress, food and the role of music in the community in the students’ stories on the American Indian Journalism Institute site. The site contains work students have done other years and work they have done in addition to what they have done in Tabor.

That adds up to another word with a “comm” root – commitment.

AIJI teaches journalistic fundamentals and multimedia, yes, but it also shows that when a newsroom shows interest in a community, especially a very small one, good things happen. The students found that sources were willing to talk, that they could quickly learn more of the background and context and that people would point them at less obvious stories.

Several of the journalists in the program will go off to internships where local news matters. The experience of covering a small-town festival with face-to-face reporting has helped prepare them for that work.

Joe Grimm is a consultant and adjunct faculty member of the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute and joined this year’s AIJI program for a couple days. He was also part of the AIJI faculty the past two years. He recruited for the Detroit Free Press, Knight Ridder and Gannett from 1990 until 2008. He now teaches at the Michigan State University School of Journalism. He has run the JobsPage journalism careers site at www.jobspage.com since 1996. Questions about careers? E-mail Joe for an answer.

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