By Dominic Minadeo

Claflin University launched their first community news program last fall with the help of a Center for Community News grant.

The Champions Project partners Claflin University with Orangeburg’s daily newspaper,  The Times and Democrat. Student journalists learn from Claflin courses in journalism and publish their work in a professional news outlet and help sustain Orangeburg’s historic paper, Dr. Luis Almeida, professor and interim chair of Claflin’s Department of Mass Communications said. 

“Students are excited about print journalism,” Almeida said. “We would not be able to have this level of enthusiasm without the reintroduction of the print version of our student newspaper and without the support of CCN.” 

Almeida is the program coordinator for the Champions Project. He said he wrote his proposal shortly after he met with CCN’s Richard Watts this past summer. 

“We talked about what it would be like to potentially partner with the Center for Community News, to be able to scale local media here in Orangeburg and beyond,” Almeida said. “We want to grow our journalism program, and saw this as an excellent opportunity for us to be able to conduct work in local media.”

Claflin University is an HBCU (Historically Black College and University) and Almeida said he hopes to cover more local government news from an HBCU perspective. 

“How nice would it be to have local news that somehow relates to the history of social justice and the representation of constituents in local government from different ethnicities and races?” Almeida said. “This is the beginning of something that can be very big.”

The Center for Community News awarded Claflin University a grant that funded two critical components of their pilot program: the first being a tablet and an audio recorder for interviews and data collection, Almeida said. The second provides compensation for the reporters’ hard work.

“Tuition is expensive, I think we can all agree on that,” he said. “We can premium the student who is doing the legwork.”

In the program’s first semester, The Times and Democrat published six student articles, produced by Tyuanna “Ty” Williams, Claflin University’s “star writer,” Almeida said.

Williams, a senior journalism student at Claflin University, grew up just 47 miles northwest of the university in Gilbert, South Carolina. She is up for South Carolina’s student journalist of the year award.

“The recognition itself is an honor,” Williams said. “To be recognized for the work that I’m doing here at Claflin, it feels really good.”

Williams said the nomination stems from the work she’s done to rebuild the Panther, Claflin’s student newspaper, from digital-only to print, along with her work filling in local news gaps as a reporter for the Champions Project, which has increased readership and interest in student journalism at Claflin.

“Being published in a professional news outlet is very important for me as a student journalist,” Williams said, “but also for the readers because they get a new perspective.”

Both Williams’ and Almeida’s work helped revive Claflin’s journalism program, along with Professor Lee Harter, journalist in residence, as they have already seen an increase in journalism majors since last year, Almeida said.

“This was an area in our program where students were not matriculating,” Almeida said. “Now we have more students interested in doing this kind of work.” Student participation in journalism concentration has grown about 25% in the last year, Almeida said.