News from the Cronkite School

The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University was the focus of a recent “Newsmaker Sunday,” the 30-minute public affairs show on Fox10.

For the second year in a row, a Cronkite senior is one of the Scripps Howard Foundation’s top 10 journalism students in the country. Deanna Dent of Tempe won a $10,000 scholarship for her academic and journalistic achievements.

Leonard Downie Jr., former executive editor of the Washington Post, talks about his career, the future of the news business and what makes good journalism during a visit to ASU and the Cronkite School.

Professor John Craft, the senior member of the Cronkite faculty, is the winner of the first Jack Clifford Broadcast Educator of the Year Award, given by the Arizona Broadcasters Association. He will be honored Oct. 16 at the association 19th Annual Hall of Fame Dinner.

The Cronkite School will host a week of special events Nov. 17-21 celebrating the school’s 25th anniversary and the dedication of its new building in downtown Phoenix.

The executive editor of The Arizona Republic, Nicole Carroll, is the newest member of the Cronkite Alumni Hall of Fame. Carroll, who graduated from the Cronkite School in 1991, was named to the Republic’s No. 2 newsroom position earlier this year. At age 40, she is one of the youngest executive editors of a major metropolitan newspaper.

A five-story light sculpture is attracting attention at the new Cronkite School building in downtown Phoenix. The artwork, designed by Paul Deeb of Vox Arts, Baltimore, replaces what would be ordinary windows in the main stairwell on the south side of the building.

The Society of American Business Editors and Writers announces that it will hold its 2010 annual conference at the Cronkite School’s new facility in downtown Phoenix. The SABEW, a not-for-profit organization of business journalists, promotes business journalism through education.

For the second year in a row, Cronkite students dominated the national AEJMC student magazine contest, winning more awards than students from any other university in the country.

The Cronkite School has raised more than $2.6 million to help fund digital equipment and specialized student programs in the school’s newly opened home on ASU’s downtown Phoenix campus.

The new Phoenix home of the Cronkite School officially opens Monday, a spectacular 21st century learning center designed to teach and inspire digital media innovation while capitalizing on a premier location in the heart of the nation’s fifth-largest city.

The Cronkite School is hosting special programs every day for students and the general public during the inaugural semester of the school’s new downtown Phoenix home.

Digital media innovator CJ Cornell is named Entrepreneur in Residence at the new Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at the Cronkite School. He will help students plan, develop and launch new media products.

Digital media leader Jody Brannon is the new national director of a 12-university, $7.5 million project funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to explore new ways to produce in-depth multimedia journalism.

A digital clearinghouse for news diversity research was unveiled at UNITY: Journalists of Color, Inc.’s national convention in Chicago. The database contains more than 400 references related to diversity in journalism, provided in an easily searchable online database.

Only about 13 percent of the Washington daily newspaper press corps are journalists of color, according to a study on diversity by UNITY: Journalist of Color, Inc. and the Cronkite School.

Rick Rodriguez, the former executive editor at the Sacramento Bee who joined the Cronkite School faculty earlier this year, is named the school’s first Carnegie Professor specializing in Latino and transnational news coverage.

The Cronkite School recently equipped a hybrid SUV with the tools of journalism, including a television camera, microphones, audio recorders and backdrops, and is taking it to high schools around the state in an attempt to interest students in journalism.

Five Arizona high schools will get fully equipped multimedia newsrooms this fall as part of the Stardust High School Journalism Program, a unique initiative to create newsrooms in high schools.

The Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation are giving the Cronkite School a $7.5 million grant to direct a bold, experimental digital media program at 12 leading U.S. universities.