UK School of Journalism and Telecommunications Celebrates 100 Years
LEXINGTON (Aug. 29, 2014) — The 2014-15 year marks 100 years of journalism education at the University of Kentucky.
The Department of Journalism began in 1914 under department chair Enoch Grehan. He served as chair until 1937; the Enoch Grehan Journalism Building was dedicated in 1951.
Under Grehan’s direction, the department became one of the nation’s pioneers in the field of professional journalism instruction. The journalism department grew from a small beginning to become one of 32 Class A departments in the nation.
Grehan was joined by Marguerite McLaughlin, one of the first female general reporters in the South. McLaughlin was the first female journalism teacher in the United States. The Marguerite McLaughlin Room in the Grehan Building is named in her honor.
Today, the journalism program is one of three undergraduate degree programs in the School of Journalism and Telecommunications. It offers emphases in broadcast/multimedia journalism and print/multimedia journalism.
Broadcast/multimedia students provide the morning news on WRFL-FM, the weekly “Campus Voices” public affairs program, also on WRFL, and the live, daily UK Student News Network newscast on Channel 16.
Print/multimedia students write for the Kentucky Kernel, UK’s award-winning, daily student newspaper, and for a wide variety of web sites and other media properties.
Students in the capstone course of the journalism major, Multimedia Storytelling, produce BlueCoast Live, a multimedia news blog.
The UK Journalism program also includes the Scripps Howard First Amendment Center and the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues.
The Scripps Howard First Amendment Center is celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2014-15. It offers a wide range of activities designed to fulfill its mission: to promote understanding of the First Amendment among citizens of Kentucky, to advocate for First Amendment rights in the Commonwealth and nationally, and to produce internationally recognized scholarship concerning the First Amendment and its related freedoms.
The center hosts an annual First Amendment Celebration. As part of the celebration, a noted First Amendment advocate delivers a state of the First Amendment address. The center also awards the James Madison Award for Service to the First Amendment to a Kentuckian who has made a substantial contribution to freedom of the press in the Commonwealth. The award is presented at the First Amendment Celebration.
The center funds Citizen Kentucky, a program that uses a freshman seminar to engage citizens in public issues through the power of the press. The center also co-sponsors an annual high school essay contest with the Kentucky Secretary of State’s office and provides a range of focused programming.
This is also a milestone year for the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues. 2014-15 marks 10 years since the institute became part of the UK journalism program.
The Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues helps nonmetropolitan journalists define the public agenda for their communities and grasp the local impact of broader issues. It interprets rural issues for metropolitan news media, conducts seminars and publishes research and good examples of rural journalism. It helps journalists all over America learn about rural issues, trends and events in areas they’ve never seen but have much in common with their own. It helps rural journalists learn how to exercise editorial leadership in small markets.
The three anniversaries will be celebrated with special programming throughout the 2014-15 academic year. Program graduates are invited to share their memories at www.facebook.com/UKJOU100 and on other social media platforms using #UKJOU100.