The Reznet Team
Reznet is a Native American and American Indian news, information and entertainment Web site that also trains and mentors Native American college students around the country as they prepare for journalism careers.
Reznet was a finalist for two Online Journalism Awards by the Online News Association: Specialty Site Journalism and Online Topical Reporting for coverage of political issues in the 2008 presidential campaign.
Reznet was one of two national finalists in the Society of Professional Journalists' 2005 Mark of Excellence awards as Best All-Around Independent Online Student Publication. In 2003, it won the Native American Journalists Association's Native Media Award for Best Internet News Site.
Founded in 2002, reznet hires about 30 Native American college students nationwide as reporters, editors, photographers, copy editors and multimedia journalists to cover their tribal communities or colleges during the academic year. With few exceptions, staff members are graduates of the Freedom Forum's American Indian Journalism Institute, an intensive three-week training and internship program each June at the University of South Dakota.
Reznet intends to produce more Native Americans for mainstream daily newspapers. "Reznetters" attend state, tribal and private colleges, ranging from major journalism schools to those with no journalism course. The 27 "reznetters" on this year's staff are members of 19 tribes located in 15 states, and they attend 16 colleges in 11 states.
In the 2006-07 academic year, more Native American journalism students were picked for summer internships at top-echelon newspapers than ever. Two "reznetters" interned at The New York Times, one at The Washington Post and another at Sports Illustrated. Two interned at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis, while others were at the Detroit Free Press, The Des Moines Register, the Associated Press in Denver for six months and The Salt Lake Tribune. (The "reznetter" at the Tribune was part of the highly selective Sports Journalism Institute program.)
Five of reznet's May 2007 graduates were offered their first jobs in journalism. Since January, nine reznet grads have gotten jobs. That number represents three percent of Native Americans working at mainstream papers around the country, as counted each year by the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
Former reznetters work as reporters, photographers and copy editors at papers including The Kansas City Star, the Omaha, Neb., World-Herald, the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, the Tulsa World, The Post-Standard in Syracuse, N.Y., the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser, The Forum in Fargo, N.D., Casper (Wyo.) Star-Tribune, Sioux City (Iowa) Journal, the Billings (Mont.) Gazette, the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, S.D., The Navajo Times and the Cherokee Phoenix.
Reznet is a project of The University of Montana School of Journalism. The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has been reznet's primary funder, and the project also receives grants from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation and the McCormick Tribune Foundation. The Freedom Forum and the Gannett Foundation have contributed.
Denny McAuliffe, reznet's project director, can be reached at 406-243-2191 or dmcauliffe@reznetnews.org. Steve Chin is managing editor and developer of the Web site. Bill Elsen is career development director and chief copy editor.
McAuliffe and Elsen are former editors at The Washington Post, where Elsen also was director of recruiting and hiring. Chin, a former reporter at the San Francisco Examiner, also directs MKmedia, which helps organizations build, maintain and evolve their Web sites.
Kevin Abourezk, a reznet assignment editor, is a reporter/editor at the Lincoln (Neb.) Journal Star and was awarded a 2006 Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism for a series about the ravages of alcohol at South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation.
Craig Henry, a reznet assignment editor, is a reporter at the Argus Leader. A December 2006 graduate of the University of Oklahoma, Henry worked for four years as the student assistant to the reznet project director and was responsible for posting all content to the Web site.
Michael Downs, a reznet assignment editor, teaches creative writing at Towson University in Baltimore. A former journalism professor at the University of Montana, Downs is author of "House of Good Hope: A Promise for a Broken City," winner of the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize.