Improving Cultural Diversity within American Journalism

For 30 years, the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education (MIJE) has helped the nation's news media reflect America's diversity in staffing, content and business operations. Through its professional development programs, the institute prepares managers for careers in both business -- and news -- sides of the journalism industry.

A Rich History of Training

The institute has a history of training and placing more nonwhite journalists than any other single institution in the country. Through the 1970s and 1980s, more than 200 were trained and placed through the institute's flagship, Summer Program for Minority Journalists (SPMJ), held at the University of California, Berkeley. Since 1980, almost 200 journalists of color trained for advancement to editing desks at the six-week Editing Program, located in 2000 to the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, from its original home at the University of Arizona Journalism Department.

MIJE Grads Stay in the Business

Since 1985, the institute's Management Training Center (MTC) at Northwestern University, the nation's first program to train news and business professionals side-by-side, has resulted in career advancement for more than 200 newspaper managers, most of them people of color. Graduates of our programs tend to stay in the business longer than most news professionals. Participants credit the programs with having given them the tools to succeed and/or report using some aspect of what they learned in the program in their jobs daily. Many SPMJ graduates have gone on to distinguish themselves as Pulitzer Prize winners, top editors, managers and publishers. Nearly 90 percent of Editing Program graduates and more than 85 percent of MTC graduates remain in the business today.

Training Multicultural, Multimedia Managers

Through its MTC and weeklong management modules, the institute has prepared 300 professionals of all colors to operate more effectively in today's multicultural, multimedia workplace and marketplace.

The Cross-Media Journalism program, since its pilot in 2000 at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, has trained more than 35 seasoned professionals to deliver the news across multimedia platforms. The weeklong program provides the framework for journalistic narrative in print, broadcast and the Internet across the "Fault Lines" of race, class, gender, generation and geography. Experienced faculty and guest speakers provide insider views and and lessons learned while navigating the ever-changing multimedia landscape.

Collaborating with Industry Leaders

The institute's programs and services have evolved over the years to meet the changing needs and conditions of the industry, shifting focus from entry-level reporters to experienced editors, managers and decision-makers; from newsroom basics to advanced skill development, and new technologies in the workplace and marketplace. Collaboration with industry leaders and partnerships with newspapers and universities -- always central to the institute's work -- continue to expand, along with new relationships with industry associations and multimedia companies.

Incorporated in 1977 as the Institute for Journalism Education, the Oakland-based nonprofit organization was renamed in 1993 to honor the late co-founder Robert C. Maynard, the former Washington Post journalist who went on to become the owner, publisher and editor of The Oakland Tribune.