Cal’s journalism school stays afloat in turbulent times, thanks to creative thinking—and some high-powered help.

The old morphing into the new is an old story—and it’s playing out right next door as Cal’s graduate school of journalism prepares students for careers in the sinking, er, shifting landscape of modern media. Captaining the “Ark”—as North Gate Hall, the building that now houses the J-school, was affectionately called by students when it opened in 1906—is dean Neil Henry, an old-school newspaperman with a keen eye toward the high-tech future of his beloved business.

Challenged with the task of training students who are entering a career that is simultaneously imploding and reinventing itself, Henry says there’s no other option than to keep teaching old-fashioned values while embracing modern technologies, and experimenting with new ways to deliver the news.

Prior to joining the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism in 1993, Henry, a bespectacled man with an ever-present smile and touches of gray in his styled hair and goatee, worked for 16 years at The Washington Post and as a staff writer for Newsweek. A 1978 graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, Henry was an in-the-trenches reporter—once living as a homeless person for a story, and counting bodies in a morgue while covering Liberia’s civil war 20 years ago.

Cal students say they admire Henry, now 56, for the personal attention he extends, from attending the funeral of one student’s brother to writing a letter on behalf of another student, Josh Wolf, who faced suspension for remaining inside Wheeler Hall on campus during an 11-hour protest against university budget cuts last November. Wolf maintains he was there filming as a journalist. Henry can’t comment on the student matter, but says his letter to the university’s Center for Student Conduct was “in defense of journalism.”

“He’s not just in his office or out fundraising,” student Alex Weber says. “He tries to be available.”

And while Henry represents, in many ways, the best of journalism’s passionate, truth-seeking past, he’s also actively involved in shaping the industry’s future—including a collaboration between his school and the Bay Citizen, a new nonprofit local news outlet launched May 26 and backed by $5 million in funding from San Francisco financier Warren Hellman.

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Henry officially took the reins as dean in May of 2009, although he had held the post as an interim position since 2007, the year his latest book, American Carnival: Journalism Under Siege in an Age of New Media, was released. In American Carnival, Henry outlines his concerns that the news industry’s values and practices have been “weakened by the relentless assault of outside political interest, profit pressures, and the manipulation of advertising and public relations.”

Add to that decreasing circulation for newspapers, ad revenues lost to online sites like Craigslist, and ongoing job cuts, and the subtitle “Under Siege” doesn’t seem like hyperbole. The national newspaper industry has lost 30 percent of its newsroom budgets since 2000, according to the 2010 State of the Media report by the nonprofit Pew Research Center. The San Francisco Chronicle, for example, cut nearly 80 newsroom jobs last year, more than one-third of its editorial staff, through layoffs and buyouts.

Nonetheless, says Henry, “We as a society cannot afford to have journalism fail.” And he’s working hard to refresh his school’s focus on journalism’s “role of truth-seeking in a free society.”

As an example, he cites The Washington Post’s decision to commit two full-time reporters to follow up on rumors about neglect and deteriorating conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. While the six-month-long assignment was a financial gamble, the rumors proved to be correct, and the series of stories the newspaper published in 2007 about the medical facility earned a Pulitzer.

Increasingly, other newsrooms might not choose to take such a financial gamble, Henry says. “I’m sure there are Walter Reed hospitals all over the country,” he says, but sadly, “they [the newspapers] don’t have the resources to do that kind of work.”

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The J-school’s former dean, Orville Schell, a celebrated expert on China whose journalism career was built mostly upon long magazine pieces and books, glittered the premises with visits from well-known writers and encouraged students to report from the world’s far corners. Schell left the school in 2007 and is now the director of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations.

While a segment of students still pursue international reporting and magazine writing, under Henry’s leadership there is equal enthusiasm—and an infusion of foundation funding—for reporters covering local news. Among other projects, journalism students are now running online newspapers for underserved communities from Richmond to San Francisco’s Mission District, populations often overlooked by mainstream media outlets as too small or not part of a desired market demographic.

By far the most ambitious project, though, is the Bay Citizen enterprise. Just inaugurated with great fanfare, the Bay Citizen is an online media outlet that also provides content for other news organizations—including the twice-weekly Bay Area section of The New York Times—covering everything from local government to Bay Area arts and education, and distributing the news in articles online and on mobile devices, and, in the future, podcasts, video, and radio and TV pieces.

Moving forward, Bay Citizen staffers will teach classes at the J-school next semester. Other departments within U.C. Berkeley—such as the business and information schools—are expected to contribute to the project, and some students will have opportunities to work as paid interns on Bay Citizen stories, including two this summer.

Hellman brought Henry on to his nonprofit news project from the start to help shape the Bay Citizen’s structure and mission, and now Henry is director of the board.

“I’m a huge fan of Neil,” says Hellman. “He has a great ability to process the question he’s being asked, and give you a well thought-out answer and to continually think outside the box.”

Henry’s colleagues at the Bay Citizen include managing editor for news, Steve Fainaru, a Pulitzer-winning reporter from The Washington Post, and editor-in-chief Jonathan Weber, who once worked at the Los Angeles Times and has launched several print and online media publications during his 20-year journalism career.

Bay Citizen president and CEO Lisa Frazier, a former media consultant, says Henry’s name came up early and frequently as someone who should be involved with the project. “People kept saying, ‘Are you talking to Neil Henry?’ and I thought, ‘I need to meet this man,’” Frazier says. Henry now contributes advice on everything from editorial standards to the Bay Citizen’s mission.

“The [Graduate School of Journalism] faculty, the students, the school itself, have amazing credibility, energy, and passion for evolving journalism,” Frazier says. “And Neil was somebody we felt was actively thinking about and leading the charge at that school for doing things differently.”

Henry says he admires recent nonprofit news start-ups like ProPublica and the Texas Tribune, both online news organizations that also have arrangements to co-publish stories in traditional news publications. For example, ProPublica reporter Sheri Fink just won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting for a story she did in collaboration with The New York Times Magazine.

Several unique elements contribute to the Bay Citizen’s projected success, according to Henry: the $5 million in start-up funds, the J-school partnership, the research-and-development capability of an academic institution like U.C. Berkeley, and the agreement with The New York Times.

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Among local journalists, many of whom have labored in the profession for decades only to see their careers cut short by newsroom cutbacks, the launch of the Bay Citizen has been viewed with the sort of cynical optimism that is the hallmark of journalism. Is online media more economically sustainable than traditional newspapers, which come with the added costs of print and distribution? Will the comprehensive quality of a newspaper be lost to a generation taught online to pick and choose information based on what they think they need to know? Can an industry built on ad revenue be rebuilt on the support of public and donor dollars? What strings will come with the funding?

Additionally, the Bay Citizen’s initial plan for financial sustainability—hiring 15 staff journalists and using students to help with research and investigative work—is seen as not so much innovative but all too familiar by the veteran reporters let go from their respective news outlets in favor of lower-salaried staff.

In a recent commentary on the Huffington Post, Peter Scheer, director of the San Rafael–based First Amendment Coalition, a press watchdog group, asked why journalism schools were still enrolling students, considering the number of vanishing news jobs.

“One explanation for journalism schools’ still-open doors is that surviving news organizations are looking to them to provide professionally trained, but cheap, labor to replace veteran journalists whose skills and experience no longer justify their premium cost,” Scheer writes. “Does it make sense for them to be subsidizing the accelerated dislocation of one generation of their graduates to make room for a younger generation of their graduates?”

Students at the J-school are equally concerned about competing against the growing pool of experienced, unemployed journalists. While students trained with digital media tools and familiar with online social networking are perhaps better prepared to move into journalism’s technological future, past experience can bring depth to the quality of news.

Bagassi Koura, from the West African country of Burkina Faso, graduates this year with his master’s in journalism. Before enrolling in the graduate program, he already had nearly a decade of journalism experience under his belt, freelancing in his home country for international media including Reuters. He came to Cal to add broadcast and filmmaking skills to his résumé. “I can’t compete with Pulitzer Prize–winning journalists looking for jobs if all I know how to do is print [journalism],” Koura says.

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While the Bay Citizen’s nonprofit model is expected to keep its quality of journalism high, Henry says, this still requires substantial funding. The media operation is aiming for an annual operating budget in five years of $8 to $12 million—financed by a mix of funding sources, according to Hellman: membership, foundation dollars, and donations from wealthy individuals, as well as content licensing.

“We know how the profit incentive can work against good journalism . . . if you take that out, you have the potential for good, public-service journalism,” says Henry. “However, good journalism is expensive.”

And it’s still unclear whether consumers will pay for it. Accustomed to reading news online for free, only 79 percent of online news consumers have ever clicked on an online ad, according to the Pew Research Center’s 2010 State of the Media report. Additionally, the survey revealed that of the 35 percent of Americans with a “favorite” news destination online, only 19 percent said they would continue to visit if that site started charging for content.

Still, industry concerns have not deterred people wanting to attend the journalism school. Each year, the school accepts approximately 50 students to the two-year program. This year, the number of applicants for those slots rose to 408.

Alex Weber, for one, was pleased to be admitted to the competitive training grounds—the nebulous state of journalism notwithstanding. Weber moved to California last year from Ohio to study at the J-school, even though he was already working part-time for an alternative weekly there, the Cincinnati CityBeat. Here, he’s getting the training he needs to improve his writing and reporting, he says, and, hopefully, prepare him for the new journalism directions ahead.

“The industry is changing, so this is the best time to be in school,” Weber says. “Although, we’re always joking about the fact that we jumped on the Titanic when we came here.”

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Bonnie Eslinger is an Emeryville journalist whose writing has appeared in the San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Chronicle, Contra Costa Times and Alameda Times-Star, among other publications.