S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications


The S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications is the communications school at Syracuse University. It has programs in print and broadcast journalism; music business; graphic design; advertising; public relations; and television and film.
The school was named for publishing magnate Samuel Irving Newhouse Sr., who provided the founding gift in 1964.
Lorraine Branham served as dean of the school from 2008 until her death in 2019. Amy Falkner is currently the interim dean. The school includes about 80 full-time faculty members and about 50 adjunct instructors. Enrollment includes some 1,900 undergraduate students; 200 graduate students; 200 online master's degree students; and 13 doctoral degree candidates. Undergraduate admissions are highly selective.
In December 2011, NewsPro ranked Newhouse as the top journalism school in the country.

History

The Department of Journalism was established at Syracuse University in 1919. It became the School of Journalism in 1934. That year, Syracuse University became the first university in the nation to offer a college credit radio course. In 1947, SU launched WAER, one of the nation's first college radio stations. With the emergence of television, SU was the first to offer instruction in the field.
In 1964, supported by a gift from Samuel I. Newhouse, the Newhouse Communications Complex was officially inaugurated in Newhouse 1, an award-winning building designed by architect I. M. Pei, which housed the School of Journalism. A year later, the building would be cited as one of the top four honor award winners of the American Institute of Architects. The building was dedicated by President Lyndon B. Johnson, who delivered his famous "Gulf of Tonkin Speech" on the Newhouse Plaza.
In 1971, the School of Journalism merged with the Department of Television-Radio and was renamed the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. A second building, Newhouse 2, was dedicated in 1974 with a keynote address by William S. Paley, chairman of the board of CBS.
In 2003, the Newhouse School received a $15 million gift from the S.I. Newhouse Foundation and the Newhouse family to fund the construction of the third building in the Newhouse Communications Complex. The $31.6 million modern structure, designed by the former Polshek Partnership, features the First Amendment etched in six-foot-high letters on its curving glass windows. Newhouse 3 was dedicated on September 19, 2007, with a keynote address from Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts Jr. The event was attended by the Newhouse family.
In September 2014, the school completed an $18 million renovation of the Newhouse 2 building, creating the Newhouse Studio and Innovation Center, which features Dick Clark Studios, the Alan Gerry Center for Media Innovation and the Diane and Bob Miron Digital News Center. Oprah Winfrey attended and spoke at the dedication ceremony.
In July 2015, the Newhouse School began offering an Online Master's in Communications, Communications@Syracuse.
In January 2020, Donald E. Newhouse donated $75 million to the School through the Newhouse Foundation.

Student Activities

Most Newhouse students participate in extracurricular activities to gain experience in their chosen field of study. On-campus publications include The Daily Orange, an independent student-run newspaper; , an online news site; and numerous magazines. The university has three radio stations on campus: WJPZ, a Top 40 station that broadcasts to the Syracuse market; WERW, a free-format station; and WAER, one of the two NPR stations in Syracuse, which has an entirely student-run sports department. On-campus television stations include and CitrusTV, the largest entirely student-run campus TV station in the country. Newhouse student-run agencies include and .
There are also a number of diversity-based organizations for students, including the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

Study Abroad

The Newhouse School offers multiple study abroad opportunities in addition to the SU Abroad program offered by the University. Newhouse students have the ability to work in Dubai, India, and France annually, and the London SU Abroad center offers classes directed by Newhouse.

Olympics

, which owns the rights to Olympic television coverage in the United States, visits campus to recruit Newhouse students for internships every two years. The corporation normally conducts on-campus interviews one year before the games. Twenty-three students covered the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro as paid interns for NBC.

Degrees

Undergraduate

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The Newhouse School offers an online master's degree in communications called Communications@Syracuse. The program is meant to extend the Newhouse School's reach online in order to prepare media professionals in the modern mass media and digital communications environment. This program offers students a foundation in communications, digital media, social media and digital journalism. Communications@Syracuse is broken down into three specializations: advertising, public relations and journalism innovation.

Controversies

In October 2014, the Newhouse School declined to allow Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist Michel du Cille to participate in a journalism workshop at the school because he'd returned three weeks earlier from covering the Ebola outbreak in Liberia. Du Cille said at the time, "It's a disappointment to me. I’m pissed off and embarrassed and completely weirded out that a journalism institution that should be seeking out facts and details is basically pandering to hysteria." Newhouse Dean Lorraine Branham said she made the decision to avoid panic and because she "was unwilling to take any risk where our students are concerned."

Centers and Special Projects

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