Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication HDR, Inc. and Ehrlich Architects. Sundt Construction was responsible for construction A few notable faculty are: Walter Cronkite was not a faculty member, but visited the campus a few times a year to interact with students and present the Cronkite Award. The school has moved away from the traditional academic structure of hiring only tenured professors. In addition it hires veteran journalists like Downie and Gillmor to be professors of practice and also draws practicing journalists from the Phoenix area as adjuncts who teach many of its courses. Cronkite News is the nightly thirty-minute news program produced entirely by students
Walter Cronkite added to the McCain-Feingold-Shays-Meehan Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2001 that would have required TV broadcast companies to provide free airtime to candidates. Cronkite criticized the present system of campaign finance which allows elections to "be purchased" by special interests, and he noted that all the European democracies "provide their candidates with extensive free airtime." "In fact," Cronkite pointed out, "of all the major nations worldwide that profess to have democracies, only seven – just seven – do not offer free airtime" This put the United States on a list with Ecuador, Honduras, Malaysia, Taiwan, Tanzania, and Trinidad and Tobago.