Journalism lesson
The summer journalism workshop Carole Remick runs at the University of Massachusetts at Boston is an institution, or at least it was.
For two decades, the workshop brought together students of color for a week to teach them the basics of journalism. As a former instructor in the program, I can attest that one can learn just so much about producing a newspaper in a week. But, a week is plenty of time to awaken a budding interest in writing and in newspapers.
Unfortunately, the program has fallen victim to the politics of the times. It has been funded in large part by the Dow Jones Co., the parent (for now) of the Wall Street Journal. But Dow Jones pulled the plug on funding, because it runs afoul of a court ruling on racial preferences.
You see, it is no longer legally permissible to have an educational program geared entirely to students of color. Dow Jones learned this the hard way, when it was sued over a similar program it bankrolled at Virginia Commonwealth University. In that case, two students who had been accepted into the program were uninvited when they turned out to be white. As part of a settlement agreement, Dow Jones agreed to fund only race- neutral journalism programs in future.
That meant that the UMass program, the High School Journalism Collaborative, was defunded.
A few years ago, Remick had founded a separate program for high school students in which race was not a factor. That program is going strong, but its mission is different.
The High School Journalism Collaborative has alumni throughout the newspaper industry. That matters in a field in which minorities have been historically underrepresented. Newspaper recruiters frequently express frustration that there aren't more people of color entering the industry; this kind of program helps to address that by introducing students to journalism at just the age when many people fall in love with it.
Jonathan Kaufman, a longtime Wall Street Journal editor and reporter based in Boston, as part of the Dow Jones/ UMass program helped start a newspaper at South Boston High School.
He said he saw firsthand the value of studying journalism, even for those who would eventually go into other fields.
"It's an incredibly empowering thing," he told me. "As the country becomes more and more diverse, we need more people in this business who can reflect that diversity. This gets kids thinking about journalism when they're 16 and 17 years old, which is how a lot of us got started." Kaufman is a Dow Jones employee, but was speaking only for himself, not the company.
Kaufman compared what he saw in South Boston with Newton, where he lives. Students in Newton, he said, don't need special programs because the educational opportunities are so much richer.
"Any program that can enrich these urban schools and give them the opportunity my kids have in Newton, I'm in favor of," he said.
Milton Valencia, a reporter at the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, was in the program in 1996, when he interviewed Scott Harshbarger, who was then attorney general . By the end of his week, he had found his vocation.
It probably was boneheaded -- and illegal -- to push students out of a program because they are white. There's nothing wrong with a program that is open to all students. But it will result, inevitably, in less space for students of color, which translates into fewer of them having the kind of experience Valencia had.
Some will argue that the program was discriminatory. Save your hate mail. It isn't discrimination to try to increase diversity in a profession that needs it. It is what covering an increasingly diverse society requires.
By chance, there's a banquet tonight celebrating the 20th anniversary of the collaborative. For all I know, it will be a festive event. But it will also celebrate the anniversary of a program that isn't likely to have a future. That's a loss, and not just for the students.
Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@globe.com. 
