Donate to Alabama Student Journalism This Giving Tuesday
We want to expand opportunities for people of color in student media at the University of Alabama. Here's how you can help.
Let’s Raise $2,000 to Help Alabama Student Media
The diversity of student media at Alabama has changed substantially in the last two years. The new student magazine Nineteen Fifty-Six just published its seventh issue highlighting the achievements and concerns of Black students, and The Crimson White recently published its first-ever diversity report. Hats off to students for taking the charge in making student media more representative of a changing student body, state, and nation. As alums we want to help students and administrators keep up this momentum in building publications that can reach every corner of campus. And we want to ensure that these positive changes are truly sustainable.
This Giving Tuesday, MASTHEAD is raising $2,000 to continue our mission of expanding opportunities for young journalists of color in student media. We’ve already funded a pair of reporter positions at The Crimson White for covering race and identity, launched a mentorship program pairing students at Nineteen Fifty-Six with media professionals of color, and sent three students to this year’s virtual National Association of Black Journalists conference. We want to do more, and more costs money. That’s where you come in.
Donate today and help us keep these efforts going into next school year and beyond. Generous donors have agreed to match up to $600 to help us reach our $2,000 goal by Dec. 7, so help us get off to a fast start on our campaign.
Where We’ve Come From
MASTHEAD (which stands for Media Alumni Seeking to Highlight Equity and Diversity) was founded in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, as people and institutions of all types were forced to consider whether they were combating forms of structural racism or upholding them. Instead of simply critiquing the school whose prestige we had already benefited from, we as alums decided to act. Through conversations with student leaders at The Crimson White and Nineteen-Fifty Six, we developed a vision for an alumni organization that would make increasing diversity in student media a priority and be responsive to the changing goals of student leaders from year to year. Our focus is on working with students to help them achieve what they want out of their short time in college media through mentorship, financial support, and advocacy.
Our nine-person board of directors (seven alums along with the editors of the CW and Nineteen Fifty-Six) eventually settled on a three-pillar strategy to execute our mission. Those are:
Student Engagement - We include student leaders on our board, fund initiatives based on their ideas, and provide mentorship for students of color with media professionals in the field
Alumni Engagement - We run fundraisers (like this one) seeking financial support for student-led initiatives, make sure alums are aware of the great work students are doing, and recruit volunteers to expand MASTHEAD’s capacity to help
Institutional Engagement - We offer earmarked donations to the Office of Student Media consistent with our goal of increasing diversity, help student leaders apply for outside grants, and build long-term relationships with administrators in other departments
As an all-volunteer outfit the MASTHEAD board is working to strengthen these pillars slowly but deliberately. Our board members serve two-year terms and have a wide variety of professional experience, ranging from practicing journalists to a graphic designer to a labor advocate. You can read more about our structure and goals on our website.
Where We’re Going
Earlier this year we launched a speaker series, hosting conversations with media professionals of color who can speak to all students about their careers and the challenges of navigating a fast-changing job market. That program will continue in the spring. We are also in the early conversations with the Office of Student Media about how our donations can be put to use in the 2022-2023 school year. And we will be supporting the launch of the Nineteen Fifty-Six print edition in the spring by helping to get it in the hands of professional journalists around the country.
In a big-picture sense, your donations and support help signal to the University of Alabama that alumni care deeply about the future of student media and want to ensure that it is more diverse and representative of the student body than it has been in the past. We view MASTHEAD as a collective movement that will build strength over time, helping us gain a seat at the table as student media evolves while also providing an ever-growing network of mentors and professionals that each new class of students can tap into.
For many of us, working in student media was an amazing opportunity. Editorial freedom, financial support, and guidance from a group of dedicated advisors is tough to come by after college. We want to make sure more students get to have these experiences in the future, and we’re so thankful for every single person that wants the same thing.
This is just the start. Donate today and help us take the next step.