Cronkite to Operate Dow Jones News Fund Digital Program

The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University has been selected as the Dow Jones News Fund’s newest digital journalism training center. Thirteen college journalism students from across the country will spend a week at the school getting intensive multimedia training before they head to summer internships at companies that include The Wall Street Journal, The Denver Post, The Indianapolis Star and The Arizona Republic. The program will run May 26 through June 2. The Cronkite School is one of two Dow Jones-sponsored digital training centers for college students in the U.S. The other is at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Ky. “It’s an honor and a privilege to be awarded a Dow Jones training site,” said Michael Wong, director of the program and the Cronkite School’s director of career services. “These talented students will learn from our high-caliber Cronkite faculty and staff, plus they’ll get to experience our amazing digital facility.” The training will focus on multimedia storytelling and students will learn about the newest digital tools and techniques to tell those stories. The Dow Jones News Fund selects nearly 100 students each year for internships at news outlets across the country and provides specialized training to ensure the students’ success. The programs are highly competitive: Hundreds of students take the DJNF editing exam in the fall semester and submit additional materials as part of the application process. Richard Holden, executive director of the News Fund, said he first visited the Cronkite School several years ago for a conference and “was impressed with everything that I saw. I was even more impressed with the faculty that Dean (Christopher) Callahan has assembled. When I received a proposal from ASU to play host to one of our digital media training programs for college students, I didn’t have to give it a second thought. I think the students will have a great experience.” The Dow Jones News Fund is a national foundation supported by Dow Jones & Co., the Dow Jones Foundation and others within the news industry. It operates grant programs that support high school and college journalism education and promotes careers in journalism. Among the programs are four copy-editing training centers located at the University of Missouri, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Texas-Austin and Temple University in Philadelphia. In addition, the University of Nebraska trains sports copy editors, Western Kentucky University and ASU focus on digital journalism training, and New York University hosts a business reporting training program. The foundation also supports journalism scholarships, holds workshops for teachers and honors outstanding students and educators. Applications for media companies interested in Internship programs in digital, news and sports editing and business reporting are available at http://tiny.cc/yxh4sw.