Former Forbes Magazine publisher Jeff Cunningham will be a new faculty member at the Walter Cronkite School and the W.P. Carey School of Business beginning in the fall semester.
Cunningham was the publisher of Forbes Magazine for five of his 20 years working with the company, and he founded Directorship Magazine, a publication for corporate directors.
“Forbes taught me really how to understand the boardroom and how power is handled at a very high CEO level, even a state-leader level,” he said.
He is currently a senior adviser with the National Association of Corporate Directors and a trustee for the McCain Institute.
Cronkite administration will leave his exact position undefined until they figure out the most efficient place for him, and Cunningham said he’ll decide his coursework once his position is better defined.
He will focus in the areas of business journalism and media technology and said he hopes his involvement will include a great deal of student interaction. Also, he said he knows the business models for a major global media company and an internet business. Cunningham said he understands the disruptive nature of technology and how it has changed the traditional news organization.
Cunningham said people who understand business the best are those who have the keenest insight into human nature.
“In business, if you don’t understand the basics of human nature … you’re not going to write a good business story,” he said. “You can certainly write about an earnings release, but you can’t write about the passions, challenges and complexities behind that.”
Cronkite Associate Dean Kristin Gilger said she is excited to have Cunningham at Cronkite and that his background in publishing and corporate journalism will help Cronkite in areas they are lacking.
“We have a bunch of ideas of where we think he could be very useful to the Cronkite School, but we want him to spend some time getting to know us and getting to know the Carey School and vice versa,” she said.
“We have a lot of journalism at the Cronkite School,” she added. “We have a little less in the business side and the publishing side, so this will be a big asset to us, I think.”
Journalism junior and finance student Erin Roman said it will be valuable to have someone with Cunningham’s experience at Cronkite.
“All of the business journalism classes that I have taken have been only by Andrew Leckey,” she said. Leckey, who is the president of the Reynolds Center for Business Journalism, has been in China as a Fulbright Scholar this semester and did not teach his classes. Leckey will return in July.
Cunningham said colleagues on the board of the McCain Institute introduced him to the idea of becoming a professor of writing, and he is excited to work specifically at Cronkite.
He said he met Walter Cronkite in the ’90s at the King’s Palace in Morocco, and he remembered the way he could capture audiences even with trivial subject matter.
“Everything else stopped for him when he was in the zone like that,” Cunningham said. “I never knew that I would be working at some point in my life over something under his legacy, and so it gives me great satisfaction.”
Contact the reporter at sajarvis@asu.edu
