Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism

School Receives $4 Million in New Endowments
Two private donors have contributed gifts to the School of Journalism totaling $4 million under the University's Hewlett Challenge. Funds from the new endowments will support faculty research, graduate student fellowships, and new teaching initiatives. Dean Neil Henry said further information about the endowments, which represent "important new cornerstones in a vital effort to position the School on firmer and more lasting financial footing," will be announced in coming weeks.

"Nothing like this has been attempted, on this scale,
by a journalism school." --Student, faculty achievements in Berkeley's Digital News Project celebrated in video.

video created by Richard Hernandez,
Ford Foundation Fellow

Bay Area Community News Sites Launched
J-School students are publishing seven websites that cover Bay Area communities as part of a broad initiative to train students in community-based, multimedia reporting and help define the future of high quality, public service journalism online. Developed under a Ford Foundation grant, the sites feature multimedia stories and interactive projects produced by students in the school's news reporting and other classes. The Berkeleyan has a story about the initiative.

Get a quick overview of the sites at The Local Report or check out a neighborhood...

In San Francisco at:

Mission Loc@l

In the East Bay at:

Investigative Reporting Program
Teams With ProPublica, Frontline
The New York Times published a story by Siri Schubert, a lecturer and former fellow of the Investigative Reporting Project at the Graduate School of Journalism, now working as a reporter at the program under a grant from the Nathan Cummings Foundation, and T. Christian Miller, that detailed the the unusual role of an executive of Siemens, one of the world's biggest companies, in a sweeping international bribery scheme. The firm has paid $1.6 billion fine, the largest in modern corporate history, as a penalty for the decades of illegal payments worldwide. See excerpts of Ms. Schubert's interview with the executive, part of an upcoming Frontline documentary. The story was a project of Pro Publica, the non-profit investigative reporting project.

Election Night Webcast
On election night, the Political Reporting program produced a five-hour live webcast, including video, audio and live phone interviews. The webcast was produced in association with the News 21 Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education. Listen to the archive of the webcast, view images from the evening and the show schedule here.

Obama-McCain 2008: The View from Europe
Hans-Henrik Holm, Distinguished Professor of World Politics at the Danish School of Journalism, visits on Oct. 27 to give a lunchtime talk to the public and school community about European press coverage of the U.S. presidential campaign.

The Financial Meltdown: A Report from Wall Street
Please join Matt Winkler, Bloomberg News Editor in Chief, for a reception and luncheon talk at the J-School on Oct. 23 on about news coverage of the world's market collapse.

The World of Undercover Reporting
Dean Neil Henry introduces, and Professor Cynthia Gorney moderates, a panel discussion Oct. 13 featuring Writer-in-Residence Ted Conover, Roger Hodge, Jake Silverstein, Bill Wasik and Professor Michael Pollan on the practice and ethics of "submersion" journalism.

Covering Crisis: Journalism and the Financial Maelstrom
New York Times reporter Matt Richtel moderated a panel discussion on Oct. 6 at North Gate Hall about news coverage of the financial crisis with David Leonardt of the Times, Bloomberg's Jeffrey Taylor, AP's Laura Impellizerri, the Chronicle's Carolyn Said, and J-School Senior Lecturer Susan Rasky.

J-School Ford Fellow Wins Emmy
Richard Koci Hernandez's award recognizes his multimedia work for the San Jose Mercury News.

Dexter Filkins on The Forever War
The New York Times foreign correspondent discussed his new book, "The Forever War," a searing account of the rise of the Taliban, 9/11, and the Iraq War on Sept. 23. Investigative Reporting Professor Lowell Bergman introduced him.

Linda Greenhouse: Writer-In-Residence
Former New York Times Supreme Court correspondent Linda Greenhouse spoke with students about her experiences as a beat reporter and the declining coverage of the highest court.

David Simon: Writer-in-Residence
A former reporter for the Baltimore Sun, the creator and writer of the acclaimed HBO series The Wire and Generation Kill, visited classes and gave talks at the J-School from Sept. 8-10.

J-School Welcomes Three New Hires
Gina Rieger has been appointed Assistant Dean for School Relations, while two nationally-distinguished Multimedia Journalists, Richard Koci Hernandez and Geeta Dayal, are now on board to lend training expertise and vision to the School's Ford Foundation-funded Digital News Project.

Welcome Class of 2010!
The J-School is pleased to welcome 59 new students who have come to Berkeley from around the nation, and countries as varied as Iraq, Spain, and Burkina Faso. See their photos from Orientation.

Beijing Beat
WashingtonPost.com has published Beijing Beat, a series of intimate reports produced in the Bay Area and Beijing by a team of digital journalists from UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. (continue reading)

What's at Stake in Election 2008? Nothing short of the American Dream.
News 21 Fellows explore the tough choices facing Americans and the next president in battleground states across the country. Visit our website and watch for updates through November.

Archive of older Highlights

Donate online to the J-School

January 22, 2009
WAYNE MILLER IN CONVERSATION
Photographs 1942-1958 takes us to the midpoint of the career of one of the country's most important visual artists and ends with his tremendously successful series that came to be published as The World is Young. This long overdue volume is an irreplaceable addition to American heritage.; More Events . . .
RECENT EVENTS: December 4, 2008
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Presented annually to honor the memory of Mario Savio, a spokesperson for Berkeley's Free Speech Movement of 1964; to promote the ideals and values he struggled to advance throughout his life and to recognize and encourage young activists striving to build a more humane and just society.; November 24, 2008
DIGITAL TV AND THE WORLD
More of China's people wander their country and the world seeking work, love and community. Yet Beijing's new magnetism pulls at them. Join the producers to watch stories of hustle, stress and solace on the streets of Beijing and beyond. Discussion to follow.; November 20, 2008
JO WHALEY
For one evening butterflies, beetles, dragonflies, and other colorful insects take center stage. Come see photographer Jo Whaley's newest work, celebrated in her book, The Theater of Insects, and highlighted this evening with a special lecture and book-signing.; November 17, 2008
J-School Docs 2008
Join the filmmakers at the Pacific Film Archive/Berkeley Art Museum's George Gund Theater for a screening featuring inspiring stories from across the planet. Question and answer sessions will follow the films and all proceeds from the event will support the J-school documentary program.; More Events . . .

Student Stories: Beijing's Transition to Transit Heaven
For years, sprawling Beijing seemed destined to be another Los Angeles, with endless traffic jams and long commutes. But as Josh Chin, class of 2007, reports in this video for WSJ.com, the city has launched itself to the forefront of sustainable growth an ambitious new subway system.; Emeryville Mayor Facing City, State Probes
Shaleece Haas, class of 2010, writes in the San Francisco Chronicle about investigations into the political and business activities of Emeryville's mayor.; Marriage Fraud
Ali Winston, class of 2010, received a Justice and Community Award from CUNY-John Jay's Center on Media, Crime and Justice and the New York Media Alliance for this story for City Limits about a federal crackdown on suspected fraudulent marriages. The article was written for an Immigration and Crime Reporting Fellowship organized by CMCJ and NYCMA.; A Dark Addiction
The Washington Post reporter Nick Miroff, class of 2006, has won a 2008 Nancy Dickerson Whitehead Award for this story about prescription painkiller abuse among coal miners in southwestern Virginia, where drug overdose deaths have become a public health crisis.; More student stories . . .
Faculty Work: Frozen Scandal
Scandal is our growth industry. Revelation of wrongdoing leads not to definitive investigation, punishment, and expiation but to more scandal. Permanent scandal. Frozen scandal... Professor Mark Danner writes in The New York Review of Books; Obama & Sweet Potato Pie
You would think first of all of a village fair: the entire community of Germantown, Northwest Philly, taking itself up on the brightest of bright sunny fall days and moving en masse, clumps of people—groups of young men in the obligatory hoodies and low-riding jeans, moms pushing strollers, dads lugging car seats... Professor Mark Danner writes in The New York Review of Books.; 2008: The Weight of the Past
Mark Danner's contribution to the New York Review of Book's a symposium on the upcoming election entitled "What's at Stake." (October 6, 2008); Weapons of Mass Destruction and Other Imaginative Acts
For the New York Times, Mark Danner reviews Ron Suskind's "The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism"; Taking Stock of the Terror War
To contemplate a prewar map of Baghdad — as I do the one before me, with sectarian neighborhoods traced out in blue and red and yellow — is to look back on a lost Baghdad, a Baghdad of our dreams...(Based on a lecture delivered by Mark Danner at the Tenth Asia Security Conference, New Delhi. March 2008); Sr. Lecturer Joan Bieder Publishes Book on the Jews of Singapore
Sr. Lecturer Joan Bieder's new book, "The Jews of Singapore," documents the history and heritage of the Sephardic Jewish community that immigrated to Singapore from Baghdad 170 years ago. Illustrated with 450 images, maps and documents,the book is a detailed account of the orthodox Baghdadi community that still thrives in Singapore today and the contributions members made both to the colony and the Republic.; Cyber hunters in China in for crash landing
Adjunct professor Xiao Qiang commenting on China's new law to curb the excesses of online "distributive investigative behavior" in Straits Times Singapore; A People Apart
For National Geographic, Nov 2008, Professor Cynthia Gorney reports from Copper Canyon, Mexico, on the ambivalent relationship between the indigenous Tarahumara people and encroaching modern Mexico.; More faculty work . . .