Experience Cronkite from Cronkite News on Vimeo.

Videography by Taryn Hale and Jessica Goldberg

The Cronkite School had its beginnings at Arizona State University in 1931, was founded in 1984 and made an independent unit in 2005. Today, Cronkite is nationally recognized as one of the nation’s leading journalism schools and has been singled out as an innovator in journalism education by both the Times of London and The New York Times in recent years.

As “the journalism school for the digital age,” the Cronkite School teaches students how to apply traditional journalism fundamentals across digital, broadcast, text and interactive media platforms. Students where take classes from renowned journalists such as former executive editor of The Washington Post Leonard Downie Jr., former CNN anchor Aaron Brown and former vice president of BET Interactive Retha Hill.

In August 2008, the school moved into a new, $71 million, world-class media complex in downtown Phoenix, putting students within walking distance of major governmental, sporting and cultural venues as well as dozens of media outlets where they complete internships and connect with professionals in the nation’s sixth-largest city and 13th-largest media market.

Today’s Cronkite students graduate as multimedia journalists, prepared not only for the jobs of today but ready to create the jobs of tomorrow. While at Cronkite, they obtain real-world industry experience in the school’s innovative professional programs, which include:

• Cronkite NewsWatch, a live, four-day-a-week, student-produced news broadcast that reaches 1.1 million households on Arizona PBS and has been recognized as the nation’s best student newscast.
• Cronkite News Service, which provides news packages on issues affecting Arizona to major print, online and broadcast media outlets across the state.
• The Carnegie-Knight News21 Initiative, whose students produce in-depth multimedia projects on issues of national significance.
• The New Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship Lab, in which students develop cutting-edge products and digital applications for major media companies and learn how to create, launch and market their own new media ventures.
• Cronkite Washington D.C. news bureau, where students cover the nation’s capital for Arizona.
• Students do professional work in the school’s Public Relations Lab, which serves as an agency for client companies.
• A Spring Training Reporting Program, in which students report on Major League Baseball for professional news outlets.

Cronkite students routinely finish at the top of national and regional journalism contests. The Cronkite School has finished in the top 10 nationally in the Hearst Awards for 12 consecutive years, and finished in the top 5 nationally for six out of the past seven years in this competition known as the Pulitzers of college journalism. For six consecutive years, the Cronkite School has outperformed all other schools in the Society of Professional Journalists’ Mark of Excellence national awards competition.

“In short, it is a new school,” site team members wrote in the school’s 2010 accreditation report.