The National Association of Black Journalists Is Where Black People in Media Find Newsrooms, Opportunities and Each Other

If you work in journalism or media, or you are studying to, you should check out the National Association of Black Journalists.

Forty-four men and women founded NABJ in Washington, D.C. on December 12, 1975, seven years after the Kerner Commission found Black people were fewer than five percent of everyone working in the news business, writing from the standpoint of a white man’s world. The association was built to change who was in the room, and its programs still work on the same two problems: getting Black journalists hired, and keeping them visible once they are.

Membership can help you land work, with career services that run all year, a job board where media openings post continuously, and mentoring and leadership programs for journalists moving toward management. The convention career fair is the peak of it, billed as the largest career expo for Black journalists and media professionals in the country, and exhibiting employers get access to the NABJ resume database before, during and after it, so an uploaded resume stays in front of hiring editors in the months when nothing is happening.

NABJ is more than 4,300 strong across nearly 130 professional and student chapters, and working a chapter builds relationships with the editors, producers and executives in your own market, which is how freelance assignments and staff jobs actually move.

Students get the most direct route in, with scholarships up to $10,000 each and more than half a million dollars awarded over the last decade. The Student Multimedia Project is an expense-paid fellowship covering the convention in a real newsroom, and NABJ has placed paid interns at NBCUniversal, ABC, ESPN and the NFL.

Student membership is $40 a year, journalists in their first five years pay $85, and full professional membership is $100.

Membership details are at nabjonline.org/join-nabj.