Teaching Tolerance Fellowships Expand Access to Digital Training

MONTGOMERY, Ala. | Teaching Tolerance and The Media Center at the American Press Institute (API) have partnered to offer online publishers four fellowships to API's Digital Storytelling Master Class being held December 7-11 in Nashville, Tenn., in cooperation with the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute.

Fellowships cover tuition, food and lodging, and a travel stipend. Recipients will participate in a series of how-to, brainstorming and critique sessions and learn more about how to create great digital stories. And they'll return home inspired to focus on providing rich, interactive and informative digital story experiences.

"Tolerance.org is dedicated to using online media to further social justice. The fellowship program has allowed us to further that goal by offering other producers from outside the mainstream media with this exceptional professional development opportunity," said Ashley Day, Tolerance.org's senior producer and a member of the Media Center's advisory board.

Fellowships were awarded to:

• Michelle Haskell, who teaches NYU graduate courses on combining social activism and new media;
• Sherry Bosse, producer of Grist, an online environmental advocacy magazine;
• Mike Berreth, producer of In-Forum.com, where he developed an extensive editorial package on the loss and reclamation of Native American languages; and
• Twilight Greenaway, project manager and former editor of Wire Tap, the sister site of AlterNet that serves as an "independent information source by and for socially conscious youth."

"The fellowship recipients selected by Tolerance.org will bring diverse, new voices to our seminars, a critical component of The Media Center's ongoing conversation about technology, information, media and society and where this potent mix is heading," said Andrew Nachison, director of The Media Center.