HCC multimedia journalism initiative wins two key grants

Houston City College's new Houston City Voices (HCV) project has landed its second grant win this summer, a $15,000 award from the Scripps Howard Fund's Community College Experiential Journalism Grant program.

The HCV project is a student-led multimedia journalism initiative housed under The Egalitarian, HCC's student media outlet. The Scripps Howard grant program hands out one-time awards of up to $15,000 per college to help community colleges and regional branch campuses start, grow, or sharpen experiential journalism offerings.

Priority is given to projects that reach underrepresented students and bring more diverse voices into the field. The bigger goal, according to the Fund, is closing the distance between what students learn in class and what they will do when on the job in a newsroom.

That mission lines up closely with what HCV set out to do from the start. 

“The project aims to fill local information gaps in underserved communities across Houston, training students to report and produce news in the neighborhoods they come from,” said Professor Fredrick Batiste, who teaches communication at HCC. “Over the next year, students will turn out biweekly video vlogcasts, a monthly podcast, live-streamed coverage of civic events, and written stories, all of it community-focused and student-driven.”

This is not HCV's first grant. Back when the project was just a proposal, a team led by Carolyn Cross, Ph.D; Ashley Rhodes-Watkins, Ed.D.; and Professors Carlton Abernathy, and Batiste won $5,000 from the Journalism + Design Lab's Community College Civic Info Challenge. 

The team’s pitch focused on training students to become trusted local news sources in Houston neighborhoods the media often overlooks, while building partnerships with media outlets and community organizations. That is the work the Scripps Howard grant will now help push forward.

Houston City Voices launches this fall as COMM 2389 (Academic Cooperative), meeting Wednesdays at 11 a.m. on the Central Campus in Fine Arts Center Room 232. The course is open to any currently enrolled student regardless of field of study. 

Between the two grants, the project starts out with $20,000 in outside funding to cover its launch and first full year of programming.