Saturday, June 24, 2006

Students Take 21st Century News Initiative Students and recent grads working under the Carnegie and Knight foundations' five-university "initiative on the future of journalism education" are showing their stuff as "News21 fellows," producing packages on heavyweight news issues: Homeland Security: The Money Trail, Columbia students dig into the "security-industrial complex." The U.S. Military Abroad, Berkeley News21 fellows head to  Djibouti, South Korea and Kyrgyzstan, to look at the lives of American soldiers Privacy and National Security, Medill School's students look into government information-gathering campaigns and privacy issues. Immigration, USC Annenberg School students head for the border to tell "compelling stories about the perilous intersection where security and freedom collide." News21 is the "incubator" part of the Carnegie-Knight project, which also includes innovations in journalism education curriculum and a research-oriented task force, which has already produced a manifesto about the importance of journalism education.  A manifesto sample: "In today's changing world of news consumption, journalism schools should be exploring the technological, intellectual, artistic, and literary possibilities of journalism to the fullest extent, and should be leading a constant expansion and improvement in the ability of the press to inform the public as fully, deeply, and interestingly as it can about matters of the highest importance and complexity." While I like to think that excellent journalism by well-funded fellows from elite universities might raise the esteem of journalism education in general --which would be good-- I don't see it as raising the budgets for public affairs reporting at financially-strapped state universities. The "watchdog" role of the press doesn't fill seats in journalism classes the way sports and feature writing do. And without those big foundation grants for out-of-state or international travel, the most likely targets for student "watchdogs" just might include the legislators who write those budgets. That's less "News21" and more "Catch22." If not money, what else besides "esteem" might trickle down to journalism schools from the Carnegie-Knight Initiative? One possibility could be the techniques used on the News21 reporting projects, especially if they keep a "for the rest of us" budget in mind. Dan Gillmor, the former San Jose Mercury News technology reporter who has become a guru of Citizen Journalism, points out a bright spot: While the News21 projects are aimed at producing "broadcast-quality journalism," they are also using low-cost readily available blogging tools. Those are bookmarks to store away for the fall semester. 12:58:47 PM

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