CARNEGIE JOURNALISM INITIATIVE

Under President Vartan Gregorian's leadership, Carnegie Corporation of New York has made journalism education one of its key priorities, although it is not a full-fledged program.

In 2003, the Corporation began a dialogue with various deans of journalism schools to see how America's major research universities could improve journalism curriculum and thus challenge both students and the news industry at this pivotal time of change for American journalism. Vartan Gregorian asked the deans at four of America's most prestigious research universities--the University of Southern California, Northwestern University, Columbia University and the University of California, Berkeley, along with and the head of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy--to develop a vision for journalism education in the 21st century. Gregorian created a partnership with Hodding Carter, then president of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, one of America's leading philanthropies focused on excellent journalism. He also enlisted the aid of the consulting firm McKinsey & Co., which, on a pro bono basis, conducted individual interviews of 40 leaders in the news industry, including news executives, editors, and correspondents, to determine their thoughts about journalism education.

These conversations created the intellectual foundation for the Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education, launched in 2005. Since it began, seven additional university schools of journalism have joined the initiative, capping in at a twelve-university membership.

The relationship with the Knight Foundation under its new president Alberto Ibarguen is a 50-50 partnership with both foundations supporting all intellectual, scholarly, reform and innovative facets of the initiative.

A key feature of the initiative is curriculum enrichment, which focuses on offering students a deep and multi-layered exploration of complex subjects like history, politics, classics and philosophy that will undergird their journalistic skills as well as help to raise the profile of journalism education and its place within the university.

News 21: Incubators, which are annual national reporting projects overseen by campus professors and distributed through both traditional and innovative media; www.newsinitiative.org And The Carnegie-Knight Task Force, which provides the journalism deans with the opportunity to speak out about issues affecting both journalism education and the field of journalism itself, are the initiative's other components.

Program Staff
Susan King, Vice President, External Affairs and Director, Journalism Initiative, Special Initiatives and Strategy
Ambika Kapur, Program Associate

Press Releases

Expansion Of Carnegie-Knight Initiative Seeks To Transform Journalism Education In U.S.

Presidents Of Five Universities Renew Their Commitment To Revitalize Journalism

PRESS RELEASE ANNOUNCING PHASE II OF THE INITIATIVE

LAUNCH OF THE CARNEGIE-KNIGHT INITIATIVE ON THE FUTURE OF JOURNALISM

Carnegie-Knight Journalism Schools

• Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California
  
• Graduate School of Journalism, University of California at Berkeley
  
• Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University
  
• Joan Shorenstein Center for Press, Politics and Public Policy, Harvard University
  
• Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University
  
• Missouri School of Journalism, University of Missouri
  
• School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  
• College of Journalism and Mass Communications, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
  
• Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland
  
• S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University
  
• College of Communication, University of Texas at Austin
  
• Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Arizona State University
  

Carnegie Journalism Reports

Improving the Education of Tomorrow's Journalists		The Business of News: a Challenge for Journalism's Next Generation
The Meeting of Two Cultures: Public Broadcasting on the Threshold of the Digital Age		Journalism in the Service of Democracy: A Summit of Deans, Faculty, Students And Journalists
Journalism's Crisis of Confidence: a Challenge for the Next Generation