News Feature

Reviving Journalism: What We Need to Know

July 13, 2007

“If what people are hearing and reading and seeing isn’t fair and honest and representative of the diversity of society,” says Leo Hindery, Jr., managing partner of InterMedia Partners, “then you can’t trust the decisions they’re going to make. Journalism is of critical importance across all aspects of society—in science and medicine and arts, in business, on the front page and in sports, and in every other arena.”

Hindery is committed to Columbia’s leadership role in the teaching and practice of journalism. A member of the Journalism School’s board of visitors, he is co–chairman of its Second Century Campaign, one of the coordinated fundraising efforts that comprise The Columbia Campaign. With a $40 million goal for endowed financial aid (40 percent of the school’s overall campaign goal), the Second Century Campaign seeks to help the profession meet its potential and maintain its standards as fully as possible.

It was in 2005, with this in mind, that Hindery donated $5 million to create scholarships for Columbia’s journalism students. “No prospective student should ever have to decline acceptance because of financial circumstances,” he says.

The gift also honors his daughter, Robin Hindery ’04JRN, a reporter for the Associated Press. “My dad’s relationship with the school was first formed, and then strengthened, by the fact that I went there,” she says, “but how the media operates, preserving a certain level of integrity—these are interests he’s always had. The kind of journalists that Columbia is trying to send into the world—who will help get people back to respecting the media and picking up their local newspaper more often—that’s very much in sync with my father’s ideals. I think he sees these scholarships as encouraging that.”

Leo Hindery is quick to praise Nicholas Lemann, who became the school’s dean in September 2003. “Nick walked in and said three things: That the curriculum had to evolve quickly—the school had, perhaps, sat on its laurels for too long; that the school had to become the premier voice on journalism ethics and integrity, for all the world; and that he needed a diverse student body to back that up.”

Indeed, Hindery supports Lemann’s diversity initiatives as vehemently as he does his ethical ones. “The media industry has never needed more diversity than it does now, of every characteristic—ethnicity, gender, race, orientation, and nationality.” But, he adds, “you can only meet this demand if you fill the journalism pipeline with diverse students and practitioners from every walk of life and every part of the world.”

Columbia’s preeminence, he argues, makes it vitally important that the best students are able to attend. “New York City will remain the media capital of the world for many years to come. There is not in any other profession such an obvious number–one graduate program as Columbia’s Journalism School, with its history and location. We need Columbia, with the quality of education that it offers, to have the best, brightest, and most diverse students applying to it,” says Leo Hindery. “That’s the purpose of the gift.”
-Marcus Tonti