Veterans wait for disability checks as VA struggles to reduce backlog from News21 on Vimeo.

Len Downie is the Weil Family Professor of Journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University and a vice president at large of The Washington Post.

In a significant example of the continuing impact of the 2012 News21 national student reporting project on voting rights, President Obama cited its investigation of voter fraud in a recent speech to the 16th annual convention of the National Action Network. Obama criticized state laws passed in recent years requiring certain kinds of photo identification from voters to prevent voter impersonation at the polls. Referring to the unprecedented News21 database of voter fraud cases compiled from all 50 states over a 10-year period, the president said such restrictions were not necessary because “one recent study found only 10 cases in 10 years” of voter impersonation.

News media and public policymakers continue to refer to findings from the voting rights investigation as part of the ongoing debate over voting rights in various states.

The same is true of the work produced by students in 2013 on veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This project detailed significant problems in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ treatment of veterans’ disability claims and medical needs that provided context for recent revelations and investigations of mismanagement in VA medical centers. The Chicago City Council, for example, recently voted unanimously to expand education about suicide prevention resources for veterans after citing News21 findings that 17.72 percent of suicides committed in Illinois between 2005 and 2011 were by veterans. The veteran suicide rate in Illinois during that time period was 25.5 per 100,000, more than twice the civilian rate of 10.6 per 100,000.

Journalism from both of those projects was published and broadcast by several dozen news outlets throughout the country, including The Washington Post, nbcnews.com, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Scripps, Digital First Media, the Center for Public Integrity, NPR and KJZZ public radio in Phoenix.

This year’s News21 project, involving 29 students from 16 universities, focuses on the legislative, lobbying and legal battles between gun rights and gun control advocates across the country. We expect to publish it in late August, although students already are blogging about their work.

The two-dozen or so journalism students who are chosen for News21 each year are proof of the kind of impactful reporting and digital innovation students are capable of when given resources and guidance. But just as important, they take what they’ve learned in News21 into their work beyond college. We have found that News21 fellows find jobs in journalism at much higher rates than other journalism students, and they already are beginning to lead.

University of Missouri graduate and 2013 News21 journalist Steven Rich was a member of The Washington Post team of reporters that shared the Pulitzer Prize for public service for revelations about National Security Agency surveillance. Two alums of the Cronkite School and News21 projects, Lauren Gilger of ABC15 in Phoenix and Brandon Quester of the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, recently collaborated on a joint digital/television investigation of hazardous chemical storage facilities in Arizona.

There are many more such success stories – evidence that News21 is changing not just the teaching of journalism but the course of many young lives.

News21 is a reporting program that was created by Knight Foundation and the Carnegie Corp. in 2006 to change the way college journalism is taught and develop the next generations of multimedia investigative journalists. Headquartered at the Cronkite School, News21 continues to benefit from Knight Foundation’s support.