Getting to Know: Denny McAuliffe
Denny McAuliffe realized early on that traditional college recruiting wasn’t going to bring more American Indians to journalism school. As a result, “We don’t recruit,” he says. “We go to them.”
McAuliffe, a member of the Osage tribe of Oklahoma, takes journalism directly to Native students through Reznet, an online student newspaper based at the University of Montana’s School of Journalism. About 30 American Indian students from across the country participate in the newspaper each year, producing news stories, blogs and photos. The students, who are chosen from a variety of institutions, including tribal colleges and mainstream institutions, are paid an average of $50 per assignment. They also receive intensive mentoring and hands-on-training from McAuliffe and other Reznet editors.
A 16-year veteran of The Washington Post, McAuliffe says he decided to make the move to academia primarily to share his love of journalism with other American Indians.
In 2000, he was chosen as one of four Freedom Forum Diversity fellows as part of the Forum’s effort to increase the number of minorities in the newsroom. As part of the fellowship, McAuliffe visited 65 higher education institutions in the hope of finding potential American Indian journalists. He says he quickly realized that Native students were most comfortable going to colleges that were close to their homes. And since they were probably unwilling to leave those communities, McAuliffe decided that any successful journalism program targeting American Indians would have to come to them.
Only one tribal college, Haskell Indian Nations University, currently publishes a student newspaper, but most of the campuses have Internet access. And so the idea for Reznet was born.
