Vicki Krueger is director of interactive learning at The Poynter Institute, where she manages News University, an online journalism and media training program that launched in 2005 due to funding from Knight Foundation, which has provided substantial ongoing support.

For a decade, journalists and the educators who teach aspiring ones have turned to Poynter’s News University to acquire the skills they need in an ever-changing digital media landscape. With funding from Knight Foundation, NewsU was created to offer journalism training to anyone, anytime, anywhere. RELATED LINKS

“Five grant-making lessons from the rise of NewsU” by Eric Newton, 04/10/15  “Poynter’s News University, world’s largest online journalism teaching platform, to get revamp with $195,000 from Knight Foundation” — press release, 04/10/15

NewsU now boasts more than 325,000 registered users in 200 countries and territories, 400 courses, 70 training partners and modules in seven languages. But it’s time to push further as disruption continues to reshape how people access and use information. As we look to our next 10 years, it’s time to rethink NewsU and how it can unleash the power of new platforms with new tools and new technologies. It’s time to expand NewsU’s capacity to help train journalists and others who share news and information worldwide. It’s time to create the next generation of e-learning in scalable, shareable and adaptable ways that reach a global audience.

Whether it’s an e-learning course on a laptop or a learning game on a smart phone, our goal is simple but ambitious: to ensure no one interested in sharing news misses an opportunity for training.

With new support from Knight, Poynter’s NewsU will be able to get started on the ways we can do just that. Our goal is to define and develop a multiplatform strategy that enables us to create and deliver training across a range of digital devices, from desktops and laptops to tablets and mobile, even emerging wearable technologies.

We’ll explore new ways of collaborating with others who are providing training and tools, and explore new ways of reaching audiences. We want to identify and meet the needs of people who are helping to share quality information and who are not yet engaged with NewsU. And we will do it all with a human-centered design approach that allows us to be nimble in our development and respond to our audience.

Thanks to Knight Foundation for more than 10 years of funding and support. Thanks to our many partners who have worked with us to develop courses and programs to make journalism better. Most of all, thanks to all 325,000 registered users at NewsU. In 2005, we started with a simple tagline: It’s all about U. Ten years later, that still holds true.  

With NewsU reimagined, we’ll continue to innovate, educate and create the best online journalism training in the world for your career success—for the next 10 years, and beyond.

To learn more about the training available from NewsU, visit newsu.org.