WASHINGTON – The Howard University Multicultural Media Academy invites high school students to attend a series of free journalism workshops from June 17-28 at the Cathy Hughes School of Communications. The 10-day program is open to high school students in ninth through 12th grades, and new graduates who will be college freshmen in the fall. The workshops will focus on how to use the power of multimedia journalism to cover health and wellness in underserved communities. The workshop series is sponsored by the Dow Jones News Fund and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The application for the summer program is available at http://bit.ly/HowardHealthJournalism. The deadline for application submission is Monday, June 10.

“We’re honored that Howard was one of 10 sites in the United States selected to host this new series of workshops with a special focus on health and wellness,” said Yanick Rice Lamb, chair of the Department of Media, Journalism and Film. She is the co-director of the program with Ingrid Sturgis, associate professor of new media.

The workshops will be held on Howard’s campus, Monday through Friday, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The free workshops include a light continental breakfast, lunch, field trips, participation in a community town hall, and sessions on reporting, interviewing, editing, multimedia, social media, ethics and other topics. Students will work under the guidance of a talented pool of professional journalists along with professors and college students from the Department of Media, Journalism and Film in the Cathy Hughes School of Communications.

They will learn how to write news stories, capture audio, shoot and edit video, take photos and incorporate social media. They will also develop an understanding of interrelated social issues — such as housing and hunger — that contribute to making communities unhealthy. Their work will be published and distributed by the award-winning Howard University News Service.

For more information, please contact mjf.howard@gmail.com or (202) 806-7927.

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(Pictured above is former student Reggie and Alumnus Anthony Brown, Jr. in a workshop. Featured image of former student learning about video production. Photos courtesy of Jarrad Henderson)

About the Department of Media, Journalism and Film

The Department of Media, Journalism and Film is the largest unit in the Cathy Hughes School of Communications at Howard University. Its faculty and alumni include award-winning, internationally renowned filmmakers, journalists, media producers, documentarians and research scholars. The department offers one of the top MFA programs in film and the only one at an HBCU. It was named as having one of the best university cinematography programs. USA Today and College Factual has ranked the journalism program among the top 20 nationally, and the National Association of Black Journalists ranked the program as No. 1 in the United States. The Broadcast Education Association honored WHBC student radio with the Signature Station Award. Howard is one of two universities in Washington and among five HBCUs accredited by the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications.

For a half-century, Howard has been the leading producer of journalists and communicators from multicultural backgrounds. In addition to its collegiate curriculum, the journalism faculty has organized workshops for high school students since 1978 and other programs for younger students. It recently collaborated with Morgan State University on a year-long pilot program under a health journalism grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. For more information, see http://communications.howard.edu. 

About Howard University

Founded in 1867, Howard University is a private, research university that is comprised of 13 schools and colleges. Students pursue studies in more than 120 areas leading to undergraduate, graduate and professional degrees. The University operates with a commitment to Excellence in Truth and Service and has produced four Rhodes Scholars, 11 Truman Scholars, two Marshall Scholars, one Schwarzman Scholar, over 70 Fulbright Scholars and 22 Pickering Fellows. Howard also produces more on-campus African-American Ph.D. recipients than any other university in the United States.  For more information on Howard University visit www.howard.edu

Media Contact: Imani Pope-Johns, Imani.popejohns@howard.edu