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Tomorrow's Workforce is a partnership of major news corporations, more than 50 national journalism professional and mid-career teaching organizations, and one of the nation's most prestigious schools of journalism.
We encourage professional development in America ’s newsrooms.
We help show how strategic investments in newsroom training and in professional development can improve the appeal and value of quality journalism. Our four-year project is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
We agree with news industry leaders who believe the challenges of the information age can best be met through increasing training and midcareer education for journalists.
National research in the news industry shows that staff development improves employee retention, editorial quality and news content, and workforce culture, all of which in turn strengthen value and appeal to audiences.
A 2002 study – Newsroom Training: Where’s the Investment? – found the news industry lagging in providing professional development and that this lack of training was the number one workplace complaint of journalists.
After professional groups representing more than 25,000 journalists called for new ways to increase training and education, Tomorrow’s Workforce was formed.
The project, with a $2.2 million grant from the Knight Foundation, is based at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in Evanston , Illinois .
Tomorrow’s Workforce offers news organizations free consulting – a learning assessment that examines an editorial operation’s commitment and capacity to train and develop its own people.
Our assessment team will survey staff, interview key leaders and examine relevant editorial and market benchmarks.
Our analysis will help:
- Corporate leaders identify ways to increase the capacity of their news organizations to grow their audiences by increasing editorial quality.
- Newsroom leaders assess and prioritize staff development needs and measure the impact of training.
- Journalism-training experts build continuous, effective and cost-effective professional development programs that build skills, knowledge and engagement in newsrooms.
- Staff members understand individual training and development choices they can make to help continue to grow as professionals.
In 2004 and 2005, Tomorrow’s Workforce will conduct assessments in more than 20 newsrooms.
The project will report training and development success stories from those and other newsrooms to industry and professional associations, training providers and journalism schools.
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