News 21 prepares students for a changing news industry

News 21 and the Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education

Led by a group of America's leading research universities, with the support of the Carnegie Corporation and Knight Foundation, this national initiative's goal is to helping improve schools of journalism, and, therefore, the news community’s ability to cover important stories. To better prepare the next generation of news leaders for an increasingly complex world, the universities raise the priority of journalism schools on campus and better integrate them with the entire university.

The project has three components:

• Course enrichment: New classes bring top teachers from outside journalism schools to team-teach classes in subjects like economics, politics, science and the arts. This helps put journalism schools more into the center of intellectual activity on campuses.
   
• News 21: With the addition of the three schools, the initiative now funds curriculum enhancement and student fellowships at 11 journalism schools and one research center. The three new schools, Arizona State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, join schools currently supported by the initiative at: University of Southern California; University of Texas at Austin; University of Maryland; Northwestern University; Columbia University; University of Missouri; Syracuse University; and University of California at Berkeley. A research center, the Joan Shorenstein Center for Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, is also supported by the initiative.
  
  Projects addressed by students working in summer workshops have included "What's At Stake: Election 2008", "Faces of Faith in the United States" (2007) and "Liberty vs. Security" (2006). 

  See www.News21project.org for the latest content from News21.

• Deans Task Force: Harvard University's Shorenstein Center produces major reports on topics such as: using news as a classroom tool in middle and high schools, youth news consumption and the effect of the internet on local news.

For more, go to www.newsinitiative.org read the July 2008 press release.