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NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF BLACK JOURNALISTS MAKES ITS RETURN TO RUTGERS

February 26, 2014 By LisaMarie Segarra

The beginning of the spring semester saw the return of the Rutgers chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists, a campus organization that folded in 2009 after suffering from a lack of involvement.

The Rutgers University Student Assembly approved the NABJ chapter as an official organization in January. Since that point, the organization has been focused on achieving the prolonged success that the previous chapters lacked.

“They were going for a good year or two, and they’ve had spurts where they’ll go for a couple years,” said Justin Hockaday, Vice-President of the new chapter of NABJ. “What happens is they have all older kids that start it, and it’s going strong, but then when they graduated, they didn’t have enough younger kids, enough freshmen, enough sophomores to keep it going.”

Hockaday himself is a sophomore majoring in Journalism and Media Studies and Spanish. As a major member of the editorial board, he hopes to continue the group after other founding members have graduated.

Christopher Etienne, a junior majoring in Journalism and Media Studies and Africana Studies, has taken on the role of revitalizing the organization as its new president after Kevin Ewell, assistant dean for student services at the School of Communication and Information, approached him with the idea.

Some of the goals Etienne has set include marketing the organization through social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, and helping the group’s members build journalism portfolios.

“The goal of our organization is just to give aspiring journalists somewhat of a field experience before they actually make that transition into their profession. The organization provides various different scholarships. There are a lot of networking opportunities,” Etienne said.

NABJ is offering the Allison E. Fisher Scholarship, the Carol Simpson Scholarship, a Visual Task Force Scholarship, and an NABJ Scholarship. They have also made deals with magazine like Hycide and Nexup Magazine, which are based out of Newark, New Jersey. The magazines will pass along assignments to the NABJ chapter and the group will select students based on merit to complete the task.

This fulfills one Etienne’s main goals for the organization: allowing students to gain work they can present to potential internships and employers.

Etienne has already published an article after working with Hycide Magazine.

“I want to show people the fun side of journalism. How going out and doing interviews can be fun and to get out there,” Etienne said.

With a Rutgers chapter of NABJ forming once again, the organization hopes to enable potential journalists of color to gain the experience needed to branch out into the field and help fill a minority gap in the newsroom.

A 2013 census conducted by the American Society of News Editors and the Center for Advanced Social Research looked at hiring practices at nearly 1,000 daily American newspapers in the U.S. The study found that about 4,700, or 12.37 percent, of 38,000 employees surveyed identify as racial minorities.

This number has remained stagnant in recent years, and a continuation of this trend would mean the ASNE would fall short of its projected 2025 goal to have the percentage of minorities working in newsrooms nationwide to reflect the percentage of minorities in the nation’s population. Minorities also make up just 20% of supervisors in the newsroom, according to the study.

The ASNE has also reported a steady decline in minorities at internships. At 26% in 2013, the statistic has dropped significantly from the nearly 40% level reached in the 1990s.

“I feel like there’s not another organization like this on campus which reaches out to journalists of color,” Hockaday said.

The group held its first official meeting Tuesday night in the Douglass Campus.

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