From the Chronicle of Higher Education, June 22, 2008

The graduate journalism schools at Columbia University and the City University of New York will improve their new-media programs with a total of $8-million in grants from the Tow Foundation, the charity announced today.

Columbia will receive $5-million, and CUNY $3-million. Under the terms of the grants, Columbia must garner an additional $10-million in donations within 18 months, and CUNY must raise enough to double its grant. Leonard Tow, a co-founder of the foundation, said the grants were a response to his “serious concerns about what is happening in the world of journalism.”

“I thought it was time for us to think about addressing these new-media opportunities so what we as citizens receive from them is more an accurate reflection of what is going on in the world than some opinion,” said Mr. Tow.

Columbia will use its grant to establish the Tow Center, which will build on the journalism school’s existing new-media curriculum and prepare students for careers in digital and online journalism. The school will hire two full-time faculty members to lead the center. The school’s dean, Nicholas Lemann, said the grant had already made an impact: Bill Grueskin of The Wall Street Journal, who two weeks ago was hired as the school’s academic dean, wanted to be involved in the new-media center, Mr. Lemann said.

“Big changes are afoot in journalism, which makes the role of journalism schools vital in a way that it hasn’t been before,” Mr. Lemann said. He added that the center would better position the school to influence the future of journalism.

CUNY’s grant will create the Tow Center for Journalistic Innovation, which will serve a purpose similar to Columbia’s Tow Center. CUNY’s journalism school was established in the fall of 2006 with a heavy emphasis on new media, and at the Tow Center students will develop and put into play journalistic enterprises and business models.

“The old model is under great pressures, some would say crumbling in mainstream media, and there is not enough innovation,” said its dean, Stephen B. Shepard. “This is meant to be a spur in innovation.” —Allie Grasgreen