AAJA/Poynter Fellow Says Stories of Children Need Sensitive Portrayals

After Romy Varghese returned from her AAJA/Poynter fellowship to learn how to best report stories on children, she noticed something absent from her newspaper's plan to cover the search for a missing autistic child. There were plans to find out from law enforcement officials why Amber Alert wasn't used. But where were the plans to talk to the child's parent and parents in general?

Varghese, a reporter at The Morning Call, received an AAJA/Poynter fellowship to attend a Beat Reporting: Covering Children seminar, August 12-17, 2007. Read more about what she learned during the program here.

AAJA members can take advantage of training sessions offered through the AAJA/Poynter Institute Fellowship. AAJA has just announced that two Poynter fellowships will be offered for 2008. AAJA members can apply, choosing among a wide selection of 15 courses from multimedia to infographics, producing to copy editing. For application details about the fellowships go here.

Photo courtesy of The Poynter Institute. Romy Varghese, far right.