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Corporation
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FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:
George Soule, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Public Affairs,
212-207-6273 , gs@carnegie.org
Marc Fest, vice president of communication, Knight Foundation,
305-908-2677, fest@knightfoundation.org
Expansion Of Carnegie-Knight
Initiative Seeks To Transform Journalism Education In U.S.
Program
Preparing Journalism Students to Lead Industry Change Gains Momentum
Miami,
Florida and New York, New York, July 7, 2008 — Seeking
to change the way journalism is taught in the United States, Carnegie
Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
are investing more than $11 million in the expansion of a national
initiative to adapt journalism education to the challenges of a
struggling news industry. Three new journalism schools are joining
the effort of redefining journalism education and training a new
generation of journalists capable of reshaping the news industry.
The
expansion will deepen and extend:
• News21 (an experimental, online news incubator);
• Curriculum enhancement;
• and a journalism education policy task force.
Each foundation will contribute half of the new funding, and allocate
it among each of the initiative’s three distinct efforts.
With the addition of the three schools, the initiative now funds
curriculum enhancement and student fellowships at 11 journalism
schools and one research center. The three new schools, Arizona
State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
and the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, join schools currently
supported by the initiative at: University of Southern California;
University of Texas at Austin; University of Maryland; Northwestern
University; Columbia University; University of Missouri; Syracuse
University; and University of California at Berkeley. A research
center, the Joan Shorenstein Center for Press, Politics and Public
Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, is also
supported by the initiative.
In
announcing the initiative’s expansion, Carnegie Corporation
president Vartan Gregorian spoke about the centrality to a fully-functioning
democracy of well-informed, bold journalists. “Today’s
journalists must be steeped in experience and deeply knowledgeable
about the subjects they report on.” Gregorian continued, “To
understand the underlying ideas and possible ramifications of import,
even truly transformative events, requires that journalists be trained
and informed enough to deal with complex, nuanced information with
a richness and depth.”
“Although traditional models of newspaper, radio and local
television news dissemination are severely challenged,” said
Alberto Ibargüen, president and CEO of Knight Foundation, “every
community in this democracy continues to have a core need for reliable
information, news that informs and news that helps build the common
language that builds community. That need will not go away and provide
hope for future journalists. They will tell those stories with traditional,
verification-journalism values but on multiple platforms and structures
influenced by new technology. Journalism can train them to do that
and, in that sense, journalism schools have a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity to lead the industry. Carnegie and Knight want them
to succeed.”
The
initiative’s credo—to accelerate change at universities
educating tomorrow’s journalists—has begun to have an
impact on the news business as the pipeline of young and innovative
reporters from initiative-supported schools bring their skills to
newsrooms around the country and across all media platforms.
Curriculum enhancement
Journalism schools participating in the initiative have received
funding from the two foundations to expand the intellectual horizons
of journalism students, in large part by harnessing the tremendous
subject-matter expertise that resides in each of the universities.
In addition to an emphasis on the fundamentals of the journalism
craft, initiative-funded schools are encouraged to draw on the resources
of the larger university to help reporters-in-training build specialized
expertise to enhance their coverage of complex beats from international
affairs and economics to health care and education. Exposure to
experts on their own campus helps students to gain first-hand knowledge
of the societies, languages, religions and cultures of other parts
of the world.
Deans
at newly funded schools are supporting enhancements ranging from
a multidisciplinary seminar on Latino life in the United States
at Arizona State and a series of courses at Nebraska focusing on
issues related to Native Americans to new interdisciplinary courses
at North Carolina on various manifestations of globalization jointly
offered by the university’s professional schools of business,
law, public health and social science.
Columbia
University’s renewed support allows the school to attract
leading scholars from outside the realm of journalism to the school.
At USC’s Annenberg School, collaboration with the campus’s
arts schools is underway which will create a program for students
focusing on journalism and music, theatre dance and film. Northwestern’s
Medill School will leverage its on-campus expertise to focus on
immigrant-related reporting. And, the graduate school of journalism
at UC Berkeley will strengthen a course, initiated with the 2005
grant, to develop reporting specialties with the graduate schools
of health and business.
News
for the 21st Century: Incubators of New Ideas
Experimental reporting on little-covered issues generated during
the summer by students participating in the News21 incubator has
been published or broadcast by news organizations including the
New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Miami Herald, L.A.
Weekly, Forbes.com, the
Associated Press, Canadian Broadcast Corporation and CNN. This summer
student-produced reports will be published on NPR.org, the incubator’s
current national news partner, as well as at newsinitiative.org.
The
News21 journalism incubator will grow from four to eight campuses,
increasing the number of competitive, paid summer fellowships to
93 from 44. The summer fellowships, open to students at each of
the 12 initiative supported schools, are preceded by a semester
of self-guided research and intensive seminar work with professors
who are acknowledged experts in the student’s field of inquiry.
During the summer, students report their stories and produce their
material for publication or broadcast across a number of platforms.
Christopher
Callahan, dean of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass
Communication at ASU, which will spearhead the News21 project from
its new Phoenix campus, believes the new storytelling techniques
and “convergence” journalism practiced by News21 fellows
is precisely what today’s newsrooms are demanding. “This
type of journalism prepares students for the newsroom of the future
where the person who shoots the piece may also write it and edit
it. And, the following day will be expected to produce a story for
the web or something altogether different.”
Journalism
Task Force
The Carnegie-Knight Task Force joins together one-time competitors
in journalism education to work toward addressing and adapting to
the sea-change taking place in the news business. Renewed funding
for the Task Force, housed at Harvard University's Shorenstein Center
on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, will allow it to produce
policy-oriented research for the deans of the 12 participating institutions.
The
Task Force allows the schools to speak out in a single, authoritative
voice about the importance of upholding the highest standards and
ideals of journalism. It has taken public stands on issues of importance
to practicing journalists as it did in a July 2006 op-ed published
in the Washington Post on privacy, security and state secrets.
The piece, signed by deans at five of the initiative-funded schools,
is thought to be the first time a group of deans has spoken out
on an issue of importance to working journalists. And, a December
2007 New York Times op-ed focused on the FCC and proposed
changes that could affect local journalism.
A 2007 Task Force survey titled The Internet and the Threat
It Poses to Local Media: Lessons from News in the Schools offered
evidence of a strong movement in America’s classrooms toward
the use of Internet-based news and away from the use of newspapers
and television news, a trend that the survey’s authors said
was virtually certain to continue. This and other Task Force products
have served as a catalyst for the industry—presenting solid
research, an element of urgency and a sense of mission.
The
Task Force will continue to take public stands and issue public
statements pertaining to the rights and responsibilities of media
companies, journalists, educators, government and American citizens.
It will stand in opposition to institutional, structural, and commercial
threats to the integrity of the profession and will work to improve
the quality of the journalism industry and journalism education.
About
Carnegie Corporation of New York
Carnegie Corporation of New York was created by Andrew Carnegie
in 1911 to promote "the advancement and diffusion of knowledge
and understanding." For more than 95 years the Corporation
has carried out Carnegie's vision of philanthropy by building on
his two major concerns: international peace and advancing education
and knowledge. As a private grantmaking foundation, the Corporation
will invest more than $100 million this year in nonprofits to fulfill
Mr. Carnegie's mission, "to do real and permanent good in this
world." The Corporation's capital fund, originally donated
at a value of about $135 million, had a market value of $3 billion
on September 30, 2007.
About
the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation promotes journalism excellence
worldwide and invests in the vitality of the U.S. communities where
the Knight brothers owned newspapers. Since 1950 the foundation
has granted more than $300 million to advance journalism quality
and freedom of expression. Knight Foundation focuses on ideas and
projects that create transformational change. To learn more, visit
www.knightfoundation.org.
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