By Jackson DeMos

A $115,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York will extend USC Annenberg's News21 project through 2012, which will be its seventh year at the School.

News21, previously scheduled to end in summer 2011,will provide fellowships and support for six graduate journalism students during their final spring semester and the following summer as they research and report on the political process, campaign management and funding of the 2012 national campaign.

"We are delighted that a new crop of graduate students will have the opportunity to focus on all aspects of the national election campaign via rich and deep multi-media reporting that goes beyond the usual election year horse-race coverage," USC Annenberg Dean Ernest J. Wilson III said. "It is not just a benefit to the USC Annenberg students. The public will gain insight into the 2012 election that mainstream media otherwise might not provide."

USC Annenberg is one of five universities – UC Berkeley, Northwestern, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Columbia are the others – to be awarded a 2012 spin-off News21 project that will complement a national program at Arizona State University.

During the summer of 2012, USC Annenberg’s News21 fellows will conduct 10 weeks of reporting from contested states and other locations, producing wide-ranging, Web-exclusive multimedia reports. One of the six fellows from USC Annenberg will participate in the national program on a separate topic.

“It’s really something that’s a challenge to students and also a benefit because it forces them to do their best,” said journalism professor and News21 program co-director Marc Cooper. “There’s no real safety net for the young reporters. We’ve also found that, while the Annenberg graduates do well in general in terms of employment, those who go through News21 do even better.”

Previous News21 fellows at USC Annenberg have been offered positions at BBC, Politico, Marketplace, the Orange County Register, PBS NewsHour and KCET.

“The News21 projects have given our students a chance to do in-depth immersive reporting at a level we can't provide in our classes,” said Patricia Dean, School of Journalism associate director and News21 program co-director. “And we help them experiment with more sophisticated multi-media elements.”

Vartan Gregorian, president of Carnegie Corporation, said the News21 program has developed a new cohort of well-educated journalists who are analytical thinkers and adept communicators, as at home in the virtual universe as they are in the day-to-day world of what has become a news cycle that knows no global borders and never sleeps.

“Yet of even greater importance,” Gregorian said, “this investment has fortified journalism’s role as a pillar of democracy.”

Cooper said he expects the 2012 program to accelerate and cement working partnerships with The Huffington Post, La Opinión, NPR, Marketplace and KCET, which last year posted 50 News21 reports on its website.

The News21 program started in 2006 with summer “incubators” at UC Berkeley, Columbia University, Northwestern University and USC.

“The Carnegie-Knight schools are very different places than they were just six years ago,” said Alberto Ibargüen, president and CEO of the Knight Foundation. “Today they have new classes, new teachers and new approaches that combine digital innovation with expertise-based journalism. And news industry leaders are recognizing that journalism education has a role to play in the future of news.”

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