Student News21 teams are getting their work published in national papers.  Outlets like the Washington Post and New York Times are running stories, photos and video from the students who are part of the program revitalizing journalism education at 12 universities.

Just last week, Columbia’s News21 team’s work was featured in the Washington Post.  Fellows produced “Brave Old World,” a report package on aging in America.  Their contributions ran in the Health and Science special section.

Video from North Carolina’s News21 fellows was featured on the washingtonpost.com homepage a few weeks ago. Their work “Powering a Nation:  The Truth About Energy,” was used in reporting the oil spill.

Other News21 fellows have had work published on the LA Times Photo Blog, in the Baltimore Sun, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among many others.

The News21 project is funded by the Carnegie-Knight Initiative.  In addition to improving student journalism skills, one anticipated outcome of the project is to show that journalism students can do stories at the highest levels.

Having reports published in the national presses is added motivation for these students, and allows them to develop an area of reporting expertise.  It demonstrates the quality of their work and helps them build portfolios.

Journalism schools are still pioneering new forms of news, with a role to play in shaping the future of news and information through their students and contributions in the field.

News21 launched a web-based resource center to share tools colleges and universities can use to advance the way they teach journalism.

Resources include class syllabi and materials from the 12 participating universities, as well as training sessions and guidance on encouraging innovation.

News21 is a program of the Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education. The initiative is an effort to improve student skills in reporting and digital media.

Student work from the program is available online, as well as an ‘Explore and Compare’ feature where visitors can view and comment on different presentation methods of the same story.

News21 entered its fifth year, and Kristin Gilger, executive editor of the national program and associate dean at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, said “we’re ready to share what we learned with other schools.”

Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Michael Vitez says that being a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan taught him storytelling skills, which he used to write a series of articles on end-of-life issues that won a Pulitzer Prize.

Knight-Wallace Fellows spend eight months living and studying in Michigan. Director Charles Eisendrath leads the group and helps them build skills to advance their careers. Some fellows find new jobs after their time at Michigan by starting new programs. At least one fellow has launched his own company: Chris Carey was a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and now runs shareslueth.com, a for-profit investigative news site about stock fraud.

The University of Michigan, Stanford University and MIT host many of Knight Foundation’s fellowships for professional journalists. Knight has endowed a Batten professorship at Davidson College, Latin American fellows as part of the the Nieman Fellowship program at Harvard University, and Knight Chairs at journalism schools throughout the country. The foundation also supports the fellowship program run by both the International Center for Journalists and the Carnegie-Knight Initiative's News21 project.

Four journalists from the University of Maryland completed a month long study of racial and ethnic trends. The study was done by interviewing multiracial Americans who shared stories on what it means to identify as a mixed race in America.

These four reporters were part of News21, a national journalism program funded by the Knight Foundation and the Carnegie Corp.

See the interviews here.

--Marly Falcon, Knight Foundation contributing blogger