The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at The University of Texas at Austin has received a $270,000 grant from the Open Society Foundations (OSF) to support its work to help Latin American and Caribbean journalists improve the quality of journalism in their countries.
The grant, which was pooled from the OSF’s Latin American Program, Media Program and International Migrations Initiative, will support the Knight Center’s work to expand its journalism training and innovation efforts. It will partially support the 2011 and 2012 Austin Forums and help pay for the Knight Center’s general operating costs through August 2012.
“This grant recognizes the work we have done in Latin America and the Caribbean for almost a decade,” said Professor Rosental C. Alves, director of the Knight Center. “It is also an important step toward the diversification of funds for our activities to help journalists in the Americas. We are grateful for the support from the Open Society Foundations.”
Since 2003, the Knight Center has organized the Austin Forum on Journalism in the Americas, an annual gathering and permanent network of organizations that focus on media development and journalism training in Latin America and the Caribbean. The forum has been co-sponsored by the OSF’s Media Program since 2007.
Founded by Alves in 2002, the Knight Center is a training and outreach program for Latin American and Caribbean journalists. Through support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the center’s programs have benefited thousands of journalists and journalism professors through training workshops and seminars in more than a dozen countries in collaboration with national journalism organizations and nearly 100 online courses from its pioneering distance education program on its trilingual Web site, reaching more than 5,000 journalists. The center also hosts a digital library containing e-books about journalism topics that are downloaded and printed in newsrooms and training programs throughout the Americas.
