Overview

Professor of Practice, News Industry Growth Strategy Location: Downtown Phoenix Campus Open Date: May 07, 2026 Deadline: Description The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication seeks a professor of practice focused on driving revenue and audience growth across the news industry. The Professor of Practice, News Industry Growth Strategy, will be housed within the school's Knight Center for the Future of News and will ensure the Knight Center's work reflects real-world media economics, operational realities and growth needs. This role connects research to industry sustainability. Serving as a thought leader within the Knight Center's Business Growth Lab and a strategic partner across the Center, this role helps shape project priorities, assess feasibility and define success in practice. We seek a practitioner with recent senior-level experience in a news or media organization who is comfortable moving between industry and academic settings. The Professor of Practice will teach at least one course per year, assigned by the dean based on relevant expertise, and will perform internal and external faculty service. This is a full-time, benefits-eligible, 12-month (not academic year) faculty appointment on ASU's Downtown Phoenix Campus; this position holds the rank of professor of practice. It is grant-funded and not a tenure-track appointment. Essential Duties Bring current industry insight into project direction and prioritization Assess relevance, feasibility and growth potential of Knight Center initiatives Lead within the Business Growth Lab while partnering across labs, including publishing, and program generation and management Build, consult and maintain relationships with publishers, creators and collaborators Translate industry needs into research questions and product strategy Teach and mentor students consistent with a Professor of Practice role Perform faculty service internally (e.g., committee assignments, student mentorship) and externally (e.g. professional workshops, contest judging, etc.) Represent the Center in industry-facing settings and convenings About the Knight Center for the Future of News The Knight Center for the Future of News at Arizona State University works to envision and accelerate a stronger future for the news industry. The Center operates as a public-interest research and development hub, combining applied research, experimentation, product development, training and knowledge-sharing. The Knight Center's work spans three interconnected areas: Journalism x Civics, Business Growth and AI Studio. Across initiatives, the Center follows a shared execution model - Research, Test, Apply, Share and Train (RTAST) - ensuring ideas are grounded in evidence, tested with real partners, translated into usable outputs and supported through adoption and training. The Center values adaptability, cross-functional collaboration and measurable impact. Team members are expected to work fluidly across labs and contribute to a culture that prioritizes clarity, experimentation and results. Learn more at: About the Cronkite School The Cronkite School is widely recognized as the nation's premier mass communication school, ranked a top collegiate program by the Broadcast Education Association for four consecutive years. Rooted in the time-honored values that characterize its namesake-accuracy, responsibility, integrity-the school fosters excellence and ethics among students as they master the professional skills required to succeed in the digital media world of today and tomorrow. Based on ASU's Downtown Phoenix campus in the heart of the nation's fifth-largest city, the School is known for its hands-on, "teaching hospital" approach to learning led by a faculty composed of Pulitzer Prize-winning professional journalists, strategic communications leaders and world-class media scholars. More than 2,500 undergraduate, master's and doctoral students regularly lead the country in national competitions as they