48 Hours to Deadline for School of Authentic Journalism Applications

By Al Giordano

The newsroom now has a new accessory: a whiteboard, just like Dr. House’s.

In a little over 48 hours comes the Sunday night deadline for completed applications to the Narco News School of Authentic Journalism 2010 session to take place next February 3 to 13 on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula.

And over the next two weeks, the names of 24 scholarship recipients who will attend that ten-day intensive training session on Journalism and Civil Resistance are going up on that whiteboard.

They'll be learning and producing quality news reports, viral videos and a documentary side by side with 48 professors (a good number of whom graduated from or taught at this school in previous years), collectively with hundreds of years experience doing investigative journalism and/or winning civil resistance campaigns.

As of tonight, two days before deadline, completed applications have already come in from communicators in the following lands: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Cuba, Guatemala, Honduras, México, Perú, the United States and Venezuela. And, lo’ and behold, there are some gi ft-wrapped items postmarked Australia, India, Great Britain, Pakistan, Spain, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia… Already, we have promising candidates from every populated continent on this earth. (And the final 48 hours, in past years, has been when the bulk of them come rolling in.)

Of course, I’m not the sort to be content just looking at or shaking the boxes: I’ve opened each and every one of the early applications already and begun studying them. And I get even more excited beholding the talents of conscience to choose from for the class of 2010. Thinking about the works its members will do – with us, and with others, just like those that came before them - for years to come is one of the best parts of this job.

The board still has a lot of white space on it, waiting to be filled with 24 names.

Maybe one of them will be yours.

English language applications are still available for the next 48 hours by sending an email to app@narconews.com. Spanish language applications can be received by emailing sol@narconews.com.

Don’t miss the Sunday night deadline (midnight pacific time). The door to the future of the Authentic Journalism renaissance remains open ‘til then.