Happy holidays from SJP

Dear Friend of the Summer Journalism Program,

Ten years ago, during our senior year at Princeton, we founded the Princeton University Summer Journalism Program to address the lack of diversity we saw in college and professional newsrooms. Since then, we have helped nearly 200 low-income high school students from across the country attend top colleges and pursue their dreams in journalism and public service. From a pool of hundreds of applicants each year, we select 20-25 rising seniors to participate in the year-long program, which includes a 10-day, all-expense-paid program at Princeton University in August as well as intensive college guidance in the following months.

This year's participants attended seminars taught by Cornel West, Robert George and President Tilghman. They visited The New York Times, CNN and Time Magazine. And they reported an investigative story about violations of a key environmental law in New York City, which was picked up by the New York Daily News, The Nation and the Columbia Journalism Review. Since August, our students have been working one-on-one with counselors to navigate the college admissions and financial aid process. In the past week, three were accepted early to Yale, one to Columbia, one to Brown, and one to UPenn.

This year has also been a tremendous one for program alumni. Of our 26 students who entered college as freshmen this fall, 12 are attending Ivy League schools. (Almost all of these students attended high schools where it is rare for someone to go on to an elite college.) In June, Walter Griffin (SJP '05) became our first program alumnus to graduate from Princeton, winning a thesis prize in the history department. Vanessa Martinez (SJP '05) spent the summer writing for The Philadelphia Inquirer, drawing on her experience as a staff writer for The Daily Pennsylvanian. Four of our alums are currently attending Princeton, one of whom (Tasnim Shamma SJP '06) served as an executive editor of the Prince this past year and also had a summer internship at Newsweek, where she wrote frequently. Amanda Cormier (SJP '07) was recently named editor-in-chief of The Columbia Spectator's magazine, The Eye; she interned at The New York Observer this summer. Eileen Shim (SJP '07) spent the summer writing for the Associated Press in Europe and is now an editor at The Yale Daily News--where Maria Guardado (SJP '09) is a staff writer. Two of our students (Hojung Lee SJP '08 and Fabiola Vega SJP '08) are staff writers at The Harvard Crimson. And Andrew Boryga (SJP '08) interned at The New York Times for the second summer in a row, earning several bylines in the print and online editions.

None of this would be possible without your continued support, and we are grateful for any contributions you can make this season. Checks should be made out to: The Trustees of Princeton University. In the memo line, please write: Friends of the Princeton University Summer Journalism Program. Mail to:

Princeton University
Alumni and Donor Records
P.O. Box 5357
Princeton, NJ 08543-5357

For more information, please contact us or visit http://www.princeton.edu/sjp.

Best wishes to you and your family for a happy holiday season!

Sincerely,

Richard Just ’01
Michael Koike ’01
Greg Mancini ’01
Rich Tucker ’01

Princeton University Summer Journalism Program Directors