Five Top J-Schools to Join in Major, Foundation-Funded Project

By: E&P Staff See a complete report on the j-school initiative elsewhere on E&P Online.

Five of the nation's leading journalism programs are joining in an effort to improve their standing and performance, it will be announced today.

"Journalism as a whole is clearly in something of a crisis," Orville Schell, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, told The New York Times.

Others involved in what the Times called a three-year, $6 million effort are: Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University; Loren Ghiglione, dean of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University; Geoffrey Cowan, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California; and Alex S. Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University.

Grants have come from the Carnegie Corporation of New York ($2.4 million for two years) and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation ($1.7 million).

"The money will be used for three main purposes: to develop national investigative reporting projects that would hire the best students and be written or broadcast in collaboration with major news organizations; to create a media policy task force at the Shorenstein Center to conduct research and coordinate the views and voices of the deans and university presidents in debates over media issues; and to develop more innovative curriculums by pairing journalists with scientists, historians, economists and other scholars on their campuses," according to the Times article.