funabiki
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Community and ethnic media Journalism innovationBiography
Jon Funabiki—whose career spans journalism, philanthropy and academia—is a Professor of Journalism at San Francisco State University. He was appointed in August, 2006, to teach and to develop the Renaissance Journalism Center, which has launched projects designed to stimulate journalistic innovations that strengthen communities. Funabiki also serves as executive director of the Dilena Takeyama Center for the Study of Japan and Japanese Culture.
Funabiki joined the university in 2006 after an 11-year career with the Ford Foundation, one of the world’s leading philanthropic institutions, where he was Deputy Director of the Media, Arts & Culture (MAC) Unit. Responsible for the Foundation’s multimillion-dollar grant strategies on news media issues, he worked closely with journalists, filmmakers, other media professionals and leaders from research, education, nonprofit and business institutions. As MAC’s deputy director, he worked with Foundation staff and media leaders throughout Asia, Latin America, Africa and Russia.
Prior to Ford, Funabiki was the founding director of San Francisco State University’s Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism, the nation’s first university-based center focused on news media coverage of ethnic minority communities and issues. Funabiki is a former reporter and editor with The San Diego Union, where he specialized in U.S.-Asia political and economic affairs and reported from East and Southeast Asia.
A graduate of San Francisco State University, Funabiki was awarded the John S. Knight Professional Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University, where he studied East Asian politics and economics; the Jefferson Fellowship at the East-West Center of Honolulu, where he studied East and Southeast Asian economics; and a National Endowment for the Humanities Professional Summer Fellowship at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he studied the cultural dimensions of U.S. history.
He has been honored with a the Lifetime Achievement Award from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism Workshop on Journalism, Race and Ethnicity; the Ethnic Media Champion Award from New America Media; a Special Recognition Award from the Asian American Journalists Association, and a variety of awards for reporting and writing.
URLs
http://www.renjournalism.orghttp://vietnamreportingproject.org
http://newmediatoolkit.org
