AMU Foundation Involved in Newspaper Exchange Effort

By: E&P Staff The Andrews McMeel Universal Foundation (AMUF), a sister entity to Universal Press Syndicate, is expanding its involvement with the Alfred Friendly Press Fellowships (AFPF).

For instance, the Kansas City-based AMUF has provided a $1,500 grant to help in a newspaper exchange. During the last six months, Mugumo Munene -- a reporter with the Daily Nation newspaper in Nairobi, Kenya -- has been at the Kansas City Star to build his skills in interviewing; narrative, editorial, and commentary writing; and computer research.

Munene's mentors are Star/Creators Syndicate columnist Rhonda Lokeman and Star Deputy Managing Editor Randall Smith, also an AFPF advisory committee member. As Munene returns to his newspaper job in Nairobi next month, Lokeman will travel to East Africa to work with journalists at the Nation Media Group bureaus and help train current and future journalists in places such as Nairobi; Eldoret, Kenya; and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The trip was inspired by Smith's similar visit last year.

During the past 23 years, the AFPF has trained 248 journalists from 77 countries. In addition to the Star, hosts have included The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Denver Rocky Mountain News, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and The Washington Post.

Other 2007 Fellows come from Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Egypt, Georgia, Iran, and Rwanda.