King senior Alana Burke was the only student from Michigan accepted into Princeton’s Summer Journalism Program, which brought together high school students from across the country. After going through the strenuous application process, Burke was admitted into the 10-day program.
“There were three rounds of applications. The first one was basic but you had to write two articles and an extra written response,” said Burke. “The second round was submitting articles you have written before to boost your application status. Then once you got past that, it was pretty much the over the phone interview that we had to schedule and they told you whether you got in or not.”
The high school journalists were exposed to a lot of different places while they were at Princeton and learned about different kinds of reporting. The young writers had workshops on how to write different kinds of articles, and also had chances to listen to different well-known journalists speak.
“We went to New York one day and went to Bloomberg News, The New York Times and Cosmopolitan,” said Burke. “As far as workshops, Richard Lui, an American journalist and news anchor for NBC News, talked to us.”
This all-expense paid, on-the-job training was for students from low income households to give them a chance to be involved in journalism. The program is not only for teens who specifically want to pursue a career in journalism but for anyone who is up for the challenge.
“I think any student, whether they’re interested in journalism or not,should go to the program because you meet different people like professors at Princeton, admissions officers, and you get to talk to people who are journalists for a living,” said Burke.
Burke was the only student from Michigan to attend and wanted to prove that Detroit has outstanding high school writers.
“I was definitely challenged by the other students because I didn't want people to feel like ‘That's the girl from Detroit. She doesn't know anything.’ I wanted to make sure my writing was excellent,” said Burke.
Burke’s article “Black Americans aren’t appropriating African culture,” written as part of the program, was published in the Aug. 14 edition of The Princeton Summer Journal.
Cutline:
princeton1 – Senior Alana Burke was one of 39 high school students accepted from across the U.S. into Princeton’s Summer Journalism Program.
