J-School professor lands prestigious fellowship

Dr. Valerie D. White, assistant professor of journalism at FAMU, is the recipient of this year's Barry Bingham Sr. Fellowship. The award will be presented at the National Conference of Editorial Writers (NCEW) annual convention in Kansas City, Missouri, September 26 - 29, 2007.

The Bingham Fellowship brings to the NCEW convention an outstanding faculty member who has shown great initiative in
mentoring minority college students. The faculty member receives an award for career-long contributions to minority students. NCEW pays the costs for the educator's travel to the convention and attempts to help the educator with projects he or she may want to do.

Dr. White chairs the Black College Communication Association, an organization of advisers to campus newspapers at historically black colleges and universities. In 2007, Dr. White orchestrated and hosted the nation's 9th annual Historically Black Colleges and Universities' National Newspaper Conference in Tallahassee, Fla.

She is adviser to the Famuan, the student paper at Florida A&M, and she was named the FAMU Teacher of the Year in 2006.

Pearl Stewart, founder and coordinator of Black College Wire, recipient of the Bingham Fellowship in 2006, was one of those who nominated Dr. White.

"Dr. White has reached out to students and faculty at HBCUs to improve their journalism programs overall, to adopt multimedia course work and to support and liberate student media. As BCCA chair, she has spoken out against censorship and other First Amendment violations. In previous years, she has taken on administrators at Hampton, her alma mater, for repressive tactics against student journalists," Stewart wrote.

"As Famuan adviser, Dr. White encouraged students to increase the frequency of publication of the newspaper from weekly to three times a week. She also urged the students to enhance the online edition, making it a daily, round-the-clock operation that has won numerous awards.

"Dr. White also established 'boot camps' for the incoming staff of the Famuan at the beginning of each semester, a practice that has spread to other HBCU papers. Some even use the Famuan's training agenda as a model for their own programs."

Under Dr. White's direction, this year, The Famuan was one of the leading award winners, winning eleven awards, including two first place finishes, and runner-up for 'Best Student Newspaper-Twice Weekly or More.'

Dr. White will use some of the prize money that comes along with this fellowship to underwrite the development of a manual for student newspaper organization and operation that can be used by BCCA schools.

In other J-School news...

Keith Miles, general manager of WANM Radio, has won a National Association of Broadcasters fellowship. This fellowship will allow him to participate in a year long NAB training institute.