News21

About News21

News21 is a national student investigative reporting initiative created by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and headquartered at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in Phoenix. Each year the program brings top journalism students from universities across the country to Phoenix for an intensive summer fellowship, where they report and produce in-depth, multimedia investigative projects on issues of national importance. The students' work is distributed to major media outlets including The Washington Post, NBC News, and USA Today. Established in 2005 as a cornerstone of the foundations' joint Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education, News21 was designed to demonstrate that top journalism students, given the time, resources, and professional editing, can produce groundbreaking reporting on major national topics and present their findings in innovative ways.

Founding by Carnegie and Knight

News21 was established in 2005 by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation as part of their joint Carnegie-Knight initiative, which began at five universities. The program emerged from the foundations' shared concern about the future of journalism education and their belief that investigative reporting, one of journalism's most resource-intensive forms, needed new institutional support as commercial newsrooms cut back. The initiative's goal, in the words used to describe the project, was to support and encourage new forms of investigative reporting and storytelling. Since 2008, the Cronkite School has received nearly $10 million in grants from the two foundations to support the News21 program, making it one of the most richly supported student journalism programs in the country. Over the years the program has been sustained by additional donor support from organizations including the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, the Hearst Foundations, the Arizona Republic and azcentral, and individual philanthropists.

How the fellowship works

News21 is based at Arizona State University but draws fellows from journalism schools across the United States; the program is now open to all journalism schools in the country and has also included fellows from Puerto Rico, Canada, and Ireland. Each year a cohort of students is selected for the program and begins with a spring issues seminar, taught by News21 Executive Editor Jacqueline Petchel, that immerses students in the topic to be investigated that summer. Students do preliminary reporting during the seminar, hearing from experts, analyzing data, and conducting interviews. This is followed by a 10-week reporting fellowship during the summer, when students work out of a newsroom at the Cronkite School in downtown Phoenix and travel across the United States, and sometimes to other countries, to report and produce their projects. The fellows work under the direction of professional journalists and faculty, including editors, data journalists, multimedia producers, and copy editors, and their completed investigations are published by local news organizations and major national media outlets.

Landmark investigations

Over the years, participating schools have produced projects on health, religion, senior citizens, energy, education, the economy, diversity, and politics, among other topics. Among the most ambitious was the 2012 voting rights investigation, titled "Who Can Vote?", in which 24 students from 11 universities worked under the direction of journalism professionals. The fellows traveled to more than 40 cities, 21 states, and one U.S. territory, conducted more than 1,000 interviews, requested thousands of public records, and reviewed nearly 5,000 documents. Their most ambitious effort was to gather, organize, and analyze all reported cases of election fraud in the United States since 2000, building the most comprehensive database of its kind. Another landmark project investigated the plight of post-9/11 veterans: fellows traveled to more than 60 cities and 20 states and undertook the most exhaustive analysis ever attempted of reported veteran suicides, gathering and analyzing health records from every state, an analysis not even the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs had completed. Former Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr., who directed the veterans project, praised the students' wealth of stories and innovative multimedia.

Recent project topics

More recent News21 investigations have tackled some of the most urgent issues in American public life. The program has produced national investigations on voting rights, transportation safety, food safety, veterans issues, and guns in America. A 2018 project on hate in America won the program significant recognition. In 2019, fellows from 19 universities investigated disaster recovery, examining how communities rebuild after hurricanes and other catastrophes. In 2020, fellows from 16 universities investigated juvenile justice, examining private companies that run programs in detention facilities, detention facility conditions, policing practices, employee misconduct, and the impact of the juvenile justice system on families, communities, and victims. Work on that project began with a seminar on juvenile justice issues, and students heard from experts, analyzed data, and conducted interviews across the country. Over the past decade, project topics have also included marijuana laws and drinking water quality, reflecting the program's commitment to choosing subjects of genuine national consequence each year.

Distribution through major media

A defining feature of News21 is that its student-produced investigations are published by professional news organizations rather than remaining classroom exercises. Completed projects have been published by The Washington Post, NBC News, USA Today, and numerous local news organizations across the country. This distribution model serves both the students, who earn national bylines and clips, and the public, which gains access to deeply reported investigations on topics that commercial newsrooms, stretched thin, might not otherwise cover in such depth. The program is explicitly designed to use innovative digital methods to distribute content on multiple platforms, and its projects typically combine text reporting with interactive databases, data visualizations, photography, and video. The multimedia presentation of the investigations has been a hallmark of the program since its founding, reflecting the foundations' interest in new forms of storytelling as well as new forms of reporting.

Awards and recognition

News21 projects have won numerous major journalism awards, an extraordinary record for student-produced work. Honors include two Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards, four EPPY Awards from Editor & Publisher magazine, four Student Edward R. Murrow Awards, and a host of honors from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Hearst Journalism Awards Program, often described as the Pulitzer Prizes of college journalism. The Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards program, founded by journalists who covered Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign, has grown into one of the largest award programs of its kind in the world, and News21's wins there place the program's student investigations alongside the best professional journalism in the country. Individual fellows have also been recognized: in 2010, News21 student David Kempa won an RFK Award for a multimedia story about one man's mission to help impoverished Mexicans. The awards record has made News21 one of the most prestigious fellowships in American journalism education.

Leadership and newsroom

The News21 newsroom in Phoenix operates each summer as a professional investigative unit staffed by students and guided by experienced journalists. Executive Editor Jacqueline Petchel leads the program and teaches the spring issues seminar that launches each year's investigation. She is supported by a team that has included assistant editors, editors-in-residence, data journalists such as Sarah Cohen, the former New York Times data editor who holds the Knight Chair in Data Journalism at the Cronkite School, multimedia and design editors, photo editors, web developers, data visualization specialists, and copy editors. Leonard Downie Jr., the former executive editor of The Washington Post and Weil Family Professor of Journalism at the Cronkite School, has directed major News21 projects, bringing one of the most distinguished editing careers in American journalism to the student newsroom. The professional staffing reflects the program's founding premise: that students can do work of genuine consequence when they are given the same editorial support as professional investigative teams.

Participating universities

While News21 is headquartered at the Cronkite School, its fellowships draw students from a rotating group of participating universities that changes each year. Universities that have taken part include DePauw University, Dublin City University, Elon University, George Washington University, Indiana University, Kent State University, Louisiana State University, Morgan State University, St. Bonaventure University, Syracuse University, the University of British Columbia, the University of Colorado Boulder, the University of Iowa, the University of Mississippi, the University of North Texas, the University of Oklahoma, the University of Tennessee, and the University of Texas at Austin, among many others. Fellows are supported by their home universities as well as by foundations, news organizations, and philanthropists, including The Arizona Republic, The Dallas Morning News, the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation, the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, and the Hearst Foundations. The national recruitment model means each year's cohort brings together some of the most promising young reporters in the country for a shared investigation.

Website and legacy

News21 publishes its investigations at news21.com, where its archive of national projects documents more than a decade of student-powered investigative journalism. The program stands as the flagship of the Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education and as a demonstration that the foundations' 2005 bet was sound: top journalism students, properly supported, can indeed produce groundbreaking reporting on major national topics. As commercial newsrooms continue to face economic pressure, News21's model of foundation-supported, university-based investigative reporting has become increasingly influential, offering a template for how in-depth accountability journalism can be sustained outside traditional newsroom structures. For the students who pass through its Phoenix newsroom each summer, the fellowship remains one of the most demanding and rewarding experiences in American journalism education, and its alumni have gone on to careers across the country's leading news organizations.