Philip Merrill College of Journalism


The Philip Merrill College of Journalism is a journalism school located at the University of Maryland, College Park. The college was founded in 1947 and was named after newspaper editor Philip Merrill in 2001. The school has about 550 undergraduates and 70 graduate students enrolled.
The school awards B.A., M.A., M.J. and Ph.D. degrees in journalism. Undergraduates can focus on broadcast or multi-platform journalism.
A Washington Post recruiter has said the college is one of the nation's best journalism schools.
The university's student newspaper, The Diamondback, is not affiliated with the school. However, the school provides opportunities for students to publish work with the Capital News Service, a wire service serving print, broadcast and online media in the Washington, D.C. region and Maryland Newsline, a live half-hour three-day-per-week news broadcast that reaches more than 500,000 households in the greater Washington metropolitan area. The newscast is now streamed via YouTube in HD.
The three college-sponsored student news outlets—the nightly television show, online news magazine, and weekly radio show—have all been named the best in the nation by the Society of Professional Journalists in the last few years.
The school is home to the National Association of Black Journalists, the largest organization of journalists of color in the U.S. From 1987 to 2015, the university published the American Journalism Review, a magazine covering print, television, radio and online media; in 2013 AJR became an online-only publication, and in 2015, the college announced that it was terminating the journal.

Faculty

The school's faculty includes several Pulitzer Prize winners: Knight Chair Dana Priest, Ira Chinoy and Deborah Nelson. Emmy Award winners include Eaton Broadcast Chair Mark Feldstein, Associate Professor Ron Yaros and Eleanor Merrill Distinguished Visiting Fellow Tom Bettag. Other notable faculty members include former Washington Post sports editor George Solomon—who directs the Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism—and ESPN's Around the Horn panelist and Washington Post columnist Kevin Blackistone.

Building

The school was formerly housed in the Journalism building located next to McKeldin Library; the building was the smallest on campus to be home to a college. Most of the broadcast facilities, including the Maryland Newsline studio, are located in nearby Tawes Hall.
The college moved into a new journalism building, the John S. and James L. Knight Hall, on January 4, 2010.

Alumni