UA News

The New York Times offers an intensive training program in January for some of the nation's most gifted journalism students.

Three University of Arizona School of Journalism students are among 20 young journalists from around the country who will take part in an intensive training program next month at Florida International University in Miami.

Student members of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists applied from around the country and finalists were competitively selected by a panel of journalists at The New York Times.

More than 40 different colleges and universities were represented among the applicants, and the UA students chosen to take part in the 2009 New York Times Student Journalism Institute are Joe Pangburn, Nicole Santa Cruz and Melissa Tan.

Pangburn, a senior journalism major and native of Prescott, Ariz., is a full-time reporter for Inside Tucson Business. Pangburn, a UA Honors College student, also freelances for a national trade magazine for photographers and wants to work as an editor for a large news organization.

Santa Cruz spent two semesters and a summer as editor in chief of the Arizona Daily Wildcat, the student newspaper at the UA.

Santa Cruz, also an Honors College student, was also a metro apprentice at the Arizona Daily Star and covered the Arizona legislature as the Don Bolles fellow in spring 2008. A journalism major who plans to graduate in May, she is a Tucson native and is currently a freelancer with The Oregonian in Portland where she was a summer writing intern.

Tan is interested in broadcast journalism, photography and multimedia journalism.

A journalism major and native of Longview, Wash., Tan spent part of the summer as a photographer at the Unity Student Projects conference in Chicago.

Also, she has worked as a broadcast intern at KVOA-TV in Tucson, as a photography intern at the Tucson Citizen and will spend spring 2009 as a broadcast intern at KOLD-TV.

Students are selected based on an essay of up to 500 words, clips or portfolios of their work and their experience in journalism.

The New York Times offers institute twice a year, in conjunction with two organizations for news professionals.

The January institute alternates each year between Florida International University in Miami and The University of Arizona.

An institute held in May at Dillard University in New Orleans is operated in association with the National Association of Black Journalists and the Black College Communication Association and is open to student members of the NABJ and students at historically black colleges and universities.

Students at the institutes work with veteran journalists from The Times, the Boston Globe and The Times Company's Regional newspapers in a newsroom environment covering events in the cities where the institutes are held.

As journalists, the students have covered presidential speeches and campaign events, the funeral of a famous mobster, the challenges to both legal and illegal immigrants and dozens of other stories.

"Through The New York Times Student Journalism Institute, The Times has been introduced to some of the brightest aspiring journalists in this country," said Don R. Hecker, director of the institute and the training editor for staff editors at The Times, in an e-mail message.

Graduates of the Institute have interned at or now work at some of the most prestigious news organizations in the United States, including The Washington Post, the Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, the Boston Globe and The New York Times, along with many other newspapers and news organizations.

"The Times has also been given the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of these talented young journalists," Hecker said. "This is one of many efforts of The New York Times Company to reach out to every community and make sure every voice has an opportunity to be heard."