The Center for the Study of Journalism and Democracy is an interdisciplinary program launched in the Fall of 2002 at the USC Annenberg School in response to an urgent national need to review the performance and quality of journalism in the United States, and to develop methods for measuring and improving the profession’s effect on American democracy.
The Center’s work is focused on understanding the interplay of journalism, culture, citizens and democracy. It proceeds from the premise that the failure of most news organizations to provide adequate news, information and alternative viewpoints on matters of significant public import is among the key factors contributing to the continuing erosion of civic literacy and civic engagement.
The major objectives of the Center are to identify deficiencies in press performance, understand their causes and consequences, and work to improve press performance in areas vital to effective citizenship: civic literacy, civic virtue, civic engagement and a robust civil society. These objectives will be pursued through an integrated program of research and scholarship, education, and publications.
The Center’s long-term goals are to:
- Develop broad-based public understanding of threats to the vitality of America’s democratic republic that result from the general failure of journalism and citizens to fulfill their respective responsibilities to the nation and their communities.
- Develop an equally broad-based sense of urgency about the need to improve press performance in ways that will increase citizen engagement of significant issues and ensure that such increased involvement in the people’s business is informed, productive and constructive.
The Center’s Founder and Director,
Jay T. Harris, is a nationally respected journalist who was publisher of the
San Jose Mercury News for more than seven years, where he led the paper to create innovative uses of new technology, launch editions in Spanish and Vietnamese, and expand its news gathering capacity while returning healthy profits and above average profit margins. He also served as executive editor of the
Philadelphia Daily News and as a vice president of Knight Ridder, Inc.
Harris worked as a national correspondent and columnist for Gannett News Service, and as a reporter and editor at the Wilmington, Delaware
News Journal newspapers where he began his career in 1970.
From 1975 to 1982, he taught at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. At Medill he served as assistant dean of the school and associate director of its mid-career training program. In 1978, he designed and launched the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ annual national census of minority employment in daily newspapers. It remains the industry benchmark to this day.
He is a member of the board of the Pulitzer Prizes, the Salzburg Seminar, and the Pacific Council on International Policy and was recently elected to the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. He also holds the posts of Distinguished Fellow at the Poynter Institute in Florida and Presidential Professor at Santa Clara University in California.