UNL students selected for News21 Carnegie-Knight fellowships

Three students in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Journalism and Mass Communications will participate in a 10-week national reporting project this summer as part of the prestigious News21 fellowship sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

The students are Matt Buxton of Portland, Ore., Aaron James of Lincoln and Charlie Litton of Omaha. They join 100 students from 11 other universities who were enrolled in seminars this spring to prepare for the summer reporting project.

News21 is designed to train a new generation of journalists to reshape the news industry. They will produce in-depth news coverage on critical issues facing the nation and experiment with innovative digital methods to distribute the news on multiple platforms. This year, the News21 team devoted its coverage to "A Changing America."

The News21 program is part of the Carnegie-Knight Initiative for the Future of Journalism Education, which is investing more than $11 million to bolster the journalism curriculum at 12 journalism schools. UNL was invited to join the national initiative in 2007. Participating universities are Arizona State University, University of California, Berkeley; Columbia University, Harvard University, University of Maryland, University of Missouri-Columbia, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Northwestern University, University of Southern California, Syracuse University and University of Texas at Austin.

Buxton, a May journalism graduate, will join a reporting team at the University of California, Berkeley; James, a senior, will join a reporting team at Columbia University in New York City; and Litton, a graduate student at UNL, will join a reporting team at Arizona State University.

UNL's three News21 fellows will be paid $7,500 for the summer program; their travel costs also are covered.

Buxton started his college career in journalism as a photographer, but soon saw the possibilities of other forms. He found himself carrying around an audio recorder or a video camera and discovered new creativity in the additional tools at hand. In the summer of 2009, he was a Poynter Summer Fellow, where he further developed his ability to find and tell a story. He also honed his photography skills that summer as photography intern at The Columbian in Vancouver, Wash. Along with his scholastic career, Buxton worked up the ranks at the Daily Nebraskan to become editor-in-chief of the campus student newspaper, where he directed and developed long-term stories.

Buxton's honors and awards include the National Hispanic Scholarship, a full-tuition academic scholarship at UNL; multiple awards for photography from the Nebraska News Photographers and Publication Board; Dean's List; and the Kinman-Oldfield Scholarship.

James returned to UNL in 2007 to pursue a journalism degree at UNL after spending 10 years in the construction industry, most recently as the owner of a painting business in the Seattle area. When he returned to school, James had the intention of becoming a newspaper reporter. Because of the quickly changing landscape in the journalism industry, he decided to diversify as much as possible, with the goal of being able to tell engaging, cohesive stories on multiple platforms.

He is pursing both news-editorial and broadcasting production degrees, with an emphasis on photojournalism. He expects to graduate in December. In addition to reporting and editing classes, his scholastic experiences include photography, page and Web design, videography, audio and television production. Last summer, he was a Dow Jones Newspaper Fund intern at the Grand Forks (N.D.) Herald. His responsibilities included copy-editing and page design. James spent fall 2009 as a fellow with the Omaha World-Herald. He was selected to be a member of the ABC News on Campus bureau this fall. He said he eventually wants to be a "backpack journalist," and has found the experience of simultaneously being a reporter and photographer invaluable.

He received a bachelor's degree in English from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. After graduation he spent two years as a sports editor for a small daily in northwest Iowa, but left the journalism field to help a friend run a small Jeep touring business near Phoenix. He eventually returned to journalism in Iowa, serving four years as the sports editor for the Atlantic News Telegraph. While there he also did freelance and stringer work for the Omaha World-Herald and the Iowa Associated Press. In six years of journalism he won five awards, including two first place awards for writing, one each from the Iowa Newspaper Association and the Iowa AP.

Litton left the journalism field in 2002, spending four years as a tunnel worker in Atlanta, Ga. During that time, he was the pilot of a tunnel boring machine, oversaw drilling and blasting operations, managed a mobile concrete batching facility and learned to appreciate the life of luxury enjoyed by journalists.

For more information about News21, visit http://newsinitiative.org; for more information about the Carnegie Corp. of New York, visit www.carnegie.org; and for more information about the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, visit www.knightfoundation.org.

WRITER: Marilyn Hahn