ASU journalism programs hailed by New York Times

When news broke about University of Michigan’s student-athlete Brendan Gibbons’ violation of the student sexual misconduct policy, it was the university’s newspaper, The Michigan Daily, not the local professional news organization, The Ann Arbor News, that broke it.

According to Dan Reimold, journalism professor at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, there are roughly 1,800 American college and university student newspapers, compared to only 1,380 daily newspapers nationwide, per last year’s State of the News Media report by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.

“Higher education issues like the big business of college sports, sexual assault, student debt and youth unemployment are all national discussions now,” Reimold said in a recent New York Times article, titled Local News, Off College Presses. “In many towns, there are newspapers hovering around the campus, but the students are the ones covering that campus.”

The article continues: “Journalism schools and student-run newspapers across the country are operating a variety of programs that are not just teaching students to be journalists, but embedding them in the media industry and allowing them to produce content.”

ASU was singled out in the article for the work of student journalists at its Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Leonard Downie Jr., former executive editor of the Washington Post and director of the News21 Initiative based at Cronkite, commented on the initiative, “(students) are covering one subject intensely with 30 reporters for eight months. No news organization could possibly do that these days.”