Five FAMU Students Selected for the New York Times Student Journalism Institute

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Five journalism students from the School of Journalism and Graphic Communication (SJGC) at Florida A&M University (FAMU) have been selected to participate in The New York Times Student Journalism Institute, May 18-31, in New Orleans.

The five chosen will join 24 students selected from a total of 102 applicants for the program. The five FAMU students are:

Yewande Addie, a junior newspaper journalism student from Atlanta, Ga.;
Jhenelle Johnson, a senior newspaper journalism student from Miramar, Fla.;
John W. Marsh, a senior broadcast journalism student from Detroit, Mich.;
Nathaniel Nelson, a junior magazine production student from Miami, Fla.;
Saraj Sabree, a senior newspaper journalism student from Miami, Fla.

“Students who come to the Institute are among the best and brightest in the country, and they have the drive and the talent to succeed without our help. But what we can give them is two weeks of intensive interaction with writers and editors from the most prestigious news organizations in the nation,” said Don Hecker, the Institute’s director and the training editor for copy editors at The New York Times.

The Institute the FAMU students will attend is based at Dillard University in New Orleans.

“They [the students] see what it’s like to work at the very top, because for two weeks they work at the very top, and they do so in a setting created specifically to focus on each of them and to be supportive of their unique set of talents,” said Hecker. “Beyond that, the students get to spend time with others who share their passion for news,
giving them a peer support network that will last through a career lifetime.”

During the program, students run a daily news Web site and the best work created is published in a newspaper at the close of the program.

“The skills we gain will help us become more marketable as journalists and prepare us for the ever changing media landscape,” said Marsh.

To learn more about the program, which is a collaborative project of the Black College Communication Association and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, go online to www.nytimes-institute.com.
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