Black College Wire provides HBCU students an outlet to display their journalism talents and gain real-world experience

By Michelle Nealy

Five years ago, Pearl Stewart, then a roving journalist for Freedom Forum, scoured the southern region of the United States to assess student newspapers at historically Black colleges and universities to help them improve. To her dismay, Stewart found many student newspapers floundering under administrative red tape and budget cuts. In a February 2000 edition of Black Issues, Stewart wrote an article titled, “All News Doesn’t Make it to Print,” revealing the inadequate conditions under which many HBCU student newspapers were produced.

The story highlighted journalism students at Shaw University in North Carolina that had never written a story for a student newspaper and students at Lincoln University in Missouri who were producing the student newspaper on their personal computers.

“School administrations were not supporting student newspapers,” recalls Stewart. “There was a lack of funding, staff and commitment.”
The most alarming problem concerning the  newspapers, Stewart says, is the irregularity of their publishing schedules. “Some newspapers only come out once a semester.”

According to Ronald Spielberger, executive director of College Media Advisers, there are 102 predominantly White institutions that produce daily college papers. Less than 10 student newspapers at HBCUs are published weekly and only one newspaper, Howard University’s The Hilltop, goes to press daily.

Stewart recognized that another drawback for student journalists at Black institutions was the lack of communication among HBCUs. “I heard students talking about how they did not know what was going on at other schools less than 50 miles away. Students expressed the desire to somehow be linked together,” Stewart says.
So she began brainstorming a solution to address these problems. She wanted to create an online forum where HBCU students could discuss the issues that were unique to them. Conversations with Eric Newton, director of Journalism Initiatives for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, led to a $200,000 grant that created Black College Wire <www.blackcollegewire.org>, the first online news exchange designed to showcase the journalistic contributions of students from Black colleges. The National Association of Black Journalists serves as the financial administrator of the grant.
Founded in 2002, BCW is a platform for students to display their work on a credible Web site as well as the opportunity to receive professional editing. On BCW, readers find news stories, editorials, features and interactive audio streams. The site links 22 HBCU newspapers and serves as a free wire service exclusively dedicated to the happenings on Black college campuses. Students at Hampton University provide content for the First Amendment Watch, which monitors administrative censorships asserted by school officials at HBCUs.