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Glynn Hill of Howard University, recipient of a White House Correspondents' Association scholarship, said the thrill of reporting "just makes me go." (Video)

J-Student Wins Scholarship Named for White House Pioneer

Howard University journalism student Glynn Hill of Philadelphia on Saturday became the first recipient of a $7,000 scholarship named after Harry McAlpin, the first African American to cover a presidential news conference.

First lady Michelle Obama helped present the scholarship during the White House Correspondents' Association's annual dinner, as Jesse J. Holland reported for the Associated Press.

"McAlpin, a correspondent for the Atlanta Daily World, covered his first Oval Office press conference in 1944 over the objection of the Correspondents' Association. At the time, the association was an all-white club and for years it blocked black journalists from attending," as Scott Horsley added April 10 for NPR.

At the dinner, Hill told C-SPAN, "Journalism for me, it sounds kind of cliché, but I do see it as a calling of sorts. They say when you pick a career you pick something that's half what you're good at, half what you really love, and journalism kind of does both those things for me. So, chasing stories, being a reporter — I was editor in chief of the student newspaper this year — but I'm excited as a reporter, you know, just the teaching, the reporting, chasing stories, all that stuff just — it makes me go."

• Michael Calderone, Huffington Post: Obama Criticized News Coverage During Off-The-Record Meeting With Reporters
  
  
• Kristen Hare, Poynter Institute: 3 reasons not to hate the White House Correspondents' Dinner
  
  
• Sara Rafsky, Committee to Protect Journalists: Obama transparency record remains unimpressive

Asian Americans Protest Detroit News Column

Unity: Journalists for Diversity joined the Asian American Journalists Association, a member of the coalition, in saying it was "disappointed in The Detroit News' decision to publish Neal Rubin's column arguing that the beating death of Vincent Chin in 1982 had nothing to do with race.

"Rubin constructed his argument on a shoddy foundation of poorly reported facts. Most notably, he failed to even mention that Chin’s assailants used racial epithets. UNITY is also troubled by Rubin's dismissal of a woman's testimony because she was a stripper.

"The Detroit News and Neal Rubin owe its readers an apology and an explanation about why changes were made to the column."

The 1982 killing of Chin is credited with sparking the Asian American civil rights movement.

• Julianne Hing, ColorLines: Detroit News Columnist Rewrites History of Vincent Chin Hate Crime
  
  
• Jenn Reappropriate blog: Reporter blames Vincent Chin for his own murder? | @nealrubin_dn
  
  
• Frances Kai-Hwa Wang website: Remembering Vincent Chin


• Frank H. Wu, Detroit News: Race integral part of Vincent Chin case

ProPublica Finds Confusion, Neglect on Desegregation

"The pace of the change wrought by the federal courts was breathtaking,"Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote Thursday for ProPublica. "In 1963, about 1 percent of black children in the South attended school with white children. By the early 1970s, the South had been remade — fully 90 percent of black children attended desegregated schools. Court orders proved most successful in the South, but were also used in an attempt to combat de facto segregation in schools across the country, from New York to Michigan to Arizona.

"Today, this once-powerful force is in considerable disarray.

"A ProPublica examination shows that officials in scores of school districts do not know the status of their desegregation orders, have never read them, or erroneously believe that orders have been ended. In many cases, orders have gone unmonitored, sometimes for decades, by the federal agencies charged with enforcing them. . . ."

As Edirin Oputu reported for Columbia Journalism Review Friday in awarding "a laurel to ProPublica,""Hannah-Jones spent more than a year reporting “Segregation Now,” which focuses on the successful integration of the Tuscaloosa, AL, city school district, and its subsequent slide back into segregation. . . "

In the series' latest installment, Hannah-Jones also wrote, "Over the course of months, ProPublica has compiled the nation's most comprehensive and accurate data on active desegregation orders. We used legal databases, academic studies and contacted more than 160 school districts across the country.

"The effort uncovered a world of confusion, neglect and inaction. . . ."

• Minhee Cho, ProPublica: Podcast: Resegregation, 60 Years Later

Nominate a J-Educator Who Has Helped Diversity

The Association of Opinion Journalists, formerly the National Conference of Editorial Writers, annually grants a Barry Bingham Sr. Fellowship — actually an award — "in recognition of an educator's outstanding efforts to encourage minority students in the field of journalism." The educator should be at the college level.

Nominations, now being accepted for the 2014 award, should consist of a statement about why you believe your nominee is deserving.

The final selection will be made by the AOJ Foundation board and announced in time for the Sept. 21-23 convention in Mobile, Ala., where the presentation will be made.

Since 2000, the recipient has been awarded an honorarium of $1,000 to be used to "further work in progress or begin a new project."

Past winners include James Hawkins, Florida A&M University (1990); Larry Kaggwa, Howard University (1992); Ben Holman, University of Maryland (1996); Linda Jones, Roosevelt University, Chicago (1998); Ramon Chavez, University of Colorado, Boulder (1999); Erna Smith, San Francisco State (2000); Joseph Selden, Penn State (2001); Cheryl Smith, Paul Quinn College (2002); Rose Richard, Marquette University (2003); Leara D. Rhodes, University of Georgia (2004); Denny McAuliffe, University of Montana (2005); Pearl Stewart, Black College Wire (2006); Valerie White, Florida A&M University (2007); Phillip Dixon, Howard University (2008); Bruce DePyssler, North Carolina Central University (2009); Sree Sreenivasan, Columbia University (2010); Yvonne Latty, New York University (2011); Michelle Johnson, Boston University (2012); and Vanessa Shelton, University of Iowa (2013).

Nominations may be emailed to Richard Prince, AOJ Diversity Committee chair, richardprince (at) hotmail.com. The deadline is May 23. Please use that address only for AOJ matters.