About this workshop
The Roanoke Times has conducted an annual Minority Journalism Workshop since 1983, a year after Walter Rugaber became publisher. He wanted to address the fact that the number of minorities who worked in newsrooms nationwide was disturbingly low. It's a situation that still persists today.
The workshop aims to make more minorities aware of job opportunities at newspapers and hopefully entice them to think about careers in the business. Having people of different races employed at The Roanoke Times is important for many reasons. For our news pages to be accurate, we must reflect the entire community and we can better ensure such coverage if we employ people from various backgrounds.
The workshop is for rising high school sophomores, juniors and seniors in the Roanoke and New River valleys and the newspaper covers all their expenses during the workshop. Through teaching them about the newspaper, we hope that it will also create a diverse pool of potential employees for the future.
2008 participants
Eight Roanoke Valley high school students participated in The Roanoke Times’ 2008 workshop.
They are: Hope Ammen, a home-schooled student; Aaron Colson, Adrian Joyce and Shanikwa Wright, all from William Fleming High School; Zack Irby, from Northside High School; Shomari Pasley, Tateona Henderson, and Kendra Washington, all from Patrick Henry High School.
Workshop partners
2008 marks the fourth year that The Roanoke Times has partnered with Washington and Lee University to teach the participants the basics of journalism. The students spend two days at the university, which is 45 minutes north of Roanoke in Lexington. At W&L, journalism professors cover everything from the basics of reporting to journalism ethics. Workshop participants also get to know each other through team building activities and spend one night in the W&L dorms.