ASU chosen to direct digital media program

Arizona State University on Monday received a $7.5 million grant to direct an experimental digital media program at 12 leading United States universities.

The Carnegie Corporation and the Knight Foundation announced Monday the addition of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication to the group’s journalism initiative. The 3-year-old group will lead a News21 digital media project.

The national operation of News21 will be moved from Berkeley, Calif., to the Cronkite school. No other universities are expected to be added to the initiative. The grant is the largest in the history of the Cronkite school, and one of the largest in journalism education.

The News21 initiative, which the foundations hope will help redefine journalism education and prepare a new generation of journalists capable of reshaping the news industry, will be headquartered at the new Phoenix home of the Cronkite school.

The Cronkite school also will operate one of the initiative’s eight digital media incubator sites. As part of the incubator program, advanced journalism students will travel the country to produce in-depth news coverage on critical issues facing the nation and experiment with innovative digital methods to distribute the news on multiple platforms.

“ASU is an institution that is forward-looking and one that takes as a major part of its mission solving the most significant problems facing our nation and our world,” ASU President Michael Crow said in a prepared statement. “In that regard we are especially pleased to be involved in a project focused on the future of news, which is so vitally important to a free society.”

The Cronkite school will hire a national News21 director, a national Web developer and a program manager over the next few months. News21 will be based in the Cronkite school’s new building, a six-story, state-of-the-art journalism education complex that opens next month on the university’s downtown Phoenix campus.