S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications

History

Early years

The Department of Journalism was established at Syracuse University in 1919 as a part of the College of Business Administration. A chapter of the journalism sorority Theta Sigma Phi (ΘΣΦ) was established in 1920. In 1932 the university began producing radio programs over WSYR from a studio in Crouse College, and it became the first university in the nation to offer a college-credit radio course.

Formation of the School of Journalism

The department became a separate School of Journalism in 1934, with Matthew Lyle Spencer serving as the founding dean. The new school was housed in Yates Castle, also called Renwick Castle, from 1934 until the building was demolished in 1954. It then moved into the Old Gym, the university's original 1892 gymnasium, where it stayed until that building was razed in 1965 to make way for the Physics Building.

In 1947 the university launched WAER, one of the nation's first college radio stations. In 1956 it became one of the first universities to offer instruction in television.

Construction of the Newhouse Complex

The school grew out of a meeting in the late 1950s between S. I. Newhouse and Chancellor William P. Tolley at the Hotel Syracuse. Newhouse gave $15 million in 1962, and in 1964 the School of Journalism moved into Newhouse 1, the first building of the Newhouse Communications Complex, designed by I. M. Pei. President Lyndon B. Johnson dedicated the building in August 1964 and delivered his Gulf of Tonkin speech on its plaza.

In 1971, the School of Journalism merged with the Department of Television-Radio and was renamed the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. A second building, Newhouse 2, was dedicated in 1974 with a keynote address by William S. Paley, chairman of the board of CBS. It cost $7.2 million to build.

In 2003, the Newhouse School received a $15 million gift from the S. I. Newhouse Foundation and the Newhouse family to fund the construction of the third building in the Newhouse Communications Complex. The $31.6 million 74,000-square-foot (6,900 m2) structure was designed by the Polshek Partnership. Newhouse 3 was dedicated on September 19, 2007, with a keynote address from the Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts.

In September 2014, the school completed an $18 million renovation of the Newhouse 2 building, creating the Newhouse Studio and Innovation Center, which features Dick Clark Studios, the Alan Gerry Center for Media Innovation and the Diane and Bob Miron Digital News Center. Oprah Winfrey attended and spoke at the dedication ceremony.

In 2019 the school began producing ACC Network broadcasts with Syracuse athletics from Newhouse 2, which is linked by fiber to campus venues and to ESPN in Bristol, Connecticut. That year it also merged its newspaper and online journalism and magazine journalism majors into a single program, magazine, news and digital journalism.

In January 2020, Donald E. Newhouse pledged $75 million to the school through the Newhouse Foundation, the largest gift in the university's history at the time.

The university's radio station, WAER, became part of the Newhouse School in 2021. In 2022 the Newhouse and Maxwell schools launched the Center for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship in Washington, D.C., now the Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship, and in 2024 the school and the Falk College began offering a degree in esports communications and management.

Reputation

Newhouse is widely regarded as one of the country's leading communications schools. Its standing grew from an early start in broadcasting, as one of the first schools to teach radio and television, and from the Newhouse family's gifts, which paid for its three-building complex. It is best known for sportscasters. Students have long run the sports coverage of the campus station WAER, which produced Marv Albert, Dick Stockton, Len Berman and Bob Costas, among many others, and a 1984 Sports Illustrated article quoted Stockton as saying, "Syracuse is to sports broadcasting what Notre Dame is to football."

Many Newhouse students also work at The Daily Orange, the student newspaper, which broke from the university's control in 1971 and has been fully independent since 1991. Its alumni include the reporters Eli Saslow, Steve Kroft and Michael Kranish, the baseball writers Jayson Stark and Jeff Passan, the sportswriter turned NHL executive Chris Snow, the college sports reporter Pete Thamel, the publisher Larry S. Kramer, the writer Jerre Mangione, known for his books on Sicilian-American life, and the cartoonists Jim Morin and Robb Armstrong. Several have worked for The New York Times, among them Saslow, Thamel, Greg Bishop and Connor Ennis, a longtime Times and The Athletic editor. Former editors-in-chief include Meredith Goldstein, a Boston Globe columnist; Rose Ciotta, who co-edited The Philadelphia Inquirer's 2012 Pulitzer Prize–winning series on school violence; and Dave Levinthal, who reported from Washington for the Center for Public Integrity and Business Insider and became an editor at Raw Story and at NOTUS, now The Washington Sun. Graduates form what the school calls the "Newhouse Network," which helps students find internships and jobs.

Academics

The school offers bachelor's degrees in advertising, journalism, public relations, recording and entertainment industries (the Bandier Program), television, radio and film, and visual communications, with a sports media track, as well as an online bachelor's in strategic communications and an esports degree offered jointly with the Falk College. It also offers residential and online master's degrees and a doctorate. Students produce work for the student news outlets The NewsHouse and NCC News and for WAER, and run Hill Communications, a public relations firm, and TNH, an advertising agency. The school runs semester programs in New York City, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. In 2026 it dropped the fall Washington semester because of low enrollment, keeping the program in spring and summer. Beginning in fall 2026, under a partnership with Spectrum News, student work appears on Spectrum's platforms, including an issues-based magazine show and its Syracuse station's sports coverage, and Spectrum places Newhouse students in newsroom internships nationwide.

For more than 30 years the school has run a fellowship with The Post-Standard and syracuse.com, both owned by the Newhouse family's Advance Local, that pays for an 18-month master's degree in journalism along with an internship at the newspaper. Originally the Newhouse News Diversity Fellowship, it was renamed the Newhouse Foundation Fellowship, and in 2025, following a 2023 Department of Education directive, its webpage was revised to describe it as for students with demonstrated financial need.

Its research centers include the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture, directed by the television scholar Robert Thompson; the Tully Center for Free Speech, directed by Roy Gutterman, which gives an annual Free Speech Award to a journalist who has faced hardship in doing their work; the Newhouse Sports Media Center; and the Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship. The school also presents the Mirror Awards, for reporting on the media industry, and the Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting, named for the alumna Robin Toner.

Faculty members have included Margaret Talev, a professor of practice who directs the university's Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship, and Joan Deppa, a professor for more than 30 years who was lead author of The Media and Disasters: Pan Am 103 (1993), a study of the press coverage of the bombing that killed 35 Syracuse students.

Deans of the Newhouse School of Public Communications

Matthew Lyle Spencer, 1934–1950

Wesley Clark, 1950–1952 (acting), 1952–1972

Henry Schulte, 1972 (acting), 1973–1980

Edward Stephens, 1980–1981 (acting), 1981–1989

Lawrence Myers Jr., 1989–1990 (interim)

David Rubin, 1990–2008

Lorraine Branham, 2008–2019 (died in office)

Amy Falkner, 2019–2020 (interim)

Mark J. Lodato, 2020–present

Notable Newhouse alumni

The Newhouse School is known for its notable alumni in sports broadcasting and other fields, including:

Marv Albert, sportscaster

Fernando Alfonso III, editor, The New York Times; formerly of NPR and the Houston Chronicle (master's degree)

Lylah M. Alphonse, former managing editor, U.S. News & World Report; editor of Globe Rhode Island and Globe New Hampshire, The Boston Globe

Michael Barkann, sportscaster

Richard Benedetto, retired White House correspondent and columnist, USA Today; political columnist, Gannett News Service

Jason Benetti, sportscaster

Matthew Berkowitz, filmmaker

Len Berman, sportscaster, sports anchor at WNBC in New York

Greg Bishop, writer, Sports Illustrated

Carter Blackburn, sportscaster

Paul Bouche, Emmy Award-winning television host and producer, A Oscuras Pero Encendidos

Contessa Brewer, television journalist

Kevin Brown, sportscaster

Steve Bunin, sportscaster

Ryan Burr, sportscaster

Tony Caridi, sportscaster, voice of West Virginia University athletics