Mission, Vision, and Values

Good government, good citizenship, a vibrant economy, and a healthy democracy depend on the quality of our public discourse.

Founded in 2000, the Reilly Center for Media & Public Affairs explores meaningful ways to enhance and elevate that discourse at the local, state, and national levels.

The Reilly Center’s mission is to generate thoughtful dialogue, research, and programming about mass communication and its many-faceted relationships with public policy. The Center uses the intellectual muscle of the LSU Manship School of Mass Communication—its faculty, Ph.D. students, and network of state and national scholars—to elevate public discourse, increase civic participation, and advance research relevant to good governance. In pursuing its strategic goals, the Reilly Center's approach to research is to be non-partisan, fact-based, and data-driven, and, when it comes to public discussions, to be thought-provoking and reflecting multiple perspectives.

The Reilly Center is partnership-driven, action-oriented, and committed to serving as a gateway for collaborative research on contemporary issues for the public good. Its forums, public programs, and research initiatives bring together journalists, scholars, business leaders, and public officials to address challenges of critical concern to Louisiana—especially those shaping the relationship between media and the public in a democratic society.

Evident in everything the Reilly Center does is a commitment to strengthen the Manship School’s national leadership in media and public affairs, and to serve as an informational resource on issues important to the people of Louisiana. It deploys its unique academic assets in service of productive public discourse, reinforcing the school’s core democratic ideals of good government, good citizenship, and informed civic engagement.