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Cronkite School to direct Carnegie-Knight News21 project

By Len Gutman on July 7th, 2008 In Media

The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication announced today that the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation are giving Arizona State University a $7.5 million grant to direct “a bold, experimental digital media program at 12 leading U.S. universities.”

According to the press release, “the News21 initiative, which the foundations hope will help redefine journalism education and prepare a new generation of journalists capable of reshaping the struggling news industry, will be headquartered at the new Phoenix home of ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.”

Cronkite School Dean Christopher Callahan told his staff in an e-mail on Sunday that the news is significant on several levels:

• There are only 12 universities (11 J-schools) in the Carnegie-Knight Journalism Initiative, and no more are expected to be added. These are the 11 journalism schools that these two leading foundations believe are the very best in journalism education.
• News21 (http://newsinitiative.org), an experimental digital media project that is a major part of the Carnegie-Knight Initiative and is now in its third year with the original five Carnegie-Knight schools (Columbia, Northwestern, USC, Berkeley and Harvard), expands under the new grant from five to 12 schools, including Cronkite. The new grant expands the number of “incubator” schools from four to eight (the new schools are Cronkite, Maryland, Syracuse and North Carolina).
• The national operation of News21 will be moved from Berkeley to the Cronkite School. ASU will be directing the News21 project for all 12 Carnegie-Knight universities. Over the next few weeks and months the school will be hiring a three-person full-time staff to run the program.
• The grant – $7.5 million over three years – is the largest, by far, in the history of the Cronkite School, and one of the largest in all journalism education.

The complete press release can be read here.
 

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