About the Cronkite School

The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication is widely recognized as one of the nation’s premier professional journalism programs. Rooted in the time-honored values that characterize its namesake — accuracy, responsibility, objectivity, integrity — the school fosters journalistic excellence and ethics among students as they master the professional skills they need to succeed in the digital media world of today and tomorrow.

Located on Arizona State University’s Downtown Phoenix campus in a state-of-the-art media complex, the Cronkite School leads the way in journalism education with its innovative use of the teaching hospital model, for which it has received international acclaim.

Arizona PBS, one of the nation’s largest public television 
stations, is part of Cronkite, making it the largest media outlet operated by a journalism school in the world. Arizona PBS serves as a hub for the Cronkite School’s full-immersion professional programs and a testing ground for new approaches in journalism.

Students get hands-on experiences in 15 intensive, full-immersion professional programs that produce news, information and community engagement on critical issues for the state, region and nation. They report on the most important issues of the day from public affairs news bureaus in Phoenix and Washington, D.C., and cover both news and sports from a Los Angeles bureau. Other immersion programs focus on digital audiences, public relations, bilingual news, health journalism, television production, digital innovation and entrepreneurship. Students in the Carnegie-Knight News21 program produce major projects on issues critical to Americans, and students in the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism pursue investigations that reveal wrongdoing and serve the public good.

Student work is published at Cronkite News and is published and broadcast by news organizations around the state, region and country. The student-produced Cronkite News newscast airs weeknights on Arizona PBS, reaching 1.9 million households.

Students are guided by a faculty that is made up of both award-winning professional journalists and world-class media scholars. The faculty includes such leading figures as former Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr.; former president of CBS News Andrew Heyward; former Atlanta Journal-Constitution editor-in-chief Julia Wallace; former New York Times bureau chief Fernanda Santos; former Arizona Republic publisher Mi-Ai Parrish; Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Sarah Cohen, Steve Doig, Jacqueline Petchel and Walter V. Robinson; public relations executive Mark Haas; and national sports columnist Paola Boivin.

ASU’s investment in the school has generated national and international attention from educators and media professionals who place the school in the top tier of all U.S. journalism schools. The Times of London, The New York Times and USA Today have highlighted Cronkite in articles about changes taking place at journalism schools across the country. The prestigious publications called the Cronkite School a pioneer, kindling a notion of new media that will shape how news is delivered and how people will stay informed in the future.