By Ariel Hart N ews organizations are forever straining to find African-American new hires. Student-run newspapers at many historically black colleges and universities are in a sorry state. Free-speech concerns abound, especially where journalism advisers aren't journalists. On average, according to preliminary figures from a study paid for by the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund, these papers run only monthly.
None runs daily.
And at a quarter of the schools studied, including the prestigious Tuskegee University, there is no student-run paper at all. The study's author, journalism professor Reginald Owens of Louisiana Tech University, says funding shortages and fear of unfair coverage play into a cycle that dooms what could be a prime source of African-American journalists. And student journalists at predominantly black colleges report censorship problems proportionally more often than those at majority-white colleges of similar size, according to Mark Goodman, executive director of the Student Press Law Center, which provides legal advice to student newspapers. Last year Whitfield tried to start a paper through the communications department. The department's director admits he told Whitfield she should write only positive stories to get the support of the administration.