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. This interest has led the Corporation to create the Carnegie Journalism Initiative which, over the next few years, will make a very limited number of grants to selected freestanding journalism schools at major American research universities.

The initiative focuses on revitalizing journalism education in the United States by helping journalism schools to experiment with enriching their curriculum in ways that will both improve journalism education and spur a national conversation with other journalism educators across the country.

This effort is one element of the Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education, which was launched in May 2005, and builds on three years of discussions by Vartan Gregorian and the deans of leading journalism schools at four of America’s top research universities—Berkeley, Columbia, Northwestern and the University of Southern California—along with the director of the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University. These conversations laid a foundation for developing a vision of what a journalism school can be at an exemplary institution of higher education, a concern shared by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which has joined with the Corporation in supporting aspects of the initiative other than curriculum enrichment.

Inaugural, multi-year curriculum enrichment grants were made by the Corporation to the journalism schools at Berkeley, Columbia, Northwestern and the University of Southern California in the spring of 2005. In August 2005, the Corporation announced that five additional journalism schools at major research universities—the University of Florida, the University of Maryland, the University of Missouri, Syracuse University and the University of Texas at Austin—have been asked to submit proposals for curriculum enrichment and a few more journalism schools may be included in curriculum enrichment efforts by the fall of 2006.

The goal of this follow-up effort (supported only by the Corporation) reflects our concern with encouraging experimentation within journalism schools and forging a greater integration with other university disciplines and departments in order to offer students the opportunity to benefit from the resources of the larger university community. Our hope is that this project will help to stimulate a rethinking and reconceptualization of journalism education in the 21st century, in light of the changes the news industry faces and the needs of a more complex and knowledge-based society. It is hoped Journalism schools in the initiative will help students gain deep knowledge of a subject, not only how to cover a subject. The goal of this revitalization of journalism education is to assure a better and more comprehensive reporting leadership and thus a better informed public who understand important issues facing the nation - from science, to government, to medicine, to business.

The Corporation will not be accepting unsolicited proposals for this initiative. Schools invited to become part of the initiative must reflect the following criteria:

• Freestanding journalism programs at research universities.
• Schools with graduate programs.
• Schools with established deans.
• Universities that have the institutional and financial commitment of the president to support this project.

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

Press Releases

CARNEGIE-KNIGHT INITIATIVE ON THE FUTURE OF JOURNALISM

PRESS RELEASE ANNOUNCING PHASE II OF THE INITIATIVE

Presidents Of Five Universities Renew Their Commitment To Revitalize Journalism

Carnegie Journalism Reports

• Mandatory Testing and News in the Schools:Implications for Civic Education

• The Internet and the Threat It Poses to Local Media:Lessons from News in the Schools

• The Business of News: a Challenge for Journalism's Next Generation

• Journalism's Crisis of Confidence: a Challenge for the Next Generation
  Also available as individual chapters:
   • Introduction by Vartan Gregorian
   • Journalism's Crisis of Confidence: A Challenge for the Next Generation
   • Appendix A: List of Participants
   • Appendix B:
     • Introduction
     • New Americans: Fresh Off the Presses
     • Abandoning the News
     • Nonprofit Journalism: Removing the Pressure of the Bottom Line

NEWS21
• Innovative Reporting by Journalism Students

• News21 Project Provides Top-Flight investigative Reports