EAST LANSING, Mich. — The arts have returned with a vengeance to Michigan State University’s College of Communication Arts and Sciences with a new program that will strengthen visual thinking and design skills for its communication students, helping to better prepare them for the modern media market.

Veteran Newsweek journalist Karl Gude has joined the faculty of MSU’s School of Journalism as the graphics editor-in-residence to spearhead a cross-disciplinary information design initiative, including journalism, advertising, telecommunication and studio art.

The former Newsweek and Associated Press information graphics director wants to train artists to be journalists, so they will possess the type of skills he was always looking for in a job candidate when hiring employees for the news magazine or the Associated Press.

“What attracted me to MSU’s School of Journalism was its innovative plan to marry its news and art programs,” Gude said. “Other journalism schools mostly teach information graphics to writers, not artists or designers. I have yet to see a writer who could diagram a detailed look inside the human body or illustrate a three-dimensional cutaway of the World Trade Center showing its architectural weaknesses.”

Such explanatory visuals have become required and expected elements in print, online and broadcast news coverage. The information design program recognizes this revolutionary growth of graphics reporting and execution in a challenging news environment.

“At MSU we plan to do this training through a series of courses within the journalism major and in courses outside the major, such as studio art. We will be developing artists with news judgment and solid research, reporting and editing skills,” Gude said. “News organizations are desperate for skilled young people to fill their important news graphics positions and have been unhappy hiring artists from traditional art schools where no information graphics instruction is offered. So, a lot of time and resources are spent training them to think informationally in a deadline-driven news environment.”

Gude, 51, recently capped a 10-year career at Newsweek where he transformed graphics from an afterthought to a feature with a real identity that could engage readers before they read the story, which is how most people actually read the magazine, said Newsweek’s editor Mark Whitaker at Gude’s recent farewell party.

The winner of numerous national awards for his information graphics, he is also a successful children’s book illustrator and a painter.

During his 27-year career in news, Gude, a commentary cartoonist, has had drawings appear on the opinion page of The New York Times. He also worked as the director of information graphics at the Associated Press for eight years and served in that same capacity at the United Press International, the National Sports Daily and the New York Daily News. Currently, he is an information graphics consultant whose clients include the Council on Foreign Relations.

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