Four finalists for dean of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication were announced Thursday, bringing the school one step closer to becoming its own college.
The Cronkite school is working to become an independent college, and the new dean would oversee the school's transition to independence and eventual move to ASU's Downtown Phoenix campus.
Christopher Callahan is the associate dean of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland and the senior editor of the American Journalism Review. He is a former Washington correspondent for The Associated Press and the author of "A Journalist's Guide to the Internet: The Net as a Reporting Tool."
Joel Kaplan is assistant dean of professional graduate studies at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. Prior to teaching communications law and advanced reporting, he wrote for the Chicago Tribune and The Tennessean, where he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in investigative reporting.
Mitchell Stephens is chair of Journalism and Mass Communication at New York University. He also worked to create the Newseum, a $40-million news museum where he served as a journalism history consultant and a member of the museum's content committee.
Ruth Walden is the associate dean for graduate studies in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Walden authored a study of insult laws commissioned by the World Press Freedom Committee and published it in June 2000.
ASU's journalism school has been under the direction of three people in the past six years.
Mark Jacobs, dean of the Barrett Honors College and head of the dean search committee, said he would like to see the dean focus on addressing concerns raised by the school's accreditation review last semester.
The accreditation review committee said in October that the school's diversity and administration needed improvement.
"I hope [the new dean] will consider diversity one of the major challenges," Jacobs said.
Steve Doig, interim director of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, is confident about the finalists and that the search committee "can't miss" with the candidates they've selected.
The school has sought to be an independent college for several years as a way of distinguishing itself, Doig said.
"It's a status thing," Doig said. "Most of the top journalism schools in the country are independent."
Reach the reporter at elias.arnold@asu.edu.
