“Journalism is what we need to make democracy work,” the late-great CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite once declared. His simple but sage observation resonates today. Ours is a nation that needs journalists perhaps more than ever — to chronicle history, sort facts from misinformation, watchdog powerful interests and people, tell the stories that build community and foster empathy, and ensure the public they serve is well-informed.
The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University traces its roots to 1949, when journalism classes were taught as part of the English Department’s curriculum. It was decades later, in the mid-80s when the Walter Cronkite Endowment’s trustees proposed the school adopt Cronkite’s name.
The period from 2005 to 2019 saw remarkable growth. According to the school’s website, the number of students grew by more than 50%, and the faculty grew by more than 70%.
Students learn and connect at a state-of-the-art building on campus in downtown Phoenix. It has 223,000 square feet of space, four TV studios, 17 newsrooms and computer labs with more than 380 workstations. There is a two-story forum for formal events, a 150-seat auditorium and a museum gallery with historical artifacts and documents.
The Cronkite School now offers online degree programs, as well.
It is home to Arizona PBS (KAET), the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism, the Carnegie-Knight News21 Initiative and the National Center on Disability and Journalism. It’s also home to NEWSWELL, a nonprofit organization led by Executive Director Nicole Carroll — dedicated to local newsroom innovation and sustainability.
A culture of community and relevance
In 2021, Battinto Batts, Jr., Ph.D., became the Cronkite School’s second dean.
“I’m the son of educators. My dad was a college administrator. He worked in career planning and placement. My mother was an elementary school teacher,” Dr. Batts shared with E&P.
“My father took pride in his students. He would come home and talk about having a student get an internship at IBM or a student who’d gotten an internship at the National Park Service. He really took pride in seeing students who came through Career Planning & Placement go on to do great things. That was rewarding to him — to play a role in putting them on the path to success,” he said.
Growing up in a family of educators in a college town, where the community shared a reverence for knowledge, instilled that ethos in Batts. Those principles, combined with his affinity for serving as a mentor, guided his career through chapters of being a journalist, a philanthropist and an educator.
Long before he became dean, Batts had been thinking about relevance — what relevance means to curricula, what it means to an institution, and what it means to aspiring journalists. It was the Cronkite School’s relevance that compelled Batts to ASU. The J-school culture was leading and innovative. It had well-equipped facilities with the latest technologies for storytelling across platforms, from print to digital, audio, video and broadcast. And he found the faculty among journalism’s brightest minds today.
Cronkite is structured with a number of degree programs for undergrads, graduate students and Ph.D. candidates. Students can work toward Bachelor of Arts degrees in Journalism and Mass Communication, Sports Journalism, Mass Communication and Media Studies, and Digital Media Literacy. A Bachelor of Science degree in Digital Audiences prepares students for the real-world application of digital strategy, social media campaigns, SEO and audience analytics.
In the graduate school, Cronkite offers a Master of Mass Communication track, a Master of Arts in Sports Journalism, Investigative Journalism, Narrative and Emerging Media, and Strategic Communication. There’s also a Master of Science in Digital Audience Strategy.
Master’s degree candidates can also choose dual programs. For example, they may pursue a Master’s in Journalism and Sustainability or Journalism and Legal Studies, or an M.D./Master of Mass Communication. Asked about these expansive, yet specialized fields of study, Dr. Batts explained, “We operate from the premise that journalism and media and communications cut across all disciplines and, anymore, you need to have some competency in journalism, communications or media to be successful in any industry.”
“We recruit students from across the country and even around the world,” Batts said. “Arizona, of course, is a desert, but I like to say that we have ‘waterfront property’ when it comes to the practice of journalism and communications, because of everything going on in the community around us. Being a purplish state, we have a front-row seat to what’s happening politically across our country. We have a front-row seat to the crisis in media trust. We get to practice our craft in this environment. We have the best laboratory in our field.”
An experiential experience
Dean Batts likens Cronkite to a “teaching hospital,” designed to immerse students in journalism with experiential learning.
“Learning by doing prepares our students to be day-one ready to go into the industry and succeed,” Batts said.
Cronkite students have the opportunity to report, edit and produce for the student paper, The State Press, and the student-run Blaze Radio station. They also contribute to Cronkite News, a multi-bureau-supported TV program.
Aspiring investigative reporters do real-world, often award-winning, work for the Howard Center of Investigative Journalism. They’re mentored by Mark Greenblatt, the Howard Center’s executive editor — a former national investigative journalist for Scripps News, who has a long list of journalism awards to his credit — and Executive Producer Lauren Mucciolo, an award-winning documentary filmmaker who previously worked for PBS Frontline before coming to Cronkite in 2019.
“We do high-level investigative journalism that serves a purpose, that serves a public function,” Mucciolo said.
“It is an incubator of future talent in investigative reporting that is desperately needed at this time. Our industry needs a pipeline to the challenged journalism and news ecosphere because investigative reporting at this time is fundamentally important to protecting our democracy,” Greenblatt said.
“When [students] walk into the Howard Center, they’re told on day one they’ve just joined a national investigative team that operates professionally by standards,” Greenblatt explained. “We teach them the standards, and then we ensure they meet the standards of the wonderful entities we partner with, from USA TODAY, the PBS NewsHour, The Associated Press, National Public Radio — all these amazing partners that trust these students and trust us.”
While working on investigative series, students find and obtain public records; they leverage various platforms for storytelling and engagement; they benefit from advanced data training; they learn how to properly cite sources with footnoting, and how to strategically use AI.
“We found a way to use ChatGPT to help us not only craft sometimes complex records requests in professional manners, but most importantly, to appeal denials,” Greenblatt said. “So, when a government agency says, ‘We’re not going to give you that public record because of X reason,’ we found a way to accurately push back with some legal justification that makes it seem like the journalist is writing with the backing of a lawyer.”
The most recent investigation the Howard Center team produced is a series called “Lithium Liabilities,” which explores lithium mining in the U.S. and its impact on the nation's precious water resources. The series was built on a variety of storytelling methods, from text to infographics, maps built with geospatial programming, video and an interactive game.
“If I started talking to you about regulatory requirements for mining, your eyes are going to glaze over,” Mucciolo said. “But when you’re playing a game that makes you a modern-day prospector going through the process of opening a mine, it becomes much more engaging and interesting.”
“We had a student for the Lithium project who, on his own accord, got a drone license during the semester, so that we could have drone photography,” Mucciolo added. “He was already a capable photographer and videographer, and decided that this was something he wanted to pursue and ‘upskill.’”
Howard Center investigations have won awards, so when students graduate, they’re not just entering the labor force with bylined clips; their work has been recognized as exceptional.
“One of our newest master’s degree holders in investigative journalism won an EPPY Award. … She won the collegiate documentary award, and now she’s going on to a job in local journalism in Omaha, Nebraska. She’s going to be applying her skills, boosted by the EPPY Award,” Greenblatt said.
At the Howard Center, student journalists not only have the tools to do investigative work, but they’re also given the support and encouragement to face the inherent challenges.
“I find that if you tell a young, motivated journalist that they are capable of doing nationally important work, they will believe you,” Greenblatt said. “They will become truly capable. If you tell them they can achieve a lot, they will. … All they need is someone to believe in them, and when we do, magical things happen.”
“We just had Marty Baron at the school yesterday, and he was in an intimate conversation with several of our students interested in investigative reporting. Of course, he’s famous for his time with The Boston Globe and The Washington Post, where he supported, edited, challenged and brought to life some of the most pivotal investigations of our time. To hear him speak and motivate and talk about the future really enlivened our students,” Greenblatt said.
Ambitious objectives
“Our curriculum has evolved and continues to evolve relative to what we see happening in the industry and society as a whole,” Dr. Batts told E&P. That applies to platform and technological innovation but also reflects the changing definition of “media.”
“Journalism has become more democratized, and I think that's healthy,” Batts reflected. “The barrier to entry into the industry now is much lower. You could launch an endeavor today if you want to — if you feel you have an audience that you want to speak to. If you have a voice and some expertise, you can launch a venture right away.”
“[Cronkite’s graduates] may want to work as part of a team to do a major production like the six-o’clock news,” he explained. “We’re still preparing our students to do that, but at the same time, we’re preparing our students to be able to launch their own venture and to have an entrepreneurial mindset, to be a part of the creative economy.”
When E&P spoke with Batts in mid-February, the Cronkite School was anticipating a significant philanthropic investment — to the tune of $15 million to $20 million — which will fund the J-school’s research arm.
“We plan to help chart the course for the sustainable future of the industry, using audience-based research. What do audiences want out of their news? How can we address the crisis with trust in media overall, and how do we build a sustainable future that takes audience needs into account? … Let’s get the audience engaged in helping to craft the future,” he said. “And then let’s build the business model and the innovations based off of what they tell us.”
Impact is a powerful motivator among the next generation of journalists, the dean observed: “They want their work to matter. They want to utilize their skills and gifts to make a difference — feeling like what they're doing matters in the grand scheme of things and that they're contributing to making society better.”
Between the degree programs, the centers in residence at ASU, and internships and study-abroad opportunities, there are a lot of compelling reasons for next-gen journalists to choose Cronkite.
“If it sounds like we’re trying to do all things at once, that’s probably true,” the dean said.
“We plan to remain out front, able to draw the students, the industry collaborations, and the donor support of tomorrow,” he said. “All of that goes back to the term relevance.”
Gretchen A. Peck is a contributing editor to Editor & Publisher. She's reported for E&P since 2010 and welcomes comments at gretchenapeck@gmail.com.
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