Central Michigan, Elon and LSU get visiting biz journalism professors

Journalism programs at Central Michigan University, Elon University in North Carolina and Louisiana State University will receive visiting business journalism professors next spring under a $1.67 million grant from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation.

This is the second year that the foundation has funded business journalism professors at universities to encourage the development of stronger business journalism training. This past spring, the inaugural visiting professors taught at Colorado State University, Grambling State University, the University of South Carolina and Texas Christian University.

The five-year program will ultimately create 11 visiting professorships at 11 different schools. It is administered through the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. The Reynolds Center also has sponsored weeklong training seminars for prospective business journalism professors over the past six years.

“The goal of the Reynolds Visiting Business Journalism Professors Program is to select institutions that will commit long-term to the teaching of principles and skills necessary to train business journalists. We are pleased that these three schools have been selected to participate in the second year of the program,” said Steve Anderson, president of the Reynolds Foundation, in a statement.

Andrew Leckey, president of the Reynolds Center and the Reynolds Chair in Business Journalism at the Cronkite School, said the three schools were chosen from dozens of applications, and all three ‘presented strong immediate and longer-term plans for initiating vigorous business journalism coursework and programs.

“The large number of excellent applications from throughout the country underscored the fact that business and economic journalism is growing in importance and popularity,” he said in a statement.

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