Cronkite School of Journalism

Adaption of photography by milhouse21200, available under a Creative Commons Attribution License. Copyright  © 2009 milhouse21200.

Adaption of photography by milhouse21200, available under a Creative Commons Attribution License. Copyright © 2009 milhouse21200.

Alex Dockery, Senior Columnist / Photographer

 

The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication is located on the downtown ASU campus. Within the school are five digital newsrooms, two media laboratories, seven computer labs, two studio and control rooms, several video editing rooms, a large meeting room for public events, and a Student Service Center. Since the school is located downtown, it allows the students to be surrounded by major local news sources such as Channel 8, Channel 12, Arizona Republic, azcentral.com, Fox 12, Fox Sports Net, CBS Radio, and the Phoenix Business Journal. The school helps students develop skills in print, broadcast, and digital journalism. They are very experience based, so the students are expected to do a lot of hands on work with interviewing and being out in the field. It is great for students interested in studying journalism in college. There have been quite a few Horizon alumni who have decided to attend Cronkite, such as Katie-Lee Faulkner (class of 2011) and Ja’han Jones (class of 2009), and they have found that the school has challenged them to be the best journalists they can be.

 

The Cronkite School of Journalism has recently received buzz in the media. It was featured in the New York Times because of the innovative entrepreneurship experiences it gives its students. In the same year the school was noted by The Times of London in an article about the rise of Journalism in the digital age. Cronkite is becoming more and more involved in social media and is using it as a huge form of communication. Every student is required to have a twitter account and be well versed in many forms of social media. “Students need to be fluent in a variety of digital media forms and understand the trends that are redefining journalism, including media economics and product development, business and marketing,”said director Dan Gillmor. “… they need to do this in a way that preserves journalism’s best principles and practices.”

 

Horizon alumni, Ja’han Jones is currently a Cronkite student. Jones has had a love for writing for quite a long time. “I’ve always had an interest in writing. Even as a child, I was a creative writer, and as I grew older and assumed more public speaking opportunities, I found my skills as a speaker and a writer would be best combined in the field of journalism.” One thing that Jones likes about Cronkite is its ability to offer students a chance to experience journalism in real-time, something many journalism schools don’t offer. “As technological advancements occur, the Cronkite adapts. That’s a blessing other schools (and quite frankly, many newsrooms) don’t have.” said Jones. Above all else, the thing that Jones likes the most about Cronkite is its commitment to greatness, “To associate yourself with a name as iconic as ‘Cronkite’, it’s vital that you stay at the forefront of journalism, and I think the school has made that a priority.” Jones advice to anyone who is interested in attending Cronkite, or getting into the world of journalism in general, is to stay curious and to always keep well read.