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January 2011
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Close Ties to the Industry
School-Affiliated Professional Organizations Actively Reach Out to Members, Students
With many professional organizations affiliated with the Missouri School of Journalism, students have ready access to people and resources that serve working journalists around the world. Fellowships, research opportunities, seminars, training, networking and more are available for those interested in the areas of investigative reporting, computer-assisted reporting, health care journalism and conflicts in journalism and law.
Association of Health Care Journalists
Center for Excellence in Health Care Journalism
The Association of Health Care Journalists and its Center for Excellence in Health Care Journalism launched a new fellowship program this fall for mid-career professionals. The AHCJ Media Fellowship on Health Performance will assist four reporters from across the country in completing a significant project examining the quality and effectiveness of a local or regional health care system.
Also on tap this fall: The AHCJ-National Library of Medicine (NMLM) Fellowship and the AHCJ-Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Health Journalism Fellowships. For the NLM fellowship, AHCJ staff takes six journalists to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) campus in Bethesda, Md., for a week to learn how to research medical studies, genetics and clinical trials and to tap other NIH resources. For the CDC fellowship, the AHCJ staff takes 10 reporters to multiple CDC campuses in Atlanta for a week to meet with epidemiologists, global health experts, emergency operations personnel and public health researchers.
AHCJ also published its fifth in a series of "slim guides" intended to assist reporters on health reporting topics. The guide - Covering Medical Research: A Guide for Reporting on Studies - was written by members and edited by AHCJ Executive Director Len Bruzzese, an associate professor in the Journalism School.
Len Bruzzese
Executive Director
Center for the Study of Conflict, Law and the Media
The Center for the Study of Conflict, Law and the Media, a collaboration between MU's schools of Journalism and Law, examines news media's impact on conflicts and their outcomes. Through research, curriculum initiatives and access to justice projects, CSCLM probes journalism's effects on conflicts, particularly in a world more closely connected by burgeoning technology.
Representative accomplishments include sponsorship of speakers and symposia, including the October 2010 symposium Alternative Dispute Resolution and the Rule of Law; submission of grant applications to fund research projects, including development of an instrument to empirically measure news-coverage effects on conflict and the creation of an institute to study and implement innovative methods to enhance the evolution of the rule of law in developing nations; curricular initiatives that bring journalism and law students together to study media effects on conflict; and award-winning journalism projects conducted by students. A project on Taser policies worldwide won an Honorable Mention from the Missouri Press Association for best investigative reporting.
Michael Jonathan Grinfeld, J.D., an associate professor at the School of Journalism, and Richard C. Reuben, Ph.D., J.D., a professor at the School of Law, act as co-directors of CSCLM.
Michael Grinfeld
Co-Director
The Committee of Concerned Journalists
The Committee of Concerned Journalists, based in the Missouri offices in the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., is a program of the Reynolds Journalism Institute. CCJ was founded by award-winning journalist Bill Kovach, based on the book he co-authored, The Elements of Journalism. Kovach is still chairman of the organization. Executive Director Mark Carter continues CCJ's work to advance quality journalism.
CCJ's major programs over the last year included a conference in March 2010 that examined press coverage of "The Great Recession" and featured former Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson and a panel of top financial journalists. A number of Missouri alumni attended the event. CCJ secured a grant from the Sloan Foundation to follow up this event with a position paper on the subject. Through more than 50 interviews with a broad range of journalists, policy makers and economists, CCJ is examining what journalists have done well in coverage of "The Great Recession" and what they need to do better. CCJ's goal is to develop specific recommendations for improvement.
CCJ is known for its training sessions with mid-career journalists, and the organization has trained over 150 newsrooms over the past decade. The Committee is now adapting its "Verification" training in the form of an online game application, in line with the migration of news (and journalists) to digital and interactive formats. The application was beta-tested with Missouri students in the fall 2010 course Mark Carter taught with faculty member Kent Collins. Internationally, CCJ has been working to expand its training, both for individual journalists and news groups abroad. One recent Missouri student and alumna, Hui Wang, has made outreaches in China with Chinese news agencies as part of the CCJ work.
Mark Carter
Executive Director
Investigative Reporters and Editors
Investigative Reporters and Editors is a nonprofit organization that provides training and resources for journalists. IRE has more than 4,000 members in the U.S. and internationally.
IRE conducts regional Better Watchdog Workshops for journalists from traditional and new media organizations. Two of the organization's newest programs include the Campus Coverage Project, which provides college journalists with the tools and skills they need to provide better coverage of their schools, and the bilingual border workshop program, in which a series of sessions are held for journalists along the U.S.-Mexico border. IRE also provides in-newsroom training and conducts boot-camp sessions in computer-assisted reporting.
In partnership with MU, IRE operates the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting (NICAR), which maintains several dozen federal government databases and makes them available to journalists. Graduate students working with NICAR perform data analysis jobs for news organizations large and small.
IRE holds two annual national conferences and operates a mentorship program that pairs young journalists with veterans willing to share their knowledge and expertise. IRE also holds an annual contest that honors the best investigative journalism in all media and publishes the quarterly IRE Journal, in which journalists discuss how they conduct investigative projects.
To keep up with the best investigative journalism being done around the country every week, bookmark www.ire.org and follow the Extra-Extra blog.
Mark Horvit
Executive Director
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