Carnegie-Knight News21 Initiative

The national News21 Initiative is part of an effort on the part of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to change the way journalism is taught in the United States and train a new generation of journalists capable of reshaping the news industry.

The Cronkite School serves as the national headquarters for the initiative, which includes the nation’s top journalism schools. The school received a $7.5 million grant to run the program, the largest grant in the history of the school.

The News21 program started in 2006 with summer “incubators” at the University of California at Berkeley, Columbia University, Northwestern University and the University of Southern California. Students in the incubators traveled the country to produce in-depth news coverage on critical issues facing the nation and then experimented with innovative digital methods to distribute the news on multiple platforms.

In 2008, the number of incubators was expanded to eight schools, including the Cronkite School. Four other schools contribute students to the program.

Students participate in an intensive seminar working with professors who are acknowledged experts in the school’s field of inquiry. Students from the seminar are then are selected in a competitive process for paid summer fellowships, during which they report their stories and produce material for publication or broadcast across a number of platforms.

For the summer of 2009, the deans selected a cross-disciplinary topic, loosely described as the American Tapestry: Exploring the Demographics of a Changing Nation. Each of the eight incubator schools determined an aspect of that broad topic, to encourage cross-campus collaboration and to capitalize on each university’s strengths through a News21 journalism seminar.

For 2009 the incubator topics are as follows:

• Arizona State University: The Latino Experience Across America
• California-Berkeley: Urban Reporting, Demographics and the American Tapestry
• Columbia: U.S. Charter Schools: Exploring Cultural, Linguistic & Immigrant Challenges
• University of Maryland: The U.S. Political Landscape: Racial Identity and Attitudes
• University of North Carolina: Changing America: Population and Energy Use
• Northwestern University: Urban Youth and the New America
• University of Southern California: Southwestern Shifts: New Communities and New Realities
• Syracuse University: Teen America: Technology, Identity and Next-Gen Empowerment

In addition, four other Carnegie-Knight schools – the University of Missouri at Columbia, the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, the University of Texas at Austin and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University – will send students to the eight incubators.

Students participating in News21 incubators already have produced experimental reporting on seldom-covered but important stories, and their work has been published or broadcast by news organizations including The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Miami Herald, L.A. Weekly, Forbes.com, The Associated Press, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and CNN. This summer student-produced reports will be published on NPR.org, the incubator’s current national news partner as well as at newsinitiative.org.

News21 is the latest digital news program at the Cronkite School, which has taken a national leadership role in preparing students for the dramatic changes in the news industry triggered by the digital revolution. Cronkite already is home to the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship, in which students learn to create and launch their own online news products; the New Media Innovation Lab, which serves as a research and development lab for news companies looking for digital solutions; and the Azcentral.com Multimedia Reporting Program, a partnership with The Arizona Republic in which students cover breaking news in multiple media for the newspaper’s Web site.