Phoenix Business Journal - Monday, July 7,2008

By Yvonne Zusel

Arizona State University received a $7.5 million grant to lead 12 U.S. universities in an experimental digital media program.

The Carnegie Corp. of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation are providing the funding for the News21 initiative, which places advanced journalism students in a digital "incubator" program.

As part of the program, students travel the country to do in-depth reporting on national issues and then experiment with various digital methods to present the news on several platforms.

News21 will be headquartered in the new downtown Phoenix home of ASU's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

ASU will serve as one of the incubator sites, in addition to sites at the University of Maryland at College Park, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Syracuse University. Four incubators at other universities have been operating since the News21 program's start in 2006.

In addition, four other Carnegie-Knight schools, including the University of Missouri at Columbia and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, will send students to the eight incubators.

ASU President Michael Crow said he is looking forward to the opportunities the three-year grant will afford the school.

"We are especially pleased to be involved in a project focused on the future of news, which is so vitally important to a free society," Crow said in a statement.

The Cronkite School will hire a national News21 director, a national Web developer and a program manager over the next few months.