The Knight Digital Media Center @ USC Annenberg broadened the scope and expanding the reach of its popular Transformative Leadership training opportunities in 2010.
With additional support from the McCormick Foundation and USC Annenberg’s Online News Review, [email protected] provided tailored, expenses-paid professional development services to 20 top newsroom leaders from both legacy news organizations and new entrepreneurial operations, with the goal of helping them move to the next level while learning from their best practices.
Participants were people who are already positioned as the new leaders of news and information in the community interest—leaders from major established news organizations that are transforming themselves, and news entrepreneurs who are reinventing models for news and information.
These newsroom leaders and their revenue counterparts participated in a six-month long series of onsite as well as customized virtual courses, and personal coaching/mentoring focused on their specific skill and strategic planning needs for their organizations (be it newspapers, broadcast, online-only, community startups or hybrids that provide quality news and info in the public interest).
[email protected] also worked with a corps of USC Annenberg School of Communication graduate students who helped in our initial ascertainment process of identifying potential participants. These students documented the particular traits and actions that make our Leadership fellows special news/info leaders for the 21st Century, to identify best practices to share with the greater professional audience.
Michele McLellan
Consultant, Knight Digital Media Center, Block by Block Community News Summit
Geneva Overholser
Director, School of Journalism, USC Annenberg School of Journalism
Vikki Porter
Director, Knight Digital Media Center, USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism
Lee Rainie
Director, Pew Internet & American Life Project
Patricia Riley
Professor, USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism