Since its founding at the University of Minnesota in 1970, the Urban Journalism Workshop provided basic journalism training to high school students of color in Minnesota who are interested in journalism careers. UJW was part of a nationwide effort to increase the presence of minorities in newsrooms in order to better reflect and serve increasingly diverse communities. From the beginning, the program was a collaborative effort by the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the Star Tribune, which supplied funding and volunteer staff and published students’ articles. Twin Cities’ television stations also contributed funds and volunteers.
Until moving to the University of St. Thomas in 2001, UJW’s work was limited to a two-week summer camp funded by local media companies and staffed by newsroom volunteers. With the help of grants from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Star Tribune Foundation, the program was able in 2002 to hire a full-time director to develop year-round programming and outreach. The University of St. Thomas contributes funding, in-kind support and training by the journalism faculty to support the program. It also offers a full-tuition, four-year scholarship each year for high school seniors who completed the journalism workshop.
Since 2001, the program has grown to serve more than 400 high school students each year from throughout Minnesota via after-school classes, weekend workshops, career fairs, teacher training, coaching and the intense summer journalism camp. Over the past five years, more than 30 graduates of the summer workshop have entered college journalism programs. Many have earned journalism scholarships and awards and work as interns in professional newsrooms and as college newspaper editors.
In 2006, the program’s name changed to ThreeSixty to reflect it programmatic and geographic growth. Between 2006 and 2009, the program’s board aims to double the size of its programs and services.
