Black Belt Foundation Selects UA Group for Project

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — The Black Belt Community Foundation has selected a University of Alabama outreach team to develop its communications and marketing plans for 2006.

Dr. Edward Mullins, veteran journalism educator and former dean of the UA College of Communication and Information Sciences, will direct the team, said Dr. Samory T. Pruitt, UA vice president for community affairs and chairman of the foundation’s communications committee.

“We are most fortunate to have Dr. Mullins and his students in the college take on this important work,” Pruitt said. “Establishment of the Black Belt Community Foundation is one of the most significant developments in this region in recent years. We are pleased that The University of Alabama will play this major role.”

Mullins said his team will function as a news and communications agency for the foundation and the many groups it supports. “This is an ideal partnership,” Mullins said. “It enables us to test in the field what we are learning in the classroom.”

Mullins has formed Community Journalism Network, which he described as “a product-oriented, hands-on public news service supported by independent grants and contracts. We will use students and citizens in teams to cover news that often gets overlooked.”

Mullins said CJN is something his college has needed for some time. “We get many requests for the kind of things we are doing for the Black Belt Community Foundation. For example, we write articles for AERN, a project in the Culverhouse College of Commerce and Business Administration. We take field trips to Alabama newspapers under a grant from the Alabama Press Association, and we produce an annual workshop for minority students, among other things.”

Mullins said CJN will provide the umbrella for these projects while giving students the kind of experience they need to get ready for jobs in journalism and related areas. In addition, he said, graduate students working on projects and theses will find topics for research regarding how news helps communities build identity, unity and democratic institutions.

Graduate student Jonathan McElvy, former editor of The Selma Times-Journal, in the heart of the Black Belt, will assist Mullins.

“Jonathan is the ideal person to work on this project,” Mullins said. “Nobody knows more about this region than Jonathan. He has lived there and worked as a reporter, editor and newspaper executive and is one of the most versatile journalists I know.”

Mullins, McElvy, students in their classes and local citizens are already at work gathering news and information for publication and for use on the BBCF website, now under construction. “Nothing is more important for a nonprofit’s communications than a dynamic Web site,” Mullins said. “We have prepared a draft and will launch in the next few weeks.”

Another partner in the project is The Tuscaloosa News. It has made its content management system and Internet server available for the Web site. “Without our ongoing partnership with The News, we would be unable to provide these services at such low costs,” Mullins said.

The journalism department and The News have an ongoing partnership in operating Dateline Alabama, the college’s award-winning student-produced Web site.

Other tasks the group will perform for BBCF, with help from other units in the college, include preparing print and video news releases, writing news stories and taking photos of the organizations getting foundation funds, producing the organization’s annual report and quarterly newsletters, and designing promotional pieces for the BBCF’s fund-raising arm.

“One of the most interesting aspects of our outreach plans,” Mullins said, “is the training of local residents to report, write, present, photograph and narrate their own stories. Citizen journalism will be a major part of CJN’s activities in the Black Belt.”

The foundation has approved a $31,100 contract for the project, essentially, Pruitt said, the direct costs of providing the services. “The BBCF is getting a bargain and the University’s students are getting a real-world laboratory you can’t put a price on,” Pruitt said.

During fall semester, Mullins, McElvy and other journalism instructors assigned their classes to write features on groups receiving funds from the foundation. “From a teaching standpoint, this is one of the most beneficial aspects of the project,” Mullins said. “Students are writing stories that not only will be used on our site and in our newsletter but also carried by local media.”

The Black Belt Community Foundation was established in 2004 to address issues in poverty, substandard education, employment and health care and to increase philanthropy from community and elsewhere. It supports efforts in Bullock, Choctaw, Dallas, Greene, Hale, Macon, Marengo, Perry, Pickens, Sumter, Lowndes and Wilcox counties, Alabama’s traditional Black Belt counties.

Dr. Carol P. Zippert, co-publisher of the Greene County Democrat in Eutaw, is chairwoman of the board. George McMillan, owner of McMillan Associates, Birmingham, is co-chairman. Cecil P. Williamson, mayor of Demopolis, is treasurer.

Other members are state Sen. Hank Sanders of Selma, who is also co-chairman of Gov. Bob Riley’s Black Belt Action Commission; Dr. Richard Holland, president of the University of West Alabama, Livingston; U.S. Rep. Artur Davis, 7th district; Renardo White, a Stillman College student; Kenneth Webb, a teacher from Sawyerville; Virginia Norman, a community worker from Jefferson; Arzula C. Johnson, a community leader in Pine Apple, and 13 others.

Felecia Jones is executive director. Offices are at 609 Lauderdale St., Selma.

The Selma Times-Journal has made its newsroom available for use by the CJN team when teams are in the field. “The Selma Times-Journal looks forward to working with Ed, Jonathan and their students,” publisher Jesse Lindsey said.