Contribution brings Baldwin’s donations to $1 million
USC’s School of Journalism and Mass Communications announced the creation of a fellowship for business journalists to earn a doctorate degree, starting with a $500,000 donation from alumnus Kenneth W. Baldwin Jr.
The Baldwin Business and Financial Graduate Fellowship, valued at more than $70,000 per year, will begin is 2014. Fellows will study and teach at USC for three to five years — three if they have a master’s degree, five if they have only a bachelor’s — and be prepared for a tenure-track assistant professor position before graduating with a doctorate in mass communications. The program is aimed at already-established business journalists who wish to enter academia.
“By investing in a business journalist’s education now, we will be able to impact the field for decades to come,” said Carol Pardun, director of the School of Journalism and Mass Communications. “We all know about the seismic shifts in the media industry. Even in the midst of this uncertainty, we know that journalists will continue to inform the public. Reporting on businesses, housing, stocks, employment numbers, etc., is going to become even more important for all of us.”
This is Baldwin’s second major gift to the School of Journalism and Mass Communications intended on expanding the school’s business journalism curriculum.
His first major gift, $500,000 donated in 2009, started the Baldwin Business and Financial Journalism Endowment Fund. That fund has provided scholarships to journalism students with interests in business as well as brought in visiting professor Rob Wells, a former Dow Jones Newswires/ Wall Street Journal Washington bureau chief. With this second gift, Baldwin’s contributions to the School of Journalism and Mass Communications now total $1 million.
“The idea is to have people who do know about this come in and give more advanced training to bright young people in the program so they will be prepared to do the work that’s out there waiting to be done,” Baldwin said in a release.
Baldwin graduated from USC in 1949 and went on to be a business editor and executive at Landmark Media Enterprises, which owns six daily newspapers and more than 120 community and special interest publications. While at USC, he studied journalism and was managing editor of The Gamecock.