$100 Million Campaign Marks Columbia J-School's Largest Fund Drive Yet

By: Joe Strupp Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism plans to announce next week "an historic" $100 million fundraising campaign, according to Dean Nicholas Lemann, who said it is the largest such effort yet.

"The J-school has never done a really big campaign like this," Lemann told E&P Wednesday. "We have always fund-raised, but never had an announced nine-figure campaign."

Lemann plans to formally present the six-year fundraising project during an opening ceremony on Sept. 26 for the newly created Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism, which opened Aug. 21.

Lemann stressed that the multi-million dollar campaign, which is set to culminate during the journalism school's 100th anniversary in 2012, is not a sign of difficult financial times at the graduate school. Instead, he sees it as a way for the journalism program to expand its efforts at improving and expanding the school's work.

"The reason it wasn't done in the past is that there is a feeling among journalism schools that they live in a universe of limited potential fundraising," he said. "A lot of other colleges are getting major gifts. I hope the feeling is that journalism schools can begin to mount major, multi-year fundraising campaigns that are somewhat less-familiar at schools of journalism."

Lemann said the primary goal of the campaign will be to increase student financial aid, with faculty and other needs as secondary recipients. Since he became dean three years ago, Lemann said the journalism school had increased its annual fundraising from between $5 million and $10 million to about $20 million during each of the past two years.

"I've spent one-third of my time over the past two-and-a-half years working on this," said Lemann. "We want our school to be as good as we possibly can be."

The opening ceremony for the Stabile Center will be at 7 p.m. next Tuesday at the graduate school's lecture hall. David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, will introduce the center's director, Sheila S. Coronel, an investigative journalist known for her coverage of the Philippines.

The Stabile Center is endowed by a $5 million donation from Toni Stabile, an investigative journalist and president of the Vincent Stabile Foundation.