Poynter Announces New Interactive Learning Fellowship in Honor of News University Founder Howard Finberg

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., Jan. 16, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Poynter Institute has established a new e-learning fellowship in the name of Howard Finberg, who retired from his full time position last December as the organization's director of training partnerships and alliances and founded its highly successful e-learning platform, NewsU.

He will continue as an active affiliate of Poynter, in which one of his key roles will be consulting for Poynter's recently announced training partnership with Gannett, the nation's largest news publisher.

The Finberg Interactive Learning Fellowship has been established in recognition of Finberg's important contributions to the Institute.  The fellowship will be awarded to a recent college graduate to support the e-learning efforts of the Institute.

"Howard Finberg has had a profound impact on The Poynter Institute, and on the careers of thousands of journalists," said Poynter president Tim Franklin. "Working with the Knight Foundation, Howard launched what is now the world's premier journalism e-learning platform, making vital training more readily accessible and affordable for legions of journalists. NewsU is a personification of Howard. Like Howard, NewsU was ahead of its time and made a tangible difference in the lives of journalists."

Finberg's work with Poynter began in 2002, when he came to the Institute as its Presidential Scholar. One of his roles was to look at the intersection of technology, journalism and training, especially the development of e-learning and how it could be used to teach journalists.

The Knight Foundation grant funded the development of Poynter's e-learning project, which led to the creation of NewsU.  The site debuted publically in April 2005 with approximately 3,000 users and 10 courses. Today, NewsU offers the world's largest online journalism curriculum in 7 languages, with more than 400 interactive courses and over 300,000 users in more than 200 countries.

In his role at Poynter, Finberg also sought new training partners and played a critical role in creating training alliances with such organizations as McClatchy, Scripps, Pioneer News Group and most recently, Gannett. He also spearheaded business development for many of Poynter's international teaching initiatives, successfully creating or organizing programs in Indonesia, Turkey and India.

"Howard's career as an innovator and visionary speaks for itself," said Vicki Krueger, director of interactive learning at the institute. "It has been a privilege professionally and personally to work with him."

Finberg winds down a long and distinguished career as a journalist, digital futurist and educator. Before coming to Poynter, he founded and ran The Digital Futurist Consultancy (www.digitalfuturist.com), where his clients included the McClatchy Co., MediaNews Interactive, The San Francisco Chronicle, Hearst Interactive and the Newspaper Association of America. Finberg was a corporate vice president at Central Newspapers, prior to its sale to Gannett Corp., where he managed the company's Internet and technology investment and provided strategic and operational guidance for the company's print and online efforts.

He has also held senior newsroom management positions at The Arizona Republic, where he created www.azcentral.com, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Chicago Tribune. He also worked at the San Jose Mercury News, San Francisco Examiner and The New York Times. Finberg established the Chicago Tribune's graphics desk, one of the country's first such operations and was the founding editor of the country's first syndicated newspaper graphics service.

Finberg formerly taught at Northwestern University and San Francisco State University and is the co-author of Visual Editing: A Graphic Guide for Journalists, a college-level textbook about newspaper design, informational graphics,  illustrations and photography. He has also been a frequent speaker at industry conferences and has served as a judge for a number of website competitions.

About The Poynter Institute

The Poynter Institute for Media Studies is global leader in journalism education, and a strategy center that stands for uncompromising excellence in journalism, media and 21st century public discourse. Poynter faculty teach seminars and workshops at the Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., and at conferences and organizational sites around the world. Its e-learning division, News University, www.newsu.org, offers the world's largest online journalism curriculum in 7 languages, with more than 400 interactive courses and 300,000 registered users in more than 200 countries and territories. The Institute's website, www.poynter.org, produces 24-hour coverage of news about media, ethics, technology, the business of news and the trends that currently define and redefine journalism news reporting. The world's top journalists and media innovators come to Poynter to learn and teach new generations of reporters, storytellers, media inventors, designers, visual journalists, documentarians and broadcast producers, and to build public awareness about journalism, media, the First Amendment and protected discourse that serves democracy and the public good.

CONTACT: Kim Tobin, 727-553-4707, [email protected]

SOURCE The Poynter Institute