UA workshop to return for its 25th year

The UA journalism department is looking for high school students to attend its 25th annual Multicultural Journalism Workshop July 11 through 19. The workshop is open to and will include students from various ethnic and religious backgrounds.

"We believe that in order to understand other cultures and backgrounds and to rid stereotypes, you have to have fair news coverage," said Ed Mullins, the journalism professor who helped launch the workshop in 1984.

"You need to have all groups represented in who holds the camera, edits the film, writes the stories and makes the story assignments," he said.

The workshop has taught more than 500 UA students. Many alumni now return to teach the workshop.

Joseph Bryant, now a reporter for The Birmingham News, attended the workshop in high school before becoming the first black editor of the The Crimson White in 2000. Bryant will be a teacher at the workshop this year.

Also returning is Merv Aubespin, one of the founders of the National Association of Black Journalists.

Each participant will have their own mentor and will work toward producing a newspaper, online publication, tabloid and a recorded newscast. Much like a reporting career, the experience includes budget meetings, research and interaction with other reporters.

"It is thorough and intensive," Mullins said. "It is mostly work, some play."

Mullins said journalism has failed to keep pace with successful diversity in other areas, such as college attendance and minorities becoming professors.

"There has been progress, but it has been slow progress," he said.

Mullins said blacks make up 12 percent of the U.S. population, but they account for only 6 percent of professional journalists.

Mullins said the workshop does not have a social agenda. Instead, he said, it simply teaches fairness through professionalism.

"We don't have grandiose goals," Mullins said. "But once you get different people together like this, the amount of conflict, if they are working toward a common goal, is minimal."

Mullins said the main way multiculturalism is expressed is through the participants living together.

"It is very eye-opening and gratifying to see a white student from Winfield interact with a black student from Selma, and by the end of the workshop, they are the closest of friends," Mullins said.

"It is a wide example of what works to remove prejudices - knowledge, interaction and communication. It happens every year."

Applications to attend will be accepted until May 1. Those interested should visit www.ccom.ua.edu/mjw.