“The Associated Press is putting all of its internship programs on a one-year hiatus, as well as our attendance at journalism recruitment conventions, as we focus our financial resources on our essential core businesses,” Colford said. “We will resume an internship program in 2012…”

The announcement that the programs will just skip a year “was met with skepticism,” Prince writes. In 2007, the AP announced a one-year hiatus for a program that paired minority student journalists with AP writer/editor mentors for a five-day workshop. That program never returned.

We also suspect that the program will not return in 2012, but for a different reason…. continued…

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We’d heard rumblings about this for a few weeks and it’s sad to hear that the rumors were true.

Richard Prince found out the program costs between $600,000 to $800,000 a year, and that the guild is advocating for the reinstatement of the internship program—a testament to how well-loved the program is, as usually established journos are wary of letting young fresh-faced interns take people’s jobs.

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Curley’s response, which read a full 15 words long, makes the “reconsideration” sound like an all-out cancellation.

AP spokesman Paul Colford wouldn’t confirm to Richard Prince, who has been following the story, that a meeting to select next year’s interns was still scheduled for Dec. 2.

“I have nothing further on this at the moment. Happy Thanksgiving,” Colford told Prince.

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“What we really need is a deeper pool of candidates,” NYT senior editor Dana Canedy told Journal-isms. “Of about 600 applications for this summer I estimate that we had only about two dozen African American candidates.”

Same story at Stanford, where twelve journalists were chosen to study under John S. Knight fellowships: nine African American applicants out of 133 total.

On the bright side for diversity, four of the twelve Knight fellowship recipients were journalists of color, and applications from journalists of color increased.

And the NYT intern class includes “several people of color,” according to Canedy.

Why is race a big deal? As UNITY, the umbrella organization encompassing NABJ, NAHJ, AAJA, and NAJA, says: “The journalism industry has an obligation to deliver a complete, fair and representative picture of the communities and world in which we live. In order to achieve this, diversity in the newsroom and in coverage is fundamental.”

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Two journalism professors at Howard University in Washington DC are disappointed in the students in their spring 2010 classes: Jack White wrote on his blog that he failed half his class. (The blog’s since been deleted, but parts of it are selectively quoted here in Richard Prince‘s column.)

“The students who flunked were, to use a word the old folks favored, truly triflin’. They did not turn in work on time even though making deadlines is essential for a journalist. They missed classes. They did not keep up with current events. Their lack of mastery of the basics of English composition—spelling and grammar—was appalling. Their carelessness was breathtaking,” White wrote.

At the same time, Dwight Cunningham wrote that he flunked 40% of his class. The 60% that passed “at least demonstrated some effort.” Not high praise, exactly.

“They don’t know that mid-year elections come every two years, that 33 (or 34) U.S. Senate seats are up for grabs, that “ensure” means something totally different than “insure” — and they don’t care about their collective ignorance.

“They just want a passing grade, to get them to some unknown next level of stupid oblivion,” he wrote.

To be sure, this problem is not limited to journalism students or students at Howard. There are students everywhere who shouldn’t be in college and are just doing it because they were told it’s what they were supposed to do.

Until America figures that out, however, it puts the J-students who do give a damn at a huge advantage.

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The names:
Desiree Cooper, columnist
Nichole Christian, editorial writer
Sharon Wilmore, an assistant managing editor
Nate Trela, an assistant metro editor
Laura Varon Brown, Audience editor and columnist, who responded to readers’ questions about the paper
Javan Kienzle, copy editor
Fred Fluker, graphic artist
Christy Arboscello, reporter
Emilia Askari, reporter
Dan Cortez, reporter
Kim North Shine, reporter
Amy Butters, copy editor
Janice Monarrez and Julie Armstrong, Web editors
Paul Barrett and Bernie Czarniecki, sports agate editors
Marty Westman, artist
Rodney Curtis, assistant photo editor

Prince raised questions about the diversity of the remaining staff, as 15 of those who lost their jobs are women, six are African American, two are Hispanic and two are Asian.

Prince says Paul Anger, the Free Press’ editor and publisher, did not respond to a question about whether newsroom diversity had increased or decreased.

In the 2009 ASNE diversity survey, the Freep reported 29.5 percent journalists of color, which is…actually, a lot higher than most newsrooms.

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