Every story requires its own unique way of being told; some are suited for print, some for digital expression, some for film, some for broadcast and some for a combination of mediums.
However, the annual Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism, which honors leading figures in journalism, seems to neglect these many modes of reporting. In fact, in the past 10 years, seven of the winners were news anchors, one was a television host, one was a moderator and only one was a print journalist. This year's winner, Robin Roberts, anchor of ABC’s "Good Morning America," added to this domination of broadcast journalists. It makes one wonder if the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication and its students are solely focused on broadcast journalism. This perception is concerning, because it’s just not true.
Roberts is an extremely successful journalist and a deserving recipient of this award. However, in the future, we would like to see the Cronkite Endowment Board of Trustees recognize that excellent journalism reaches across all disciplines in the field. It is especially important for them to acknowledge this considering the breadth of Cronkite students' journalistic interests. The leaders in journalism of the past decade have innovated through an incredibly wide variety of mediums.
In addition to recognizing the work of journalists across mediums, it is important to diversify the award's recipients, because they all present speeches to journalism students about the current state of the business.
Perhaps students would like to hear from someone like Arianna Huffington. Since 2006, she has been advancing digital media, to the point of the Huffington Post becoming the first digital media outlet to win a Pulitzer Prize. Considering Cronkite’s investment in the New Media Innovation Lab, where “students create digital products for media clients and develop their own entrepreneurial ideas in the digital space,” it’s disappointing to see Cronkite continually forgo viable candidates in this discipline.
The committee should also consider honoring a radio personality. Ira Glass, for example, has been a leading radio personality for nearly 20 years with his program, “This American Life.” With a partnership with NPR member station KJZZ and a student-run radio station, The Blaze, Cronkite is certainly a radio friendly j-school; honoring someone like Glass would go a long way toward reaffirming that.
How about an accomplished text-based journalist like Ezra Klein, who created the Washington Post’s Wonkblog? Or Nate Silver, creator of FiveThirtyEight, who changed the face of political and economic journalism with his data-driven, analytic approach toward everything from baseball to elections?
Brandon Stanton’s Humans of New York blog has been one of the most significant contributions to photojournalism in the past decade. Aspiring Cronkite photojournalists would have loved to see this field honored.
We can’t forget about those Sun Devil future documentarians either. Bill Simmons created the collaborative documentary series “30 for 30” in conjunction with ESPN films. Standout features like “The Two Escobars” and “Bad Boys” were powerful enough to garner Emmy nominations, and droves of students would have flocked to see his input on such an intriguing form of media.
We recognize the award is one of the school's biggest fundraising opportunities, which raises the stakes for choosing a broadly recognized media figure. However, Cronkite shouldn't choose fundraising at the expense of demonstrating that only one type of journalistic work is "excellent."
The namesake of the school may be the most successful broadcast journalist of all time, but if this is supposed to be an award for exclusively broadcast journalists, let’s just call it that. For now, it is an award for excellence in journalism, and the committee needs to start recognizing all that that entails.
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