ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (August, 2011) –The Poynter Institute’s e-learning project, News University (Poynter NewsU), today announced that California State University, Fullerton (CSUF) will become the third school to partner in the Journalism 101 pilot program it launched earlier this year.

CSUF joins Florida Atlantic University and Missouri State University as the first schools that will participate in this unique e-learning pilot. As partners, these schools will provide guidance on the development of the online teaching and work with Poynter NewsU to ensure the introductory course content meets the needs of the schools and students.

Funded by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Journalism 101 is a 16-week online course that teaches the basics of journalism skills and values and is designed to satisfy graduation requirements for a core journalism class for the program’s partner schools. Poynter NewsU will work with partner schools to provide data about student performance.

“We have built, on the strength of Poynter NewsU’s interactive e-learning modules, a program that takes advantage of the special teaching skills of the Poynter faculty,” said Howard Finberg, Poynter’s director of interactive learning. “We want to help universities with journalism programs find new ways to introduce journalism and allow teachers to have more time to coach and mentor students in person. We also believe the program will be a great resource for colleges and universities that do not have a formal journalism curriculum through which to offer this material.”

“We are very excited to be partnering with one of America’s most respected and dynamic journalism organizations as we continue our efforts to be on the cutting edge of communications education,” said Anthony R. Fellow, chair of Cal State Fullerton’s Department of Communications.

Journalism 101 will draw upon the expertise of Poynter faculty and the Institute’s e-learning program. It will feature live and video teaching by Poynter faculty and adjuncts, as well as lessons from more than two-dozen self-directed modules on NewsU. Upon completion of the pilot course on journalism basics, Poynter and the school’s partners will evaluate the program’s success with an eye toward expanding the program and developing similar courses on other topics.

Poynter NewsU will showcase the Journalism 101 project at the upcoming convention of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) convention in St. Louis. That session, “E-Learning’s Impact on Journalism Education,” will be held at 3:15 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 11. University officials interested in learning more about the program should contact Howard Finberg, at hfinberg@poynter.org or 727-821-9494.

About Poynter’s News University Poynter’s News University (http://www.newsu.org) offers training to journalists, journalism students, teachers and the public through more than 200 interactive e-learning modules and other forms of training. It has more than 185,000 registered users in 225 countries. The Poynter Institute trains journalism practitioners, media leaders, educators and citizens in the areas of online and multimedia, leadership and management, reporting, writing and editing, TV and radio, ethics and diversity, journalism education and visual journalism. Poynter’s website, (http://www.poynter.org) is the dominant provider of journalism news, with a focus on business analysis and the opportunities and implications of technology.

CONTACT Howard Finberg, Director of Interactive Learning hfinberg@poynter.org

Jessica Blais, Director of Marketing jblais@poynter.org