Downtown Phoenix campus

Located in the heart of downtown Phoenix, the Cronkite School is widely considered the best equipped, most advanced journalism education facility in the country.

World-class building

Students study and work in a 100,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art media complex on the corner of Central Avenue and Taylor Street. The building includes a large forum for public events, five digital newsrooms, two digital media laboratories, seven other computer labs, two TV studios and control rooms, dozens of digital editing bays, a 150-seat auditorium, seven conference rooms and a Student Services Center with a reading room and interview rooms for internship and job prospects. The LEED Silver-certified building won an international architecture award.

Proximity to major-market media organizations

The school is closer to major metropolitan news operations – TV, online, newspaper and audio – than any other journalism school in the country. The proximity is important in a discipline in which high-quality professional internships during college are essential for future success. The Cronkite School owns and operates Arizona’s PBS station, located in the Cronkite building. The current reach of Arizona PBS, and the school’s nightly newscast Cronkite News, is 4.8 million people in 1.9 million households across 80 percent of Arizona. The weekly viewership is more than 1 million. Just blocks away are The Arizona Republic – one of the nation’s largest daily newspapers – azcentral.com, KPNX-TV/Channel 12 –  the region’s NBC affiliate –FOX 10/KSAZ-TV, FOX Sports Net, CBS Radio, the Phoenix Business Journal and La Voz, a leading Spanish-language newspaper. Other daily news operations are within a few miles.

Accessibility to fieldwork

The core of the school’s journalism curriculum is rigorous fieldwork, with students reporting, writing, producing and editing stories for public consumption. The school’s location makes it possible for students to easily cover major events, people and issues. Within walking distance are city hall, federal, state and local courthouses and government agencies, as well as the Phoenix Bioscience Center and cultural venues such as the Herberger, Orpheum and Dodge theaters. Sports venues, such as Chase Field, home of the Arizona Diamondbacks, and Talking Stick Resort Arena, homes of the Phoenix Suns, are a short walk from campus.

Liberal arts coursework

All journalism courses are taught in the new building, and students are able to take their general education core classes on the downtown campus. Cronkite students can complete their entire course of study on the downtown campus, but they can easily enroll in specialty classes – or pursue a second major – on the Tempe campus.

Residential living

First-year Cronkite students reside in Gordon Commons, a residential hall just across the street from the Cronkite building. The complex, located between First and Second streets on Taylor Street across from the Cronkite School, features two towers with 1,284 beds and a combined 366,500 square feet of space.

The first floor includes a dining facility, retail stores and an outdoor patio garden. Each floor has a laundry facility, meeting room, vending area, atrium lounge and screened porches. Gordon Commons also features living and learning communities for the Cronkite students enrolled in Barrett, The Honors College.

Light rail system

A light rail transportation system connects Mesa, Tempe and Phoenix. The 20-mile line runs from uptown Phoenix through the city’s downtown and east to Tempe and Mesa. A light rail station sits directly across from the Cronkite School and gets students to and from the Tempe campus in about half an hour.

Student amenities

A student center on the Downtown Phoenix campus serves as the hub of student interaction and connection. It features meeting spaces for the campus’s 100-plus student clubs and organizations as well as a gaming room, recreation lounge, five high-definition TVs, a grand piano and a station for Changemaker Central, which connects students to resources to support their big ideas.

The Sun Devil Fitness Complex, in collaboration with the Lincoln Family Downtown YMCA, consists of 143,000 square feet devoted to fitness, wellness, sports and aquatic facilities for ASU students and the downtown Phoenix community. It includes more than 150 pieces of state-of-the-art cardio and strength equipment, two pools, an indoor running track, two gymnasiums and numerous group fitness studios offering a broad range of group fitness, yoga, Pilates and mindfulness activities. The rooftop pool – with great views of the city – is exclusively for student use.