Stanford Journalism Program Mission

Our mission to teach, study, experiment and collaborate is rooted in a respect and passion for the core responsibilities of journalism in a free society.

We teach students to discover, verify, contextualize and publish truths that inform all citizens; to hold government institutions accountable and serve as a check on any powers that threaten democracy and the public good; and to tell stories that are as accurate as they are independent, as compelling as they are significant, and as hard-hitting as they are even-handed.

We develop tools to make it easier to discover important stories and lower the cost of accountability journalism through better use of data and algorithms. We train the next generation of journalists to tell stories in multimedia, as narratives, and by visualizing information. We model best practices for sharing our work and allowing others to scrutinize it.

At Stanford, we are uniquely positioned to advance investigative reporting’s role in democracy. We aim to be pioneers in the field of computational journalism, partnering with media and technology companies and with faculty and students from the social sciences and engineering.

We help students develop their conscience and conviction to call out those who jeopardize the integrity of journalism. Our students study the First Amendment to understand the rights it gives them as professionals and as citizens, and to appreciate the duty it places on them to reveal the diversity of truths that comprise the human experience.

We challenge students to examine the prisms through which they see and record daily life. We hone habits of introspection, not only for recognizing personal biases but also for helping students stay grounded in professional ethics throughout their careers.

We train students to work with a variety of constituencies and stakeholders because journalism is made stronger by collaborative communities. We aim to prepare the future leaders of such communities.

Above all, our mission is to serve the public’s need for facts in a just, self-governed society.