Posted February 17, 2010 by Susan King

When Andrew Hayward, the former president of the fabled network television giant CBS News, opened the first panel for the Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education at the Paley Center for Media, which took place last week, he joked about the title of the conference:  A Way Forward: Solving the Challenges of the News Frontier. “Solving. Not exploring,” he said. “Not questioning—solving!”

As pretentious as it might sound, solving problems—and promoting change—is exactly what philanthropy likes to think it does.  Defining problems, finding solutions, bringing people together is what the big bucks behind foundations allow us to do.  Unlike government, we don’t set policy or have REALLY huge budgets to make things happen.

We take risks and experiment and attempt to identify issues and offer solutions. After nearly eight years working on the changes underway—and very much needed—in journalism schools across the country, I can say with confidence that something has

While the challenges facing the news business are certainly not solved,  at the Paley Center, the talk wasn’t about how things used to be better in the golden days of the news business.  There weren’t a lot of tears about how change is destroying the business, either.  Both of these themes, however, were expressed on the stage in January 2008, the first time we gathered the journalism leaders and faculty of 12 of the nation’s leading universities together.

At the 2008 Paley Summit, there was a clear gnashing of teeth, and a tentative attempt by some Internet gurus to convince the high priests and priestesses of news that the question was no longer about saving newspapers or TV news bureaus, but rather it was about how to deliver high-quality news to new audiences.  This year, the Internet isn’t questioned as a vehicle for news. Many of  the new digital players, like Twitter, not even on the radar  two years ago, are now considered as essential tools in any journalist’s arsenal. 

One panel focused on entrepreneurial skills and the need to teach them at J schools. Once a radical idea, when asked who thought entrepreneurism wasn’t a ripe topic for students, not one hand was raised in the crowded auditorium.

Change—ready or not—is here. Solutions, like those promised in the partnership between Carnegie Corporation and the Knight Foundation, do not depend on a single answer.  Part of the foundation-supported change in journalism education hinges on more interdisciplinary- and subject-focused curriculum and innovation on all levels.  Both foundation presidents Vartan Gregorian of the Corporation and Alberto Ibargüen of Knight emphasize different elements of the change needed. But both are committed to the idea that journalism is too important for democracy to simply let bob along the river of change especially given that journalism schools are often too slow to change.

 After eight years of working on this partnership, do I think journalism education, at least in the 12 schools we are supporting with Knight, preparing students for a changing news business?  Some more than others.  I do think these 12 J schools are experimenting in ways they weren’t before. And, for the most part, they have admitted that the news curriculum gruel was pretty thin at the turn of the last century and needed to change.  Deep learning and deep thinking is what the business needs from its leaders. When Vartan Gregorian began the journalism initiative, he wanted a “Flexner moment”—something similar to the change brought about through the leadership of Abraham Flexner, whose seminal 1910 report on medical schools changed the way American medicine was taught. It will be up to the 12 deans to report back to Gregorian about whether they’ve achieved something as momentous. Gregorian likes to say that the deans’ reputation and that of their journalism school rests on what they have to show after eight years of funding and strategy.  Check their reputations in 2012. 

Posted January 22, 2010 by Susan King

A century is a big deal and at Carnegie Corporation of New York we are completing our first 100 years of grantmaking.  We expect to have another century!

One’s history is always important for an institution, particularly if you believe as we do that understanding our past helps us better prepare for our future.  And when you work for an historian – our president Vartan Gregorian is an historian – it is incumbent upon us that we discover, study and remember our roots.  This Carnegie Centennial will be about understanding Andrew Carnegie, who is often called the father of modern philanthropy, and the tradition of giving that has shaped our 100 years.

But it is also about change.  About not staying the same.  As you can see, we have a new look.   In preparation for our centennial we created a logo for the Corporation that combines Mr. Carnegie’s signature with bold letters for the rest of our name.  (We’re the Corporation because Mr. Carnegie had created more than a dozen institutions with words like Institute, Endowment, and Foundation and had run out of the traditional monikers.)

In all this time, we’ve never had a logo per se, but in this visual 21st century of the Internet we realized we needed something that telegraphed our identity.  No better way, in our mind, than turning to the signature of the man whose mission we still follow: Andrew Carnegie.

As well, we debut a new website.  It’s been almost year in the making and, although not officially part of our centennial planning, it will offer the public a better understanding of us as an institution by helping to unlock our rich past and better disseminate our Timeline, our historic research and current grantees’ work.

Mr. Carnegie’s challenge to us was to advance and diffuse knowledge. We think he would have been an early and ardent adopter of the Internet as a communication vehicle.  As an institution, we have always placed a high value on transparency.  We were the first foundation to produce an annual report and the Carnegie Quarterly was one of the first regular publications in the philanthropic world.  One of our trustees coined the phrase “glass pockets” to emphasize how open we needed to be with the public about our commitments and our work.

We hope that this Carnegie Corporation blog will also make us more transparent by explaining some of our goals as an institution, some of our priorities as a grantmaker, and some of our concerns as a leader in the nonprofit world.  We also want to be more interactive.  Let us know what you think – about our new site, about Andrew Carnegie’s legacy, and about our work.