News from the Cronkite School

Business stories on environmental sustainability published in the nation’s 10 largest newspapers have increased dramatically, a new Reynolds study shows.

With nearly 1,100 in attendance, Walter Cronkite presented the annual award in his name to television journalist Jane Pauley.

Twelve journalists and 12 journalism educators are awarded Reynolds Center fellowships to focus on business journalism, to be held concurrently in January at the Cronkite School.

Dan Gillmor, an internationally recognized author and leader in new media and citizen-based journalism, will be the founding director of the new Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at the Cronkite School.

Rick Rodriguez, the former executive editor of The Sacramento Bee and one of the nation’s most prominent Latino journalists, will deliver the keynote address at the fall 2007 convocation for graduates of the Cronkite School.

Dean Christopher Callahan calls the subpoenas of New Times records a “grotesque and unprecedented” abuse of government powers.

Ellen Soeteber, an award-winning journalist and former top editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, will join Arizona State University as the Edith Kinney Gaylord Visiting Professor in Journalism Ethics at the Cronkite School.

Cronkite student Ryan Kost has been named one of the top 10 journalism students in the country by the Scripps Howard Foundation. He was awarded a $10,000 scholarship through the foundation’s Top Ten Scholarship Program.

Cronkite students won more awards than students from any other university in the country in the 2007 Student Magazine Contest, sponsored by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

For the fourth year in a row, public relations students in the Cronkite School placed first in the NASA Means Business Competition. The year-long competition promotes science, technology, engineering and math education to middle and high school students.

The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com are creating an endowed scholarship at the Cronkite School in the name of Republic film critic Bill Muller, who died Sept. 6. The scholarship will be awarded annually to a deserving journalism student.

The Stardust Foundation is making a $510,000 grant to the Cronkite School to fund a groundbreaking initiative to develop high school journalism programs in Arizona. The Scottsdale-based foundation will invest in multimedia classrooms at 10 selected high schools.

Tim J. McGuire, the Frank Russell Chair for the Business of Journalism in the Cronkite School, is launching a blog on the business of journalism and media ethics. He will write two to three times a week on trends in the rapidly changing news industry.

Media coverage of Latino issues will be the topic of a forum at Arizona State University Sept. 22. Gilbert Bailon, president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and editor of Al Dia, the leading Spanish-language daily newspaper in North Texas, will kick off the program, entitled “Media Coverage of Latino Issues – It’s Not Only Immigration.”

Tim McGuire, the Frank Russell Chair in the Business of Journalism at the Cronkite School, will deliver the keynote address for the Arizona Newspapers Association annual meeting and fall convention. Other Cronkite faculty will lead sessions on topics ranging from computer-assisted reporting to managing a newsroom.

Aaron Brown, the former lead anchor for CNN, has been appointed the inaugural Walter Cronkite Professor of Journalism at Arizona State University. Brown will join the full-time faculty of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in January.

Most members of the Asian American Journalists Association have positive feelings about the work they do, but they worry that media consolidation and newsroom cutbacks will weaken the profession’s commitment to diversity, according to a new survey conducted by the Cronkite School on behalf of the Asian American Journalists Association.

Two-thirds of the nation’s daily newspapers still print stock market tables in some form, but virtually none offers a complete listing of market results, according to a study by the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism.

Cronkite School Dean Christopher Callahan releases a statement following the news helicopter crash in Phoenix on July 27 that claimed four lives, including that of Jim Cox, a photojournalist for Channel 3 who was a 1993 Cronkite graduate.

Christine Devine, the Emmy Award-winning Los Angeles news anchor and 1987 graduate of the Cronkite School, is making a $50,000 gift to her alma mater to help kickoff a fund-raising campaign for the school’s new home.