UNL joins Carnegie-Knight initiative on transforming journalism education

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Journalism and Mass Communications will receive a $250,000 grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to launch a series of new courses.

UNL was invited in 2007 to join a consortium of the country's top journalism schools in a national initiative to redefine journalism education and train a new generation of journalists capable of reshaping the news industry.

The Carnegie-Knight initiative is investing more than $11 million to bolster the journalism curriculum at 12 schools. At UNL, the Carnegie grant will fund creation of a series of year-long courses that focus on the issues of indigenous peoples in the United States and abroad. The courses will be team-taught by history and journalism professors and will draw upon scholars from other UNL programs to help teach aspiring journalists. Each course will be organized as a seminar during the first semester and a practicum in the second semester. Students will use time between the semesters to travel and conduct interviews for a multimedia journalism project that will be completed at each year's end.

"As other nations increase in economic and strategic strength, it is vital that our students are prepared to communicate with persons in other cultures to promote understanding and prevent media stereotypes," said Will Norton Jr., dean of the College of Journalism and Mass Communications.

The Carnegie-Knight initiative includes two additional efforts to address and adapt to the sea change taking place in the news industry: expansion of the existing News21 program -- an experimental, online news incubator that includes paid fellowships for journalism students; and the appointment of a journalism task force to speak out about the importance of upholding the highest standards and ideals of journalism.

"In the future, it may be impossible to think of a newspaper newsroom, a television newsroom, a radio newsroom or an online newsroom. Newsrooms will be multi-media," Norton said. "Thus, we have to prepare students for newsrooms in which they will have to work in all media."

Other journalism schools participating in the Carnegie-Knight initiative are the University of Southern California, University of Texas at Austin, University of Maryland, Northwestern University, Columbia University, University of Missouri, Syracuse University, University of California at Berkeley, Arizona State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 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 Carnegie-Knight initiative

The Carnegie Corp. of New York was created by Andrew Carnegie in 1911 to promote "the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding." For more than 95 years, the corporation has carried out Carnegie's vision of philanthropy by building on his two major concerns: international peace and advancing education and knowledge. As a private grant-making foundation, the corporation will invest more than $100 million this year in nonprofits to fulfill Carnegie's mission, "to do real and permanent good in this world." The corporation's capital fund, originally donated at a value of about $135 million, had a market value of $3 billion on Sept. 30, 2007.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation promotes journalism excellence worldwide and invests in the vitality of the U.S. communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers. Since 1950, the foundation has granted more than $300 million to advance journalism quality and freedom of expression. The Knight Foundation focuses on ideas and projects that create transformational change.