About

About the Renaissance Journalism Center

As the United States becomes more diverse and the media undergo revolutionary and unpredictable change, San Francisco State University’s Department of Journalism has created an interdisciplinary center to identify and spark promising new journalistic models and practices that serve, strengthen and empower communities.

While talk of the “death of journalism” permeates much of today’s discourse about the state of the media, the Renaissance Journalism Center explore the new opportunities—visible or beyond the horizon—that open up as a result of these changes.

Discovering these new opportunities will require varied approaches, such as working to improve the burgeoning ethnic news media, examining new business models that will sustain journalism, forging improved relationships between journalists and community, and empowering community leaders with new tools for storytelling and networking.  These explorations will require an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach that connects the media, the community and the academy.  The San Francisco Bay Area offers a rich and diverse setting for this work.

Mission & Activities

In broad strokes, the mission of the Renaissance Journalism Center is to:

  • Promote innovative media and journalistic practices that support healthy, pluralistic communities and advance equity, fairness and justice.
  • Capture the knowledge needed to understand the role and impact of these new forms of media, to address problems and issues and to develop tools and resources.
  • Collaborate with others from media and technology, business, the academy, the philanthropic and nonprofit sector, government and other interested stakeholders.


Current Projects

  • The Learning Lab, a training initiative on new practices in storytelling, multimedia, social networking and business.
  • The Media Greenhouse, a mini-grant program to encourage innovation in journalistic, business and technological practices.
  • The Vietnam Reporting Project, a fellowship program for mainstream, ethnic and student journalists.
  • The New Media Lab & Incubator, an experimental program to help nonprofit organizations to utilize journalism and social media.

Supporters

The Renaissance Journalism Center has been created in partnership with ZeroDivide and receives financial support from Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy, Chicago Instructional Technology Foundation, Denver Area Education Telecommunications Consortium, Ford Foundation, Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation, Instructional Telecommunications Foundation, McCormick Foundation, Portland Regional Education Telecommunications Corporation, Twin Cities Telecommunications Group and ZeroDivide.

Leadership

  • Jon Funabiki is the Executive Director. A professor of journalism, Funabiki is the former Deputy Director of Media, Arts & Culture at the Ford Foundation, one of the world’s leading philanthropies, where he was in charge of grantmaking initiatives in journalism.  Funabiki has also served as founding director of SFSU’s Center for Integration & Improvement of Journalism.  During a 17-year career in journalism, he was Pacific Rim Correspondent for The San Diego Union, reporting from Japan, South Korea, China, the Philippines and other countries.  He also has worked for community and ethnic news media.
  • Whitney Wilcox is the Program Manager. Prior to joining the Center, Whitney worked as the Interim Deputy Director of New Routes to Community Health, a grantmaking program supporting the development of media in collaboration with media production centers, immigrant organizations, and community institutions. She also served as the station manager of a community television station and as a staff associate of the Benton Foundation. Whitney has an M.S. in community development from UC Davis and a B.A. in journalism and political science from UW Madison.

The mission of SFSU’s Department of Journalism, which was founded in 1962, is to prepare students to search for, gather and present news according to the highest standards of truth, honesty, fairness, clarity, courage, independence, importance, perseverance and service to the democratic ideals that underlie the First Amendment offers undergraduate journalism degree programs.  With more than 600 enrolled majors, the department’s Bachelor’s Degree program in Journalism ranks as one of the university’s 10 most popular majors.  Students concentrate in news-editorial, visual journalism, online news or magazine sequences, and they produce the award-winning Golden Gater newspaper, Golden Gater [X]Press website and[X]Press magazine.  Graduates of the department are employed by leading newspapers, television stations, radio stations and other media outlets throughout the nation.  The department is also the home of the Center for Integration & Improvement of Journalism, which promotes diversity in the news media and in journalism education.
 

Contact Us:

Renaissance Journalism Center
425 Bush Street, Suite 300
San Francisco, CA  94108
Tel: 415-773-0388
Fax: 415-773-0380
Email: info at rjcmedia.org

 

 

Grants

Media Greenhouse Grants

The Media Greenhouse supports ethnic media, community media, and nonprofit groups in an effort to incubate and test innovative models for gathering and distributing news. This support includes grants, technical assistance and training for news organizations. The goal is to foster growth and improvement in journalism. All projects awarded the grant will share what is learned with the greater journalism and philantrhopic communities.

 

Training

The Renaissance Journalism Center offers an annual series of classes, workshops and conferences providing training in journalism, multimedia skills, online practices, newsroom management, business development and other topics.

 

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