Global News has launched a scholarship for Black youth entering the four-year journalism program at the University of King’s College in Halifax.
The scholarship will provide a student with $3,000 each year, over the course of four years, for a total of $12,000.
Brian Daly, an assistant professor at the School of Journalism, says it’s always good to have more funding to support youth.
“In the Black community, a lot of people are looking at STEM fields, they’re looking at business programs, law school, med school,” said Daly.
“What about journalism?” he said.
“Media has great power in holding powerful institutions accountable. You have to have people from various communities.”
Daly added having diverse people in the newsroom will bring more stories that otherwise wouldn’t be told.
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“Networks, Global News being among them, understand that you need to have people from the African Nova Scotian community within this powerful network and system.”
This scholarship, set to be awarded in September of 2022, is Global News’ second time supporting Black students at the School of Journalism at King’s. The network created the Global News Journalism Award in 2020, that gave an African Canadian student $10,700 over four years.
The Canadian Association of Black Journalists has for the past three years also organized J-School Noire, a media training and mentorship program for Black youth.
“They have little ones, starting in high school, teaching them how to interview each other, how to handle a camera, some of them you see sitting in the anchor chair,” said Daly, adding that continued support is important. “Then you make available scholarships and financial aid to continue the education in journalism.”
Daly said this is a recruiting effort, and he encourages youth to consider journalism as a career path.
“The skills you learn in journalism school are transferrable,” he said. “If you can communicate well, it helps you if you want to be a lawyer, it helps if you want to be a journalist, it helps if you want to get into public service.”
This year’s scholarship will also offer an opportunity for mentorship throughout the four years of the journalism program, in one-on-one conversations with Black journalists at Global News.
Director of the King’s School of Journalism, Tim Currie, acknowledged that lack of diversity is a problem in this field.
“It’s clear that neither journalism schools, nor Canadian newsrooms have been filled with a representative population of reporters,” said Currie.
“This scholarship is an important collaborative effort to diversify the number of students in the King’s Journalism School, and by extension, the number of Black working journalists.”
The funding is open to Black students who have Canadian citizenship or permanent residency. More information on the scholarship is available on the university’s website.
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