Medill School of Journalism

The Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications
Established 1921
Type Unit of Northwestern University
Dean John Lavine
Academic staff 55[1]
Undergraduates 684
Postgraduates 342
Location Evanston, Illinois, United States
Campus Evanston / Chicago (news service)
Website www.medill.northwestern.edu

The Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications is a constituent school of Northwestern University which offers both undergraduate and graduate programs. It has consistently been one of the top-ranked schools in Journalism in the United States.[2][3] Medill has produced journalists and political activists including thirty-eight Pulitzer Prize laureates,[4] numerous national correspondents for major networks, and many well-known reporters and columnists. Northwestern is one of the few schools embracing a technological approach towards journalism.[5] Medill received Knight Foundation grant to establish the Knight News Innovation Laboratory in 2011. The Knight Lab is a joint initiative of the Medill and the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern, one of the first to combine journalism and computer science.[6]

Contents

Description

The Medill School was founded in 1921 and named after Joseph Medill (1823–1899), owner and editor of the Chicago Tribune, which was then run by his grandsons Robert R. McCormick and Joseph Medill Patterson.[7][8]

The journalism program offers Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees. The undergraduate curriculum requires a broad liberal arts education as well as the study and practice of journalism. The Integrated Marketing Communications program offers a master's degree over five quarters with concentrations in advertising, public relations, and direct, database and e-commerce marketing. As of 2011, the school had 55 faculty and 684 undergraduate students.[1]

Medill undergraduates participate in a journalism residency for one quarter in their junior or senior year, during which they intern in a professional newsroom. Media outlets across the United States—and in some cases, overseas—have participated in this program.

Medill is headquartered on the southern end of Northwestern's campus in Evanston, Illinois campus, but it also opened a program in 2008 at Northwestern University in Qatar, a branch campus located in Qatar. For many years the school's main location was in Fisk Hall. In fall 2002, the school opened the McCormick Tribune Center, which features a professional-grade TV studio and multimedia classrooms for Medill's growing emphasis on new forms of media. It was generally known as the Medill School of Journalism. To reflect the broader focus the faculty approved the expanded name "Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications" in late 2010, and the new name was approved by the university board of trustees in March 2011.[9]

Cost of Attendance

The 2010–2011 cost of attendance for Medill graduate students was $85,914.[10]

Medill Knight Lab

Medill is known for graduates who "mix high-tech savvy with hard-nosed reporting skills".[5] The Knight Lab is a joint initiative of Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism and the Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation announced in 2011. It combines the disciplines of journalism and computer science together to establish a cutting edge media innovation lab, one of the few of its kind in the country.[11][12] According to Northwestern's press release:

"Among the Knight Lab's goals is to maximize use of open-source software already developed through the Knight News Challenge, a $25 million worldwide media innovation contest now in its fifth year, as well as from other grantees from Knight Foundation's $100 million media innovation initiative...Those include projects such as Open Block, an aggregator of public information; Document Cloud, for managing and displaying original documents; Public Insight Journalism, which helps newsrooms tap the wisdom of the community to find better news sources; and Spot.Us, a new way of "crowd-funding" journalism."[12]

Awards

Medill alumni have won:

Medill Innocence Project

For the Law School project, see Center on Wrongful Convictions.

The Medill Innocence Project began in 1999 as an effort by Medill faculty and students to reinvestigate murder convictions in Illinois and determine if people were wrongly convicted. This effort has helped to free 11 innocent men, including Anthony Porter.[21][22] Medill Innocence Project work is credited with prompting Illinois Governor George Ryan in 2003 to suspend the death penalty and commute all death sentences.[23]

From 2009 to 2011 the project was involved in a dispute with the Cook County, Illinois state's attorney over the handling of the Anthony McKinney case.[24] The university claimed reporter's privilege in resisting a subpoena for Innocence Project records of the case, while the state claimed the project had been acting as investigators in behalf of McKinney's counsel. Medill faculty member David Protess, Innocence Project founder and director, was suspended during this dispute. In 2011 Protess left to found the Chicago Innocence Project[25] and blog for the Huffington Post[26] while the school gave up the records.[27][28][29]

Medill News Service - Chicago

Medill Chicago is a working news bureau in downtown Chicago that operates as part of Northwestern University's graduate journalism program at the Medill School.

Medill graduate students have been providing news coverage to client newspapers since 1995. Each quarter, approximately 40 graduate students are assigned to cover stories about city and county government, the events in state and federal courts, business and economic development, health and science issues and the arts and sports.

Medill News Service - Washington, DC

Every Medill News Service journalist has the opportunity to spend a quarter in a Washington, DC covering breaking news as well as in-depth, enterprise stories on politics, civil rights, energy, technology or education. Medill journalists attend congressional proceedings, press conferences, conventions and congressional hearings and connect those stories to the communities they cover—not an insider audience.

The Medill News Service serves newspapers, Web sites, television stations and radio stations, which all pay a quarterly fee to help cover production and communications costs. Print correspondents transmit stories electronically every day. Television stories are sent by network feed or satellite, or shipped overnight, as each station requires.

"Quotegate" Controversy

In a February 11, 2008 column written for the Daily Northwestern, Medill senior David Spett questioned the use of anonymous sources by Dean John Lavine in a letter Lavine wrote for Medill's alumni magazine. Lavine attributed a quote praising a Medill marketing class to "a Medill junior" in the class. Spett reportedly called all 29 students enrolled in the class, including all five Medill juniors, and according to Spett, all denied saying the quote.[30] Lavine denied fabricating the quote in a February 20 email to students, but expressed regret for what he called "poor judgment" in not keeping his notes.

The so-called "Quotegate" controversy was the focus of stories, columns and editorials in local and national media, including the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, The Washington Post and Editor & Publisher.[31]

Notable alumni

The school publishes a Medill Hall of Achievement.[32]

References

  1. ^ a b "Medill School of Journalism: Office of Undergraduate Admissions". Northwestern University. http://www.ugadm.northwestern.edu/academics/schools/medill/index.html. Retrieved January 9, 2011. 
  2. ^ Leonard Mogel. The Newspaper:Everything You Need to Know to Make It in the Newspaper Business. pp. 215–8. ISBN 9780982959626. http://books.google.com/books?id=M6mloTfuhrQC&pg=PA216. 
  3. ^ Lynn O'Shaughnessy. The College Solution: A Guide for Everyone Looking for the Right School at the Right Price. p. 84. ISBN 0132365707. http://books.google.com/books?id=-Shhc-gPnuoC&pg=PA84&q=%22Northwestern%20is%20considered%20one%20of%20the%20best. 
  4. ^ a b "Pulitzer Prizes"
  5. ^ a b Matt Villano (June 6, 2009). "Can Computer Nerds Save Journalism?". Time. http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1902202,00.html. Retrieved February 22, 2011. 
  6. ^ "Medill and McCormick launch a news innovation lab with $4.2 million in Knight funding" (Press release). John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. February 3, 2011. http://www.knightfoundation.org/news/press_room/knight_in_the_news/detail.dot?id=377645. Retrieved February 22, 2011. 
  7. ^ Bulletin. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University. 1920. p. 5. http://books.google.com/books?id=0mjOAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA5. 
  8. ^ "New Journalism School: Chicago Newspapers to Aid Students at Northwestern University" (PDF). The New York Times: p. 11. November 14, 1920. http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9804E3D6173AE532A25757C1A9679D946195D6CF. Retrieved January 9, 2011. 
  9. ^ "Board of Trustees Approves Expansion of Medill's Name" (Press release). Northwestern University. March 11, 2011. http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/newsreleases/archives.aspx?id=183028. Retrieved March 14, 2011. 
  10. ^ "2010-2011 Journalism Cost Of Attendance". Medill.
  11. ^ Megan Garber (February 3, 2011). "Medill and McCormick launch a news innovation lab with $4.2 million in Knight funding". Nieman Journalism Lab. http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/02/medill-and-mccormick-launch-a-news-innovation-lab-with-4-2-million-in-knight-funding/. Retrieved February 22, 2011. 
  12. ^ a b Wendy Leopold (February 3, 2011). "Knight News Innovation Laboratory Launches: Unique journalism and engineering partnership seeks to speed local media innovation". http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2011/02/knight-news-innovation.html. Retrieved February 22, 2011. 
  13. ^ http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/alumni/awardofrecipients.aspx?id=61137
  14. ^ http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/alumni/awardofrecipients.aspx?id=61139
  15. ^ http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/alumni/awardofrecipients.aspx?id=66977
  16. ^ http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/alumni/awardofrecipients.aspx?id=66979
  17. ^ http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/alumni/awardofrecipients.aspx?id=66981
  18. ^ http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/alumni/awardofrecipients.aspx?id=66983
  19. ^ http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/alumni/awardofrecipients.aspx?id=66985
  20. ^ a b Wendy Leopold (February 28, 2011), "I Should Have Got a Haircut: Medill alum wins Academy Award for best live action short", news release, http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2011/02/medill-alum-oscar.html, retrieved March 15, 2011 
  21. ^ Schwartz, John (June 17, 2011). "Freed by a Journalism Professor and His Students". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/18/business/media/18innocence.html. Retrieved June 18, 2011. 
  22. ^ "Medill Innocence Project". http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/journalism/undergrad/page.aspx?id=59507. Retrieved February 22, 2011. 
  23. ^ "Innocence Project Professor Pulled From Class". ABC News. Associated Press. March 18, 2011. http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=13167043. Retrieved October 23, 2011. "Their work also is credited with prompting then-Gov. George Ryan to empty the state's death row in 2003, re-igniting a national debate on the death penalty and leading to the end of capital punishment in Illinois." 
  24. ^ Long, Jeff (October 19, 2009). "Northwestern University's Medill Innocence Project is in a standoff with Cook County prosecutors". Chicago Tribune. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-nu-subpoena-19-oct19,0,3778012.story. Retrieved February 22, 2011. 
  25. ^ "The Chicago Innocence Project". http://www.chicagoinnocenceproject.org/. Retrieved October 23, 2011,  organization web page.
  26. ^ "Blog Entries by David Protess". Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-protess/. Retrieved November 25, 2011. 
  27. ^ Cohen, Jodi S.; Meisner, Jason (June 13, 2011). "Renowned Northwestern prof Protess to retire". Chicago Tribune. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chibrknews-renowned-northwestern-prof-protess-to-retire-20110613,0,3116062.story. Retrieved October 23, 2011. 
  28. ^ "Northwestern to turn over student emails to prosecutors". Chicago Tribune. September 24, 2011. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-medill-student-records-20110924,0,2196157.story. Retrieved October 23, 2011. 
  29. ^ Miner, Michael (October 20, 2011). "The Innocence Project crossed a line. But it's not a clear or straight line: Chicago magazine, David Protess, and the murky mores of investigative reporting". Chicago Reader. http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-innocence-project-crossed-a-line/Content?oid=4838837. Retrieved October 23, 2011. 
  30. ^ Spett, David (February 11, 2009). "The Dean's Unnamed Sources". The Daily Northwestern. http://www.dailynorthwestern.com/2.13897/the-dean-s-unnamed-sources-1.1921912. Retrieved January 9, 2011. 
  31. ^ "Webliography: Quotegate". Chicago Tribune. March 8, 2008. http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2008/03/webliography-qu.html. 
  32. ^ "Medill Hall of Achievement". Medill alumni web site. http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/alumni/hallofachievement.aspx. Retrieved January 9, 2011. 

External links

Academics
Research
Campus
Athletics
Media
Traditions
People