What is the Committee of Concerned Journalists?What does the Committee of Concerned Journalists do?Who belongs to CCJ?How is CCJ funded?Do you provide grants to journalists?What is the Traveling Curriculum? Where can I get a description of what's on your website and where to find it?I tried to post a comment about something I saw on the CCJ website and it didn't show up - why not?  What is the Committee of Concerned Journalists?The Committee of Concerned Journalists is a consortium of reporters, editors, producers, publishers, owners and academics from across media worried about the future of the profession. Chaired by Bill Kovach, it was formed in 1997 after a meeting at Harvard attended by leading figures in journalism. The participants included such diverse members of the profession as author David Halberstam, PBS correspondent Gwen Ifill, newspaper editor John Carroll and educator Jim Carey. The group is dedicated to the idea that, in order for journalism to survive, journalists themselves must be clearer, more rigorous and more vocal about the principles that set their profession apart and make their jobs matter.Effective July 1, 2006, Jeffrey Dvorkin, the first ombudsman for National Public Radio, became CCJ’s Executive Director.[top] What does the Committee of Concerned Journalists do?After its inception in 1997, CCJ issued a statement of concern, created a network of professionals nationwide, held twenty-one forums, and conducted surveys and content studies to identify the core principles journalists share. These were then distilled in 2001 into a book, The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect. In turn, these ideas are available to news people through our Traveling Curriculum of workshops. The work continues through further research, reporting, writing and discussion. [top]Who belongs to CCJ?Over 7,000 people – including reporters, writers, editors, producers, educators, students, and interested citizens – have joined the Committee of Concerned Journalists. Click here to join. [top]How is CCJ funded?CCJ operates on a $2.8 million grant from The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. We are an affiliate of the new Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. [top]Do you provide grants to journalists?No. CCJ is a grantee, not a grantor. We have received funding, and we sometimes hire journalists and researchers for specific projects, but we do not have resources set aside for people looking for funding. [top]What is the Traveling Curriculum?The Traveling Curriculum is a CCJ training program for journalists and news organizations of all types. The workshops are designed to help organizations to identify their goals and to test whether their reflexes and methods are living up to those goals. News organizations pick from a growing menu of "modules" and custom design a training program to meet their objectives. Modules focus on a range of topics-from testing the discipline a news organization uses to verify the news to examining the techniques they use to make the news interesting. Based on studying what kind of training works in other fields, and developed with educational experts at Stanford, the curriculum relies heavily on Socratic method, case studies, small group exercises and large-group discussion. Lecture is limited. Begun in 2001, the CCJ Traveling Curriculum has reached thousands of journalists around the country and the world in a short time. Click here for FAQs specific to the Traveling Curriculum training program. [top]Where can I get a description of what's on your website and where to find it?You can find an outline of our website on the "About Our Website" page here. [top]I tried to post a comment about something I saw on the CCJ website and it didn't show up - why not?When you post a comment, it's sent to an approval queue and will not immediately appear on our website. Several times a day the CCJ Website Manager checks the comment approval queue and publishes comments to the site. Anonymous and inappropriate posts are not published. See the Guidelines for Posting Comments page for more information. [top]