Today

Previous Article | Next Article

The Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Alex S. Jones has served as director of the Shorenstein Center since July 1, 2000. Under his leadership the Center has become a major source of knowledge and authority on press ethics.

Jones has enhanced the Fellowship Program, raised the profile of the Goldsmith Awards, launched new initiatives to increase student engagement, and broadened the advisory board. He has strengthened the financial underpinnings of the Center, with the strong support of the Shorenstein family. Jones inaugurated a new Washington-based program of briefings for journalists and convened conferences on new issues such as blogging and journalism and the reporting of science.

The Center is one of five institutions selected to participate in the Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education. The Center now offers the Lynette Lithgow Summer Internship Award, News21 internships, and a day-long workshop on journalism for Kennedy School students interested in the field. The David Nyhan Prize for Political Journalism was endowed in 2005 and is awarded in conjunction with the annual Theodore H. White Lecture.

Today the Kennedy School's Dean, David Ellwood, oversees an institution with more than 900 students, 44 tenured faculty members and 15 research centers. Over the last 20 years, the Shorenstein Center has been one of the most active programs in the School and has hosted more than a thousand brown-bag lunches, faculty seminars and conferences with leading journalists, policymakers and scholars from around the world.

The contemporary challenges facing the media and their role in a democratic society prove the value of the Center's original vision and institutional mission. The interaction of the realms of press, politics and policy has never been more intense and consequential, and the need for productive collaboration of the academic and the practitioner never more palpable. In the coming years, the Center is committed to strengthening its dynamic mix of programs and participants, particularly fellows and faculty, as we engage the challenges of a rapidly changing media environment.

 
Back to the top...  Learn more...