Journalism dollars flow at TCU, ACU and more

No sooner do we leap over the equinoctial solar perpendicularity, it seems, but the cash to journalism programs starts falling like leaves:

The TCU Daily Skiff reported Friday that a $5.6 million renovation will add a television studio and converged newsroom to the TCU Schieffer School.

Also on Friday, Abilene Christian University dedicated its new converged-media newsroom:

On the newly renovated second and third floors of the Don H. Morris Center, the $1.1 million project offers common spaces and floor plans designed to encourage collaboration among students and faculty as well as a space for the department's first advertising and public relations agency.

Dr. Cheryl Bacon, chair of the school's department of journalism and mass communication, said it used to be enough for students to enter the job market with a good education and clips, an impressive portfolio or a great audition tape to display practical, real-world experience.

But "for students to get jobs today, it's not enough for them to have only one skill set," she said. "They have to be able to write, to shoot, to edit, to design. They have to do stories for print, for broadcast, for online."

While students may still specialize in one area of media, they will emerge competent in multiple platforms, she said.

Back in August, the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation announced $1.85 million in grants to journalism organizations, and last week Chicago's McCormick Foundation announced more than $4 million in journalism grants, including:

4. Investigative Reporters and Editors (Columbia, MO) $100,000
To assist in conducting customized workshops for ethnic
media reporters
5. Kansas University Endowment Association (Lawrence, KS) $50,000
To strengthen its Military and the Media Projects
6. Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) $1,355,000
For the Medill School of Journalism and its national
security training initiatives
7. The Trustees of Indiana University (Indianapolis, IN) $75,000
To launch a Nonprofit and Philanthropy Reporting Program
8. University of Colorado Foundation $110,000
To launch the Resolving Door community journalism project
9. University of Southern California (Los Angeles, CA) $120,000
For coverage on urban environmental justice
10. West Virginia University Foundation, Inc.(Morgantown, WV) $85,000
To launch a multimedia training program between journalism
schools and rural newspapers