Active Grants for Training and Education

This grant will bring under one roof Knight-supported journalism programs now scattered across the campus. They include: the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism, begun at the University of Maryland in 1987, and the American Journalism Review. The new building’s Knight Center will double the space for the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and adds a state-of-the-art conferencing facility. The center will be an engine for networking, professional development and training and improved journalism education.  On a campus known for its multicultural environment, the journalism school had 45 percent graduate students of color in 2002 and 19 percent undergraduates of color.

Since 1997, in conversations with thousands of news people and through the book, “The Elements of Journalism,” the Committee of Concerned Journalists has helped journalists rediscover their passion for the values of quality journalism. In 2001, a Knight pilot grant created the “Traveling Curriculum,’’ a training program designed to take the committee’s standard-setting work directly into newsrooms. The training, designed with teaching experts at Stanford University, reached some 5,500 journalists from 100 news organizations during its first three years.  Training sessions are followed by six-month reviews to push for and review tangible results. A formal assessment program by researchers at Stanford has established concrete changes at every newsroom to date. The web site www.journalism.org averages 32,000 unique visitors a month. With this grant, the committee will move to the University of Missouri. There, it will train at least 4,000 additional journalists during the next three years as it develops a “fee for service” model for the training.

In 1983, the Knight Science Journalism Fellowship program at MIT was created to help journalists deepen their understanding of science, medicine, technology and environmental research.  (See the endowment grant, below.)  This grant, which is designed to attract matching funds, increases the number of MIT fellowships from six to 10 a year.

The environment is a major 21^st century story. In the United States, at least 2,500 journalists write regularly about the environment.  But as many as 20,000 general assignment reporters can be handed an environmental stories. This project addresses the larger need for training those GA reporters by supporting a major outreach effort, in partnership with Michigan State University. Jim Detjen, the Knight Chair for Environmental Journalism, has directed the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism since 1999.  Activities include: developing a master’s degree specialization in environmental journalism, which the university will continue in perpetuity; holding at least 20 training events; expanding the center’s web site to offer on-line modules; developing a broadcast course; producing a textbook; and launching an endowment campaign. 

This grant will complete construction of a new journalism building, named Knight Hall, which will be occupied by fall 2009. The new 60,000-square-foot, $27.7 million facility will house the Knight Institute for the Future of Journalism, which will bring together Knight-funded programs. They include the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism; J-Lab, which runs the Knight-Batten Awards for Journalism Innovation, New Voices and the Knight Citizen News Network; Knight Chair Haynes Johnson; and the American Journalism Review. Additional professional journalism groups may want to locate to the  state-of-the-art Knight Hall. This grant aims to focus Knight’s programs on the future of journalism and improve journalism education and professional development and training. Knight Hall is supported by an additional $2.4 million grant to create the Knight Institute.

In 2002, Knight Foundation’s Newsroom Training: Where’s the Investment?, a multimedia national study, found that 8 in 10 journalists said they need more professional development, and 9 in 10 news executives agreed.  In response, a coalition of journalism groups endorsed a “call to arms” to encourage the news industry to invest more in training.  Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism won a $250,000 planning grant to host the project.  This grant funds the four-year project under the direction of Michele McLellan, a former editor at The Oregonian and author of a popular credibility handbook for the American Society of Newspaper Editors.  McLellan will convene annual meetings of the industry training coalition, explore with industry CEOs ways to increase investment in training, develop measurements that help news leaders determine what training they need and whether they are providing it, and develop materials explaining how training is used in other professions. The project, named Tomorrow’s Workforce, officially launched in April 2004. Its major newsrooms include the Atlanta Constitution. Its results, including a national poll showing changes in training funding and time investment, will be unveiled in April 2007.

The digital revolution is changing newsroom decision-making. The Knight Case Studies Initiative is a new journalism education model that is designed to create future journalism leaders. The case-studies program is based on the successful Harvard Case Studies run by its business school. This grant will use dynamic, multimedia techniques, integrating real-life case studies into the journalism school’s curriculum. The web-based case studies will show the real-time ethical, management and leadership issues a publisher, executive editor or a senior correspondent considers in making decisions at the highest levels of the profession. A new, permanent graduate course, “Decision Making in Journalism,’’ will be created from a dozen cases. This project aims to change the way journalism decision-making is taught in this country by giving teachers and the profession powerful new tools to work with.

In 2002, Knight gave the American Society of Newspaper Editors Foundation a $52,000 grant to produce The Learning Newsroom, a guide to newsroom training.  A “learning newsroom” expects training, education and personal development to occur routinely. This training model works well at small newspapers that can’t fly people to national programs. This partnership between API and ASNE will create at least 10 pilot newsrooms over a three-year period.  A director and support staff will launch pilots in a variety of newsrooms. The papers must agree to protect their training budgets from cuts.  Consultants will help newsroom staff develop self-teaching systems.  Each newsroom will identify its needs; design and attend workshops to learn what it needs to learn; and put the new knowledge or skills into practice. The Learning Newsroom philosophy will be taught as a regular, permanent part of API’s work.

Mid-level editors and news directors are the guardians of newsroom culture. But they are the least likely to leave the office for training. APME will conduct training each year at 15 sites nationally, targeting 1,000 mid-level editors at newspapers and news directors at broadcast stations. NewsTrain events each will be at least two days, coordinated through the Associated Press bureaus and APME chapters in each state, in partnership with regional and state press associations and city press clubs, universities, host newspapers and TV stations.  At least half of the teaching at each NewsTrain session will be “on-demand,’’ short courses specifically asked for by the region. Half will be “national circuit’’ material, including a module on the value of training and a primer on available programs. The project will be able to show how this training has not only helped these key journalists do their work, but changed their attitudes about the usefulness of good training. To continue after 2007, the program must find independent means of support.

A huge gap remains between what scientists know about public health and what reporters report. In 1999, Knight Foundation and CDC launched the Knight Public Health Journalism Fellowships.  This grant will extend the midcareer fellowship program for three years.  Each class will have at least six journalists.  The fellowships last three months – one in the classroom and two doing fieldwork with CDC researchers.  Each year, the fellows will be joined by at least 15 journalists for a 10-day “boot camp.’’  Those trainees will take short courses in epidemiology, statistics and bioterrorism – prerequisites for good health reporters – but will not go into the field.  CDC will develop training modules to be offered to journalists at conferences, and will create a web site with training basics. In addition, CDC will find additional funding to support the project.

This grant re-launches the Western Knight Center as the Knight New Media Center, specifically focused on helping good journalists and good journalism succeed in the 21^st century. It will specialize in delivering content training to new media journalists as well as new media training to traditional journalists. The center will convert its web site into an interactive learning and resource center and experiment with videoconferencing and webinars. This grant is part of the foundation’s effort to help journalists succeed in a new media world. The center will offer seminars directly to 150 journalists each year, including a leadership workshop for news leaders who are transforming their news operations. The content training offered to new media journalists will include improving online coverage of topics ranging from elections to urban growth to globalization. New media training includes skills training in the latest interactive  storytelling techniques. Since 2002, the center has been a new media leader, both in teaching practitioners and in using the World Wide Web to draw 30,000 unique monthly visitors.

Under a pilot grant, the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association Traveling Campus program trained 7,200 newspaper employees in one year, equal to the number SNPA had trained in its previous 34 years. This grant extends that new training program for four years, ensuring visits to at least 20 regions each year, with each of the four-day sessions including as many as 15 separate seminars. By 2007, SNPA will fully fund the program with an endowment being raised for that purpose. Endowment pledges stand at $8 million. By offering regional journalists high-quality training usually available only at national centers, this grant supports the foundation’s goals of increasing midcareer education of journalists as well as news industry investment in training.

There are some 50 national journalism organizations in the United States.  These groups promote higher professional standards. Some are more financially stable than others.  The Challenge Fund for Journalism was created in 2003 to help seven journalism groups learn how to raise money from their members. This project will train up to eight additional journalism groups, nominated by Knight, in capacity building and challenge grant fund raising.  Depending on their needs, groups will get technical assistance, capacity grants, peer learning and matching challenge grants.  The TCC Group is a management consulting firm that works with funders and nonprofit organizations. This grant is a partnership with Ford Foundation and the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation.

Teachers College created the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media in 1996 to promote fair, accurate and insightful reporting about education.  This project will triple the Institute’s outreach under new director Richard Colvin. During the next three years, Hechinger will elevate education coverage as a specialization within journalism by creating a free online course on covering school district budgets; collaborating with the Education Writers of America on two regional seminars for education reporters and editors from medium-sized newspapers; developing a course to help prepare students to cover a wide variety of education issues and disseminating it through journalism education organizations; and holding an annual seminar for frontline editors who supervise education coverage.

Epidemics know no national boundaries. With this grant, three nonprofit groups – Internews, the International Center for Journalists and the Panos Institute in London – will work together for the first time to produce a map of journalism training worldwide. Using it, they will offer micro-grants to projects that increase the ability of existing training groups to improve and expand health journalism training. Local trainers will be encouraged to share materials freely with other programs and to connect with larger international projects. A report of best practices will be shared. The goal is to encourage better health journalism worldwide.

Editing skills are among the most desired by the eight of 10 journalists who say they want midcareer training. In 2001, Knight Foundation funded a summer institute for midcareer copy editors at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The 18 participants, from newspapers with circulations of less than 20,000 to more than 1 million, rated the program as “outstanding.’’  This grant will extend the copy editing training five years, link it with other Knight editing programs, develop institute content on the web site and require participants to pass along what they have learned. A redesigned, one-week institute will enable more copy editors to participate in classes on headline and cutline writing, photo editing, page design, legal and ethical issues, newsroom management, Internet research and web page editing.

Since 1975, the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship Program in Economics and Business Journalism has offered qualified journalists the chance to enhance their knowledge of business, economics and finance. As many as 10 fellows each year receive free tuition and a stipend for the nine-month program. This grant will help pay for operating costs of the fellowships during a drive to build its endowment. The fellowship is named for Knight Foundation, which established an endowment for the program in 1987, and Walter Bagehot, the 19^th-century editor of The Economist.

Since 1954, the NAA Foundation has coordinated the Newspaper in Education program to encourage the use of newspapers in schools. Today there are NIE programs at more than 950 of the nation’s 1,450 daily papers. This project will develop and test a set of sixth-grade language arts classes that use newspapers and meet national standards. The classes will integrate reading, writing, journalism, grammar, linguistics and visual literacy. A daily newspaper will be used as a textbook and resource.  The classes will be tested in 20 classrooms in disadvantaged schools, hopefully increasing reading test scores in those classes.

This project will create a leadership institute to train 15 new deans and directors of journalism and mass communication programs. The deans or directors will get the tools and training they need to strengthen their programs and work more successfully with faculty, alumni and administration officials. A significant number of journalism deans are retiring nationwide. Their replacements do not all have experience in educational leadership.

This program matches up recognized national news leaders with their university of choice for a one-year fellowship, during which time they’ll research and envision the future of quality journalism.  In 2006, former Los Angeles Times editor John Carroll became the first Knight Visiting Lecturer. At the Harvard’s Shorenstein Center, he is researching, writing, teaching and speaking out publicly about how journalism excellence is achievable in today’s fast-changing world.

This project will bring together top journalism researchers to probe major media issues. The task force will create a web site and three major reports, including one on journalism education. This grant, in partnership with the Carnegie Corporation of New York, is one of three grants designed to help journalism education. The other two promote increased specialized teaching at the participating schools – University of California at Berkeley, the University of Southern California, Columbia University, Northwestern University and Harvard – as well as a special reporting project in which students will team up to cover large, complex stories and distribute them in innovative ways.

Many journalists know little about nonprofits, though they make up the third major sector of the economy. In 2003, for example, giving by the nation’s nearly 65,000 grant-making foundations totaled nearly $30 billion. Professor Burnis Morris has been training journalists how to cover nonprofits since 2001 under Knight Foundation sponsorship. The program, previously run at the University of Mississippi, is now at Marshall, where  Morris is the Carter G. Woodson Professor. This grant will expand his program with traveling training and web efforts, so it can reach hundreds more journalists who want to cover nonprofits more effectively.

Kent State’s Scholastic Media Program is considered to be one of the nation’s best. For six consecutive years, Kent State has been one of five universities to host the American Society of Newspaper Editors High School Journalism Institute. The program, part of Knight Foundation’s High School Initiative, trains high school teachers to start or improve high school newspapers. This grant will convert the vacant John S. Knight Chair in English Composition and Theory, endowed with a $1 million grant in 1990, to a Knight Chair in Scholastic Journalism. The Knight Chair will create innovative programs, including an online and on campus master’s program for scholastic media teachers; be a leader crusading for First Amendment awareness and civic education, the use of news in classrooms and the creation of student media; help high school students understand journalism fundamentals; and encourage diverse students to pursue journalism careers.

Journalists list lack of training as their No. 1 job dissatisfaction. Most do not get regular midcareer training because the news industry spends .07 percent of payroll on staff development.  The gap between supply and demand for training is widest in TV newsrooms, according to the 2002 Knight Foundation multimedia national study, “Newsroom Training: Where’s the Investment?’’ Regional training has been improved through NewsTrain, a four-year project begun in 2003 to train mid-level editors at newspaper regional sites, conducted by the Associated Press Managing Editors.  RTNDF, in collaboration with NewsTrain, will train broadcast journalists most in need of training – mid-level news managers – who determine the daily news assignments for their staffs.

Three post-doctoral fellows will work with Knight Chair Jack Balkin on research projects in freedom of speech, democracy and technology.  The research will result in a report on the relationship between public attitudes and Supreme Court decisions on the First Amendment. The fellows also will assist the Knight Chair on books and white papers, in outreach activities and in special programs related to law and technology. A white paper already published explained the relationship between U.S. Supreme Court decisions on the First Amendment and public opinion on the First Amendment.

Salzburg Seminar will convene some 75 former Knight Fellows at a conference at the Museum of Television and Radio in New York. The conference will allow the fellows to continue the learning from previous Salzburg events and discuss how to improve the Knight Fellowship program. Salzburg will then develop an action plan that will clarify program improvements in future years.

The Journalism Teachers of the Year and Journalism Administrator of the Year Awards recognize excellence in journalism and mass communication education.  This grant will help continue the awards,  which were started by AEJMC and The Freedom Forum, until they can be permanently part of the Scripps Howard Foundation’s National Journalism Awards program.  AEJMC will oversee the nominations, while Scripps will handle the selection and presentation process. 

The Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, housed in the School of Journalism and Telecommunications at University of Kentucky, was started in 2002 to improve the journalism reaching the 56 million people in the rural United States. This grant will help increase the Institute’s impact by completing a national survey of rural media to gauge their scope and training needs, improving its web site, www.ruraljournalism.org, and creating a journalism training module for News University. Rural journalists are among the nation’s neediest. Their regions are poor; their news organizations, small; their pay low and their training almost nil. They need help covering the major issues of their regions: the export of blue collar jobs, out migration of the “best and brightest,’’ aging and unhealthy populations and fading community identity.

his grant will create an online educational program for the National Press Photographers Association’s Best of Photojournalism contests. The contest will be judged online. The project web site also will contain additional teaching tools. A roundtable will be held to discuss ethics and First Amendment issues. The end result of the work will be a new, self-directed module on photojournalism on News University.

The Council of National Journalism Organizations raises the visibility and membership of professional journalism groups and helps them work efficiently together. During the past decade, the council’s membership has more than doubled to 53 groups. These groups, representing at least 25,000 American journalists, set standards and offer training. With this grant, the council will work with the Society of Professional Journalists to improve and expand www.journalismtraining.org, a calendar of training opportunities, and to revamp its own web site, www.cnjo.org,  and to better market the services of professional journalism organizations.

This grant will create an innovative interface called The Beat Doctor, a self-test that will allow any reporter to find out if he or she has what it takes to do a good job covering local hospitals.  The automated “doctor,” will diagnose the reporter’s fitness and suggest web resources and journalism training to better prepare the reporter for hospital coverage.  The fun self-test will be a lesson in-and-of itself, because it will tell reporters that 1) covering hospitals is more difficult than they think, 2) there are some specific topic areas they need to know more about and 3) there are organizations and resources available on the World Wide Web that will help them learn what they need to know to do a better job. The Beat Doctor will be available through the News University.

The Arthur F. Burns Fellowship, named after the late U.S. ambassador to Germany and former Federal Reserve Board chairman, is an exchange program for journalists in the United States and Germany. Each year, it awards 20 two-month fellowships – 10 to Americans, 10 to Germans – and they switch countries and cover the news.  The program, which has 333 alumni, maintains contact with 95 percent of them. This grant will enable the Burns Fellowship program to further develop their alumni network, and to share their best practices with Knight’s midcareer training programs.