Knight Foundation launches new media training center
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation is launching a Knight New Media Center to offer training.
Funded in the first year with $650,000, the center will offer customized week-long "boot camps" in multimedia reporting for traditional print and broadcast journalists; and seminars for new media journalists to learn how to better cover specialized topics.
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Knight Foundation Launches New Media Training Center at University of Southern California, UC Berkeley
SEATTLE, April 25 (AScribe Newswire) -- To help America's journalists adapt to rapid change, and to advance news values in the digital age, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation is launching the Knight New Media Center.
Funded in the first year with $650,000, the center will be jointly operated by the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California and the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.
The Knight New Media Center aims to fill two major gaps in journalism training. First, at UC Berkeley, it will offer customized week-long "boot camps" in multimedia reporting for traditional print and broadcast journalists. Second, at USC, it will offer seminars for new media journalists to learn how to better cover specialized topics.
A national advisory board of senior digital journalists and scholars will help guide the center. The board includes Neil Chase, deputy editor for news, nytimes.com.; Bill Gannon, Yahoo News editorial director; Ruth Gersh, director of online services, AP Digital; Chris Jennewein, vice president, internet operations, San Diego Union-Tribune; Mary Lou Fulton, vice president/audience development, Bakersfield Californian; Jennifer Sizemore, managing editor, MSNBC.com.; Mitch Gelman, senior vice president and executive producer, CNN.com; Bruce Koon, executive news editor, Knight-Ridder Digital; Adam Clayton Powell III, director, USC Integrated Media Systems Center; Dan Gillmor, director, Center for Citizen Media, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, and Paul Saffo, director, Institute for the Future.
"The Knight New Media Center will prepare journalists to succeed in the 21st Century," said Eric Newton, director of journalism initiatives for Knight Foundation, announcing the center's launch at the American Society of Newspaper Editors convention in Seattle. "This initial grant is made in anticipation of great achievements and of even greater grants in the future."
Newton said the grant marked the acceleration of the foundation's funding in new media, but he also noted that the Knight Foundation remains the nation's largest journalism funder overall, investing $25 million a year to a broad range of journalism education and training, press freedom and freedom of information projects.
The center is the successor to the Western Knight Center for Specialized Journalism, which provided workshops on specialized topics for hundreds of working journalists each year.
Vikki Porter, the award-winning former editor and reporter who directed the Western Knight Center for the last six years, will serve as the center's director and direct the topical seminar programming. She is based at USC Annenberg. Veteran journalist and former Western Knight Center associate director Lanita Pace-Hinton will direct multimedia training for the Center. She will be based at UC Berkeley.
"The Western Knight Center's record of attracting and training the nation's top journalists has shown that training changes what journalists do and influences the quality of the news they report. We are proud of that," said Geoffrey Cowan, dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication. "But we are prouder still that we are changing. This is not a time for business as usual. Thanks to our great directors and our partnership with Knight Foundation and news organizations across the country, we will continue to be in the forefront of the effort to improve journalism nationwide."
More information about the Knight New Media Center may be found online at http://www.knightnewmediacenter.org.
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