Multimedia Reporting Program

Members of the inaugural multimedia reporting class at azcentral.com gather on the 10th-floor balcony of The Arizona Republic, overlooking ASU's downtown campus. The class consists of (from left to right) Deborah Bevers, Samantha Sanchez, Kirsten Keane, Shea Drefs, Amanda Chan, Eric Graf, Michael Struening, Codie Sanchez, Celeste Sepessy, Amanda Fruzynski, Amanda Soares, Joseph Cox, Adrian Barrera, Love Bhakta, instructor Aric Johnson and Carolyn Carson.

A joint program of the Cronkite School and The Arizona Republic provides journalism students a cutting-edge multimedia reporting experience that helps prepare them for jobs in the rapidly changing news industry.

The students, who receive both course credit and a salary for the semester, commit to working two full days a week reporting breaking news for azcentral.com, the leading news Web site in the state. Students work in four Republic newsrooms across the Valley reporting on local crime, traffic, weather, community events and other breaking news.  Stories are updated continually, which means students often write multiple versions of a story under tight deadlines.

During the program’s inaugural semester of spring 2007, the students’ work generated an average of 100,000 to 120,000 page views a week, representing about 10 percent of the overall news page views generated by the Web site. One student’s story exceeded 50,000 views in a single day alone.

Students’ stories also receive prominent play in the print edition of The Arizona Republic, the nation’s 14th largest daily newspaper.

“The students are getting a great real-world opportunity to grow their skills, and our online and print products are enriched by their reporting,” said Randy Lovely, the Republic’s executive editor. “And their work has added to the sense of immediacy and urgency that we are pushing for throughout our news operations.”

The students are supervised by Aric Johnson, an experienced editor who is serving as the Cronkite School’s first Arizona Republic Editor-in-Residence. Johnson, who has been a reporter and editor at the Fresno Bee, the Reno Gazette-Journal and the Republic, directs the program, coaching the students and editing their work. Johnson also arranges sessions for the students with newsmakers and reporters.

Students also are producing photo slide shows and will be branching out to produce video and audio for the Web site.

Applications for the program are taken twice a year. For more information, contact Assistant Dean Kristin Gilger at kristin.gilger@asu.edu.