Cronkite Institute for High School Journalism

Summer high school journalism institute students report
from the Sony Television Studio at the Cronkite school.

The Cronkite Institute for High School Journalism is a consortium of programs that provide support and training for high school journalism students and their teachers.

The institute includes long-standing Cronkite programs as well as several new ones. It is directed by Anita Luera, a longtime Arizona broadcast journalist and past president of the Arizona Latino Media Association.

Among the programs are the Donald W. Reynolds High School Journalism Institute, a two-week fellowship program for 35 high school journalism instructors from around the country, and two full-immersion summer programs for high school students interested in journalism—the Summer High School Broadcast Institute and the Entravision Summer Digital Media Institute.

A major new initiative is the Stardust High School Journalism Program under which the Cronkite School is supporting struggling high school journalism programs by providing equipment, training and support. In 2008, the school installed fully equipped multimedia newsrooms at five underserved Arizona high schools. Five more schools joined the program in 2009. Dave Cornelius, a longtime Valley educator who built the state’s premier high school broadcast education program, has joined the Cronkite School as director of the Stardust High School Journalism Program.

As part of the school’s outreach efforts, Luera visits dozens of high schools throughout the state each semester. She travels in a Cronkite School vehicle outfitted with a television camera and other equipment that can be taken into classrooms, job fairs and other events, allowing students to try out equipment and see themselves on camera. The program aims to encourage students who might not otherwise have had any exposure to journalism to consider journalism as a career.

In addition, the Cronkite School supports daylong workshops each year for high school students, working closely with the Arizona Interscholastic Press Association, the Arizona Latino Media Association and the Arizona Indian Education Association.

Also, through a partnership between the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication and the Workforce Education and Development Office of University College, the Cronkite School has launched a new Career and Technical Education (CTE) program providing technical advisement, professional development, curricular support, training courses and an online collaborative community of practice to secondary school teachers statewide. The resources enable teachers to bolster high school journalism programs throughout the state and better prepare students for college.

The school’s array of programs is arguably the most extensive offered by any university in the country, according to Cronkite Dean Christopher Callahan.

Many high school journalism programs have suffered in recent years, the victim of budget cuts and other priorities, especially at schools with large minority populations. This is despite the fact that studies have consistently shown that students who study journalism do better in both high school and college.

By building stronger high school programs, the Cronkite School hopes to create a pool of talented young people who will go on to study journalism in college and who will enter the profession, according to Callahan.

The high school programs are possible because of the support of a variety of individuals and foundations, including the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation, the Stardust Foundation, Entravision, the Arizona Broadcasters Association, the Scripps Howard Foundation, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the American Society of News Editors.