Capital News Service is a student-powered news organization run by the Philip Merrill College of Journalism. Celebrating its 25th anniversary during the 2015-2016 school year, CNS provides deeply reported, award-winning coverage of issues that are important to Marylanders. CNS “Inspires Maryland Pride” by providing coverage of the state few can offer.
With bureaus in College Park, Annapolis and Washington run by professional journalists, CNS delivers news in multiple multimedia formats via partner news organizations, a destination Website, a nightly on-air television newscast on UMTV and affiliated social media channels (including Twitter and Facebook). CNS provides breaking news coverage, in-depth investigative and enterprise journalism, and serve as a laboratory for students to test and develop innovative new methods of reporting and telling stories.
In the fall of 2013, the Philip Merrill College of Journalism’s Capital News Service and Virginia Commonwealth University’s Capital News Service debuted a collaborative, regional news service bringing together several dozen reporters across multiple platforms in bureaus in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C.
By providing a true newsroom experience to our students, the Capital News Service sends them into the job market with real-world skills and the ability to shape the future of journalism. Only Merrill’s most motivated students are accepted into the Capital News Service program, and they go on to land internships and jobs at the nation’s finest news organizations: The New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, the Associated Press, Politico, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, ProPublica, National Geographic, NBC News, The Dallas Morning News, the Washington City Paper, Washingtonian magazine, Money magazine, the Wall Street Journal and many more.
About Merrill
The Vision
The Philip Merrill College of Journalism is shaping the future of news and media. As the top journalism school in the Washington, D.C. region and a global leader in journalism education, the College is committed to promoting a strong and independent free press.
Through its faculty and curriculum, the Merrill College champions the fundamental journalistic values of accuracy, accountability, and fairness, and is a trailblazer in using digital and multimedia technologies in dynamic storytelling. It prepares its undergraduate students for success in today’s exciting and innovative journalism landscape and gives its graduate students the skills and confidence to rise to the top of today’s demanding news and media-dependent professions.
The Mission
The college educates students at the undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral levels within a liberal arts context, preparing them for careers in journalism and related fields, as well as careers in academic research and teaching. The College works to elevate professional and ethical standards of practice, as well as advocates for increased public knowledge and involvement in democratic processes through dissemination of news. The mission of the College is to improve the production, delivery, and access to news, as well as to enhance the understanding of journalism’s political, cultural, and social roles in the United States and around the globe.
Our undergraduate mission is an uncompromising dedication to the principles of the journalism profession, with training in evolving types of news gathering and delivery.
Our professional master’s program provides a post-graduate education to those with a host of undergraduate degrees seeking to enter the field and intensive specialized training for mid-career journalists with a particular focus on investigative, sports, security, and computational journalism.
