The new Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University has been added to the most popular selection of Apple’s iTunes U after just a few short weeks in production.
The series, “Journalism in the Digital Age,” contains episodes of an ongoing Cronkite speaker series in which journalism leaders discuss critical issues facing the news media. The podcast series garnered more than 44,000 plays and nearly 20,000 downloads during the week of April 10-16 alone.
The most popular episode was “Investigative Journalism in a Nonprofit Newsroom,” in which Paul Steiger, editor-in-chief, CEO and president of ProPublica, the national investigative reporting nonprofit, was interviewed by Leonard Downie Jr., Weil Family Professor of Journalism at the Cronkite School and former executive editor of The Washington Post, for the Must See Mondays speaker series in the school’s First Amendment Forum. Apple reported that 29,284 people played the podcast during the week of April 10-16 and 11,716 downloaded it – the most of any iTunes U offerings.
iTunes U is one of the many ways that the Cronkite School has embraced new networked communication strategies in the changing world of participatory journalism and social media. They also offer popular Twitter and Facebook content and are exploring mobile delivery technologies as well through the Cronkite News Online, an outlet for the reporting done by the school’s professional immersion programs.
“We teach our students to think about new media distribution models, so it’s only fitting that the school models the same innovation,” said Liz Smith, outreach director for the Cronkite School.
Listeners can play, download and subscribe to the Cronkite podcast, as well as many others offered by ASU on iTunes U. Those who subscribe will receive updates each time new episodes become available.
Related Links