The University of Memphis Journalism Department recently received a $210,000 grant from the Scripps Howard Foundation, the corporate foundation of the E.W. Scripps Company.
The grant will provide three additional years of funding for the Scripps Howard citywide high school journalism program.
Funding for the program will be used to publish the Teen Appeal, a monthly newspaper written for and by teenagers from 29 Memphis City Schools from The University.
Elinor Grusin, an associate professor in the journalism department at The U of M, wrote the grant proposal requesting more funding to the Scripps Howard Foundation. She also acts as the project director for the Teen Appeal.
With the recent funding, Grusin said, the staff of the teen-driven newspaper will be able to continue contributing to their publication for the next few years.
“We’re finishing our sixth year of operation, this year. This grant will take us well into our ninth year,” Grusin said.
The Scripps Howard Foundation has provided funds for the citywide high school journalism program since it first began at The U of M.
“So far, this brings the amount of money that Scripps Howard has invested into this program up to more than $500,000,” Grusin said.
Grusin, along with other administrators in the journalism department, designed the program to introduce the concepts of newspaper production to Memphis high school students.
“When we started this program, there were only four high schools that published newspapers on a regular basis in the city school system, out of the 29 or so,” Grusin said.
In order for the participating students to learn as much as possible, several goals were established by the Journalism Department.
“The first goal of the program was to expose young people to newspapers and give them a chance to work on a high school newspaper and learn all of the things that go along with that,” Grusin said. “The second goal, in addition to teaching them journalism, was to help diversify newsrooms.”
The new grant from Scripps Howard could be beneficial to the high school program and the Teen Appeal in more ways than one.
“We’re really excited because we are starting a few new things right now that we are trying to get rolling,” said Chuck Holliday, full-time coordinator for the Teen Appeal. “One thing we are working on is accepting camera-ready advertising in the future, so we can hopefully take the money and start to pay some students to be on staff. Right now it is just strictly volunteer thing, so we would like to maybe pay some student editors.”
Future use of the grant money could also allow the teen publication to collaborate with the Commercial Appeal’s Web site, gomemphis.com.
“They are going to put the Teen Appeal on their Web site, right now it is on The University’s server. We should get more space, and they have a new software program that would allow us to teach the kids about online journalism and new media,” Holliday said.
Overall, the new grant from the Scripps Howard Foundation will allow faculty members in The U of M Journalism Department to continue providing journalism education through the publication of the Teen Appeal.
“I think this is just about the best thing that a journalism department can do for the community they live in,” Grusin said. “It gives kind of a new meaning to community service.
