Plugged In
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.”
