UA Journalism Department will host New York Times Hispanic Institute

The New York Times and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists are launching an intensive training program for Latino student journalists that will be hosted in alternate years by The University of Arizona Department of Journalism and Florida International University, announced Institute leaders at the annual NAHJ convention in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., June 15.

The Hispanic Student Journalism Institute will be held Jan. 3-10, 2007, at FIU's Biscayne Bay campus in north Miami and at The University of Arizona in Tucson in January 2008. It will be modeled on a program that The Times established for students at historically black colleges and universities in 2003 at Dillard University in New Orleans. There, student writers worked closely with reporters and editors from The Times and some of its regional newspapers covering hurricane preparations, a police shooting and the recent mayoral race.

The Institute's editors help students with their stories before they are posted on the Institute's Web site The best pieces are printed in a newspaper produced at the end of the Institute.

The UA journalism department's commitment to diversity and its emphasis on bilingual journalism, including publishing a community newspaper for the city of South Tucson for more than a quarter-century, factored into The Times' selection process, said Jacqueline E. Sharkey, journalism department head.

"Initiating an interdisciplinary International Journalism program and the fact that our department is dedicated only to journalism impressed the Institute's leaders," Sharkey said. One in eight students in the UA journalism department is Hispanic. Each year the department sends 10-20 students to the California Chicano News Media Association Journalism Opportunities Conference.

For more than 25 years the journalism department has hosted a journalism diversity workshop for Arizona high school students that allows young people from diverse populations to learn about writing, ethics, media law and other topics as well as produce their own newspaper.

"Having this institute in our department recognizes our longstanding commitment to diversity and multicultural journalism and will enable us to increase our efforts in these areas," Sharkey said.

To qualify to participate in The Hispanic Student Journalism Institute, students must be NAHJ members, have completed one semester at a student newspaper or major newspaper, be in good academic standing and write a 500-word essay about being a journalist.