Douglas High School was one of only five schools chosen throughout the state to particpate in a newsroom program.

As part of the grant, the high school will get computers and software, including digital video and still cameras, along with teacher training.

The school will have enough hardware and software to allow them to launch their own news website.

Students and journalism teachers and advisers at the schools also will get training and mentoring in the skills and values of journalism.

Students who get involved in high school journalism learn valuable writing and communication skills – and ultimately graduate from high school and go on to college in greater numbers,  said Cronkite School Dean Christopher Callahan..

Students will learn such skills as writing, reporting, grammar, editing, page design, Web production, videography and photography. They also will participate in a conference each summer at the Cronkite School to further develop their skills and expose them to a college environment.

Teachers also will get support. The Cronkite School will offer an in-depth training course each summer for the teachers, as well as help develop journalism curricula for their schools, arrange for professional journalists to come to their classes, and help them train students in technical and journalistic skills.Over the next two years, the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism will create multimedia newsrooms at 10 underserved Arizona high schools under a grant from the Stardust Foundation.

The Stardust High School Journalism Program is believed to be the first university-based initiative in the country to create newsrooms in high schools, according to  Callahan.

The grant targets schools with large minority populations that do not have school newspapers or viable journalism programs. Those are the schools that often don’t have the resources to publish school newspapers, Callahan said.

The Stardust Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Jerry Bisgrove in 1993. Headquartered in Scottsdale, the foundation is designed to selectively provide grants to organizations that impact the linked concepts of family and neighborhood stability.

“Stardust values the opportunity to expose more students to careers in journalism,” Bisgrove said. “The communication skills they will learn in this program will be useful to them, regardless of their chosen profession. In today’s fast-paced, information-driven world, effective communication is vital to achieving success in all facets of one’s life.”