Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York


The Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York is a public graduate journalism school located in New York City. One of the 24 institutions comprising the City University of New York, or CUNY, the school opened in 2006. It is the only public graduate school of journalism in the northeastern United States.
The Newmark Graduate School of Journalism grants three degrees, the Master of Arts in Journalism, Master of Arts in Social Journalism and the nation's first Master of Arts in Entrepreneurial Journalism. The school, which requires its MA in Journalism students to complete a summer internship at a news organization in order to graduate, places a heavy emphasis on practical skills and hands-on experience. Its faculty is drawn from current and former journalists at The New York Times, BusinessWeek, The Economist, The Nation, NBC Nightly News, and PBS, among others.
Sarah Bartlett is the Dean of the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. She succeeded Founding Dean Stephen B. Shepard on Jan. 1, 2014. Bartlett joined CUNY in 2002 as the Bloomberg Chair of Business Journalism at Baruch College. She moved to the Journalism School in 2006, after serving on its original curriculum committee. She created and oversaw both the Urban Reporting and the Business & Economics subject concentrations and helped found the school’s Center for Community and Ethnic Media. Her journalism career has included editorial positions at Fortune, BusinessWeek, and The New York Times and she also served as editor-in-chief of Oxygen Media.
In June 2018, the school announced it would be change its name from the City University of New York's CUNY Graduate School of Journalism to the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York, after the Craigslist founder donated $20 million to the school's foundation.

History

The CUNY Board of Trustees approved the Graduate School of Journalism's creation in May 2004. Proposed by CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein, the school was to focus on teaching reporting skills and news values at a time when other journalism schools were emphasizing education in academic disciplines such as political science and statistics.
After a search that weighed dozens of journalists and educators, former BusinessWeek editor-in-chief Stephen B. Shepard was chosen as the school's first dean. Goldstein and Shephard had worked together before; as head of CUNY's research foundation, Goldstein helped BusinessWeek formulate its business school rankings in the 1980s. Former New York Daily News editor Pete Hamill was also among those considered.
The school admitted its first class, comprising 57 students, in the fall of 2006. Dean Baquet, now executive editor of The New York Times, spoke at the school's first graduation ceremony in December 2007 and received an honorary degree. Veteran broadcast journalist and presidential aide Bill Moyers addressed students at the school's second graduation commencement ceremony a year later.

Governance

Beside faculty, staff, and administrative, the student body elects representatives to a Governance Council. The by-laws and other relevant materials are on the Governance Council page.

Campus

The Newmark Graduate School of Journalism is located in Midtown Manhattan, near Times Square. It is housed in the former headquarters of The New York Herald Tribune, on West 40th Street which CUNY purchased in August 2004 for $60 million. Renovation of the building cost $10.7 million and took place at the same time that The New York Times was building a new, 52-story office tower to house its headquarters next door.
The campus building houses a newsroom with seats for 130, a broadcast studio, several multimedia editing suites, a library and research center with 1,500 books on journalism, as well as numerous classrooms.
In 2006, the school hosted a reunion of about 100 former New York Herald Tribune journalists gathered to commemorate the sad 40th anniversary of the paper's closing in 1966. The school has also provided a space for several professional conferences for journalists, including the Networked Journalism Summit in October 2007, and an October 2008 conference on new business models for news organizations.

Curriculum

The school's three-semester MA in Journalism program formerly included media tracks in print, interactive and broadcast, though in March 2009 the requirement to choose a track was removed. It also offers subject concentrations in health/science, business/economics, arts/culture, urban, and international reporting. Students participate in a paid summer internship the summer between their second and third semester.

Student life

Short-form and spot news stories appear on the school's award-winning , which runs stories written by students.
It also has an online publication for long-form stories, , named after the building's Manhattan address on West 40th Street.
Students also contribute stories to the Bronx-based neighborhood papers Mott Haven Herald and Hunts Point Express, which are run by faculty member Bernard L. Stein.

Notable alumni