Cronkite Global Initiatives

Empowering Future Journalists (2023): Advancing Media Education and Fostering Innovation in North Macedonia: Quality news and information are vital to self-governance in any country. Functioning democracies require citizens who are educated about the decisions of government and the ways that government interacts with the people, businesses, national institutions, and global partners. This knowledge empowers citizens to engage in public policy development and hold their leaders accountable.

IREX’s Media Sustainability report noted a dramatic drop in North Macedonia’s journalism school enrollment. To meet this urgent need for well-trained journalists, this project establishes a strategic relationship between The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University and the Faculty of Law at Saints Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, North Macedonia, to address the limitations and challenges faced by the media in North Macedonia and generate new interest in journalism among potential students.

Media Campaigns to Fight Gender Based Violence: Arizona State University is leading a large, interdisciplinary initiative to help reduce gender-based violence in El Salvador, with the goal of stemming the flow of irregular migration to the United States.The project, called “LibrES: For an El Salvador without Gender-Based Violence,” is being funded by a $35 million, five-year cooperative agreement awarded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and will focus on three areas: prevention, protection and accountability. The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication is leading the design of media campaigns to address violent, controlling and abusive behavior by influencing how people think about gender roles and about violence against disabled and LGBTQ people.

First Cities Summit of the Americas (2023): The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University partnered with Equis Institute and the U.S. Department of State to deliver programming as part of a State Department Summit that convened leaders from across the Americas to discuss the best practices for combating disinformation, conspiracy theories and hyperpartisan narratives in the media. The Cities Summit of the Americas featured a number of government officials, journalists and research experts engaging in a robust conversation on how to protect fact-based democratic discourse and support those who deal with the offline consequences.

Media Summit of the Americas (2022): Journalists and civil society leaders from across the Americas gathered at the ASU in California Center in 2022 to participate in the first-ever Media Summit of the Americas, a multilingual conference designed to address a growing information crisis in the hemisphere.

The event, which was part of the larger Ninth Summit of the Americas, was organized by the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University; the U.S. Department of State; and Equis Institute, a hub for leaders in the Latino community working to increase civic participation in American democracy. This event brought important personalities to ASU, including the Secretary of State. Link https://cronkite.asu.edu/media-summit-americas-22/

Business & Economic Journalism
Benefits of South Asia Economic Integration: A Journalism Summit (2018-2020) – Promote business and economic reporting in South Asia. Cronkite Global Initiatives partnered with the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism to train 65 journalists from six nations in South Asia. The project launched with a March 2019 multi-day conference in Dubai and later that year facilitated the organization of the South Asian Society of Economic Reporters (SASER). The purpose is to support business journalists in each of these nations:  Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. This network offers training, enables information sharing and fosters collaboration on reporting projects. Learn more about SASER.

Elections Reporting
Election Reporting in Pakistan – The Cronkite School partnered with Media Foundation 360 in Pakistan in 2017 to train journalists in election coverage reporting techniques. Funded by the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, three faculty members held on-the-ground workshops in three Pakistani cities for 75 practicing journalists and in partnership with four Pakistani universities. They developed and delivered university courses on election media coverage. Learning objectives and concepts covered included the democratic electoral processes, underscore the watchdog role of the independent media in safeguarding the freedom and fairness of elections and using specific reporting skills to enable audiences to become fully informed on candidates and platforms.  Read their project.

A similar elections reporting project was conducted in Botswana. 

Train the Trainer
Faculty research and teacher training in Pakistan – Strengthen, deepen, and internationalize the professional and scholarly contributions of the University of the Punjab’s faculty in the fields of mass communication and development studies. The Cronkite School combined with ASU’s Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict to help PU’s Institute of Social and Cultural Studies and Institute of Communication Studies, partnered on a comprehensive three-year project funded by the the U.S. State Department. The project led to the advancement in curriculum development and teaching, socially embedded research and publications, and encouraged international scholarly engagement. Twelve faculty from the PU’s ISS spent a semester embedded at the Cronkite school working alongside fellow scholars. Six Cronkite faculty traveled to Lahore to offer curriculum consultation, scholarly support and demonstrations of classroom teaching techniques.  

Refugees
Coverage of refugees in the Balkans – A collaboration between the Cronkite School including alumni of the Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship. The University of Zagreb’s journalism faculty and other regional schools brought together scholars, teachers and students from several countries to implement a multi-media training and reporting project focused on the impact of the Syrian refugee crisis in the Balkans. Twenty-six students and 6 faculty members from Arizona, Albania, Croatia, Greece, Montenegro, Slovenia and Serbia produced two TV news magazines, created an online reporting portal and shared social media stories. Learn more about the project.

Disinformation and Media Literacy
Fake News and Disinformation in Croatia – Dr. Silcock and Assistant Professor Dr. Jacob Nelson’s work focuses on the changing relationship between journalists and the public. The two trained 25 young journalists from the four countries in the Balkans. The workshop consisted of “hands-on” training workshops that produced more than 15 video products-mini documentaries, tv stories and 4 “how-to” educational videos. This was a highly successful collaborative reporting project with the University of Zagreb. Croatian faculty and students from the University of Zagreb’s journalism department (FPZG), along with six students and one faculty member from three other countries joined in the collaboration. The Public Affairs Office at the U.S. Embassy in Zagreb funded the project and it received awards. Watch the video.

Other major international initiatives include faculty-led Cronkite study abroad programs, overseas faculty research projects, invited scholars and professionals in residence and training for emerging international journalists through programs such as the Edward R. Murrow Program for Journalists through the U.S. Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program.