9 'New York Times Institutes' to Be Held in 2007

By: E&P Staff Journalists wanting to learn more about reporting on healthcare, the environment, or even dance, can get that training from the nine New York Times Institutes to be held in 2007.

Each of the Institutes will run for one to three weeks and offer immersion classes on a particular topic for about a dozen participating journalists. Held at a variety of locations, each session will be hosted by an institution considered to be an expert in the field.

Writers, reporters, and editors are invited to apply for each of the Institutes held between February and October of the upcoming year. A range of topics are scheduled for each of the sessions.

For the scientifically minded, Columbia University in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic will host an Institute on Environmental Threats in association with The Center for Environmental Management in March. Also, a session in May on The Science, Politics and Ethics of Embryonic Stem Cell Research will be hosted by New York University?s Department of Journalism.

Two Institutes will also offer education on economic issues. Columbia University?s Graduate School of Journalism will host Covering Globalization: Food, trade, Agriculture and the Environment in March. And the Markle Foundation in New York will host Two Explosions in Health Care: Content and Cost, in February. Fifteen journalists will be accepted to this Institute to study the deepening relationship between medical technology and economics.

Three Institutes are more artistically inclined. The Museum of the Moving Image in New York will host a five-day Institute in April on the Art and Industry of Film. The National Dance Institute at Duke University in Durham, N.C., will host Dance Reporting and Criticism in June. And Theater Reporting and Criticism will be the topic of July?s session at the Eugene O?Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Conn.

The final two sessions will be held in October in New York City. The New York Times will be host to the Institute on The Ethnic Press, and the International Longevity Center will present The Age Boom Academy, to help journalists understand the rise in life-expectancy and its political, economic, cultural, and scientific implications.

Since 2000, the New York Times has held 33 institutes with approximately 400 participating journalists. In addition to the classes offered at each session, Web sites and informational material will be available for those journalists not attending.