A national news outlet that covers Native American issues is moving from Washington, D.C., to the Arizona State University campus in Phoenix, the school announced this month.
Indian Country Today, a nonprofit and digitally focused news site, will move the majority of its staff to ASU's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication this summer, ASU said in a news release.
Christopher Callahan, dean of the Cronkite School, called Indian Country Today "the leading voice for Native American communities across the Americas," adding that the partnership with ASU will "provide our students with more opportunities to cover these critically important stories" and attract more Native American students to careers in journalism.
According to ASU, Native Americans make up nearly 2 percent of the U.S. population and 6 percent of Arizona's population, but only 0.37 percent of journalists in the U.S. are Native American.
The move is part of a larger initiative by the Cronkite School: Cronkite News, its student news service, has made Native American coverage a priority, and the school is currently searching for the nation's first named professorship focused on the intersection of Native Americans and the news media.
Mark Trahant, editor of Indian Country Today, said the "game-changing" move to the Cronkite School "builds on so much of the work that ASU is already doing" with Native American and border coverage.