HSPA Foundation looks forward to continuing its partnership with the National Sports Journalism Center at IUPUI as the center’s leadership changes.
Tim Franklin, the director who helped found the center as part of the Indiana University Department of Journalism in 2009, will join Bloomberg News as an editor-at-large in the Washington bureau.
HSPA and HSPA Foundation have worked with the center’s leadership to distribute stories written by students in the sports journalism program to newspapers across the country during events in Indianapolis such as the NCAA Women’s Final Four and the Indy 500, and the benefit to both newspapers and students is palpable, said Karen T. Braeckel, Foundation director.
“HSPA and the Foundation are advocates for content-sharing to help newspapers better serve readers, and we appreciate Tim’s involving the National Sports Journalism Center toward that effort,” Braeckel said. “The experiences journalism students gain will benefit the industry as well.”
Franklin, who was the Louis A. Weil Jr. Endowed Chair at IU, will join the center’s National Advisory Board to stay involved with the program he helped launch.
He will start at Bloomberg Aug. 8.
The school will begin a national search in August for the new director. Dan Drew, a veteran IU professor and former broadcast journalist, will oversee the program in the interim.
“Helping to launch the National Sports Journalism Center at IU, an institution that I care deeply about, was one of the most challenging but rewarding things that I’ve ever done,” Franklin said. “It’s not at all easy for me to leave the school or the students, but I do so knowing that the center is now firmly established as one of the best – if not the best — sports journalism programs in America.”
Franklin said the move allows him to fulfill a lifelong goal of practicing journalism in Washington, D.C. Prior to joining IU in January 2009, Franklin was the editor in chief of The Baltimore Sun, and editor of the Orlando Sentinel and The Indianapolis Star.
Franklin helped establish the center and sports journalism focus at IUPUI that was ideally matched with Indianapolis’ reputation as the amateur sports capital of the world.
The center is now the official partner of the Associated Press Sports Editors and the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association, the nation’s two largest professional sports journalism organizations.
The IUPUI campus is the home of the APSE Red Smith Award Hall of Fame, widely considered the most prestigious award in the field.
Last year, IU launched the nation’s only master’s degree program in sports journalism. Both the IUPUI and IU Bloomington journalism programs offer undergraduate sports journalism courses.
This summer, the center is organizing Diversity Sports Media Institutes in Indianapolis and Chicago to engage high school students in sports journalism.
In 2009, Franklin also launched SportsJournalism.org, a blog with breaking news and commentary about the sports media industry. The site has more than 25,000 unique visitors each month and was recently named one of the Top 10 sports business blogs.
“This is a bittersweet moment for me,” Franklin said. “While it’s difficult to leave the School of Journalism, I’m very excited about this opportunity to return to a newsroom. And, I’m especially thrilled to be doing so in Washington for Bloomberg, which is a fast-growing news organization and one committed to the highest journalistic standards.”
In his new role, Franklin will help develop and execute enterprise stories across Bloomberg government reporting teams for the organization’s various news outlets and publications.
