UC Berkeley Journalism - Program - Ford Foundation Grant

School Wins Grant To Develop Digital News Sites

The J-School is pleased to announce an exciting new teaching, research, and technology development initiative supported by a $500,000 Ford Foundation grant to produce digital news sites for San Francisco Bay Area communities.

The new digital sites will provide news and information in communities such as Albany, Berkeley, El Cerrito, Oakland, Emeryville, and the Mission District of San Francisco beginning with the fall semester.

The sites will be produced by 60 graduate journalism students enrolled in news reporting courses and will be accessible on the Web and via mobile devices. The School's core professors will serve as instructors and editors of the sites.

The Ford grant will allow the School to hire two experienced multimedia journalists as Visiting Fellows on a fulltime basis over the next two years to work on the initiative, helping train students in digital storytelling and developing the sites and other digital products at the school.

"The future of local news depends on technological innovation, creativity and a deep commitment to the public interest," said Calvin Sims, a program officer at the Ford Foundation. "UC Berkeley's initiative is marked by all three of these qualities, and we are pleased to invest in its potential to promote engaged citizens and stronger communities in the Bay Area and beyond."

Due to the local news industry's economic crisis, hundreds of skilled reporters at Bay Area newspapers, radio, and television stations have lost their jobs in recent years. Local news coverage has diminished.

To help fill this growing void the J-School intends to provide new, original, and meaningful journalistic content in digital form to neglected communities, in an effort to better serve the public and the mission of public education.

Another key aim of the Ford initiative will be the creation of innovative approaches in serving local communities that can be adopted by both individual journalists and local news organizations.

As part of their training, the graduate students will immerse themselves in the communities beginning with the start of classes in late August, and seek active citizen participation in development of the local sites.

Working closely with Paul Grabowicz, the school's Associate Dean for New Media, the Ford-funded Fellows also will seek to initiate new collaborations with researchers from other UC Berkeley schools and departments, such as Information, Business, Computer Science, Engineering and Law, on developing the sites and other projects.

-- Neil Henry, dean