TO: Aspiring University Journalism Students Who Are Interested in Internships at the Leading USA-Based, Online News Service for Independent Voters in America.
FROM: Donald V. Watkins, Founder and Owner of www.donaldwatkins.com.
RE: The Availability of Internships in Investigative Journalism in the United States and Abroad.
Date: January 6, 2022
Donaldwatkins.com is an independently-owned, free online news service that offers in-depth investigative journalism on matters of significant public interests within the United States and abroad. The news service began publishing its investigative articles on the public Facebook page of Donald Watkins (Birmingham, Alabama USA) in 2013. In February 2018, the news service moved to: www.donaldwatkins.com.
Today, www.donaldwatkins.com has readers in every U.S. state and most of the 208 sovereign nations recognized by the United Nations. Donaldwatkins.com is the leading USA-based, online news service for Independent voters in America. Donaldwatkins.com does not solicit advertisements from any entity or person, nor does it accept money or "things of value" from any political candidate, political campaign organization, political action committee, trade association, corporations, or wealthy American donors. Donaldwatkins.com is truly "Unbossed" and "Unbought" by the oligarchy that runs America.
Seeking the "Best of the Best" Aspiring Journalists
Donaldwatkins.com is now seeking journalism students who want real-world experience in investigative journalism. Accepted applicants will be trained in gathering, organizing, analyzing, and reporting contemporary stories within their proper historical context. These stories will be written by the student intern, edited and fact-checked by www.donaldwatkins.com, and published worldwide under the student's byline. Copyright protection will belong to www.donaldwatkins.com and will be enforced worldwide by the publisher.
Applicants must be 18-years-old, politically independent, mentally-tough, self-motivated, bilingual and committed to finding and reporting the truth on each reporting assignment. Preferences will be given to students who seek domestic and international geopolitical assignments. Domestic assignments will focus on the American economy, women's rights, voting rights, immigration reform, and the 2022 U.S. Congressional elections and 2024 U.S. presidential election. International assignments will focus on the rise of autocracies around the globe and the growing sphere of geopolitical influence of Iran, Russia, and China in the 21st century.
Applicants for domestic investigative assignments must demonstrate an in-depth knowledge of American history, with a focus on: (a) the manner and means of America's extermination of nearly 550 Native-American Tribes between 1600 and 1906; (b) America's 124-year transfer of land and wealth to white European migrants under the Homestead Act of 1862, from 1862 to 1986; (c) the vigilante destruction of "Black Wall Street" in Tulsa, Oklahoma in May 1921; (d) America's forced sterilization of poor women in state prisons and mental institutions, its forced lobotomies on men and women in state mental institutions, its non-therapeutic human experimentation in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study (1932-1972) and the Guatemala Study (1946-1953), without informed consent, and its documented "crimes against humanity" inside and outside of it national borders; (e) the U.S. Department of Justice's documented COINTELPRO counter-intelligence program against innocent, law-abiding U.S. citizens, from 1956 to 1972; (f) the racial history behind many of America's immigration laws and policies; and (g) the murder of 19-year old Army private LaVena Johnson, who is black, by four-star general Kevin P. Byrnes (retired), who is white, on a military base in Balad, Iraq in July 2005, without consequences.
About Donald V. Watkins
Attorney Donald V. Watkins is America's best known "political prisoner." Watkins was imprisoned by local bigots in the federal law enforcement establishment in Birmingham, Alabama on bogus "fraud" charges in 2019. According to a judicial opinion published by one courageous federal judge in the state, Alabama has had an "unrelenting historical agenda, spanning from the late 1800s to the 1980s, to keep its black citizens economically, socially, and politically downtrodden, from the cradle to the grave." This racist agenda continues to this date.
Donaldwatkins.com has emerged from the suffocating grip of Alabama's hardcore racism against people of color to become the leading media voice of Independent voters in the United States. Its readership is diverse and worldwide.
Donaldwatkins.com has survived eight years of concerted and coordinated efforts by the state and federal government agencies and the ruling white oligarchy in the Old South to shut down its website.
Watkins' investigations into public corruption and officials acts of misconduct often put his life and freedom at risk. However, they ended the public careers of Alabama governors Guy Hunt and Robert Bentley, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Mark E. Fuller (Montgomery, Alabama), Mayor James Robinson (Montgomery), Public Safety Director Ed Wright (Montgomery), more than two dozen corrupt law enforcement officials in Montgomery and Birmingham, Alabama, and scores of lesser known public officials and "inferior court" judges in the state.
In SEC v. HealthSouth Corp. and Richard Scrushy, 261 F. Supp. 2d, 1298 (N.D. Ala., 2003), Watkins exposed a litany of misconduct by U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) attorneys M. Graham Loomis and William Hicks in 2003. The Court blasted the personal misconduct of Loomis and Hicks for violating the constitutional rights of Richard Scrushy, who was Watkins' client in an asset freeze case and a related criminal case. Rather than terminating these lawyers, the SEC promoted Loomis to Senior Trial Counsel for the SEC's Atlanta Regional Office, while Hicks was promoted to Associate Director for the SEC's Atlanta Regional Office.
Not surprisingly, William Hicks led the SEC investigation that precipitated criminal charges against Watkins, while M. Graham Loomis signed off as the lead Trial Counsel in the SEC's civil lawsuit against Watkins. No SEC official in Washington voiced an objection to this actual and apparent conflict of interest.
The SEC shopped the companion criminal case against Watkins to Birmingham federal prosecutors after a prior grand jury review by top-flight career federal prosecutors in New Jersey on the same evidence concluded that Watkins had broken no federal laws on the business transactions that were the subject of the Hicks/Loomis investigation and lawsuit. The prosecution team in the Birmingham case was led by Lloyd Peeples, a failed pizza store operator who joined the U.S. Attorney's office in 2017. Peeples has a long and documented history of racial animus towards successful blacks. The criminal case was prosecuted in Birmingham, a judicial venue that led the nation in unlawful COINTELPRO activities against civil rights activists.
In its April 3, 1977 print edition, The Washington Post credited Watkins with exposing "Alabama's Watergate." The July 25, 2005 print edition of Fortune magazine featured Watkins in an article titled, "Donald Watkins: The Man Who Saved Richard Scrushy." In May 2020, Netflix featured Watkins' record-breaking legal work in a documentary series titled "Trial by Media," Episode #4, "King Richard." Watkins' life story is also the subject of a 2017 video produced by The HistoryMakers (http://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/donald-v-watkins).
If you are interested in this unique internship opportunity, please submit your resume to:
dvw@donaldwatkins.com.
The internship application period is open through March 31, 2022.
Donaldwatkins.com provides equal opportunity to all applicants.
