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Morehouse Student’s iReport Scores Grand Prize, All-Access Pass to Essence Music Festival

Morehouse Student’s iReport Scores Grand Prize, All-Access Pass to Essence Music Festival

CNN, together with the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), announced that Travers Johnson, a senior from Morehouse College in Atlanta, is the grand prize winner of CNN’s “Campus iReporter” contest.

The contest ran in association with a tour of eight historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to promote CNN’s Black in America multiplatform programming initiative.

Johnson won a trip for two to the Essence Music Festival in New Orleans over the Fourth of July weekend for “To Be Young, Gifted and Black in America,” an iReport about whether it is a good time to be young and black in America..

His iReport was submitted through www.iReport.com, CNN’s first uncensored, unfiltered, unedited, user-generated community Web site.

More than 11,500 students from eight HBCUs participated in the tour, which included Florida A&M, North Carolina Central University, North Carolina A&T, Hampton University, Howard University and the Atlanta University Center, which includes Clark Atlanta University, Morehouse and Spelman Colleges.

As part of the “Campus iReporter” contest, students from each school shared their firsthand accounts of the black experience through video, photo, audio or text submissions. NABJ chose one “Campus iReporter” from each school to win a digital video camera. Those winners were then eligible to submit additional footage to compete for the grand prize, also chosen by NABJ.

“We congratulate Travers on winning the grand prize for his thoughtful and thought-provoking piece,” said NABJ President Barbara Ciara. “He is a talented young journalist with a promising career in journalism. We also commend the other student participants who gave voice to young African Americans whose perspectives are seldom seen in today’s media landscape.”

Johnson, a Morehouse student originally from Quitman, Texas, said: “I am very excited, honored and humbled to win the Campus iReporter Contest. It was a great experience to participate in CNN’s Black in America Tour.”

The tour included a trailer outfitted with a jumbo television screen, along with video kiosks, where participants submitted more than 350 video responses to a programming-related question via iReport. There were live DJs at each stop, text-message polling, a graffiti wall and electronic polling stations using questions from a CNN/Essence Magazine/Opinion Research Corporation poll, where approximately 250 students submitted their responses. CNN anchor T.J. Holmes and CNN correspondent Chris Lawrence reported live from some of the stops and also spoke with journalism students about their careers in journalism.

CNN.com’s special section for the tour is available at www.CNN.com/blackinamerica/hbcu and features images from stops on the tour. Forty years after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., CNN launched a sweeping on-air and digital initiative, Black in America. The series continues on Wednesday, July 23, and Thursday, July 24, with a pair of two-hour documentaries, Black Women & Family and Black Men reported by anchor and special correspondent Soledad O’Brien. Both programs will premiere at 9 p.m. (ET/PT).

Black in America examines in-depth the often under-reported stories of the African-American experience. This landmark program features six hours of documentaries, a weekly series of reports on CNN/U.S. and CNN International and a multimedia online effort. For more information, please visit CNN.com’s interactive special section at www.CNN.com/blackinamerica.

Johnson’s winning iReport submission is available at http://www.iReport.com/docs/DOC-20793. iReport.com is a natural progression of the network’s successful iReport initiative, which has generated more than 125,000 video, photo and text submissions to CNN.com since the initiative’s launch in 2006.

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