UNC’s Knight Chair will refocus on the economics of digital media, journalism
CHAPEL HILL – The Knight Chair at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, a professorship created in 1991 by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, is being expanded to embrace the digital age with a new title and an endowment boost of $200,000.
Now called the Knight Chair in Journalism and Digital Media Economics, it will focus on 21st-century economic models that will preserve and improve the ability of journalists to produce news in the public interest.
The Foundation, created in 1950, has invested nearly $300 million to advance journalism quality and freedom of expression. It focuses on projects with the potential to create transformational change. It has just launched year two of the Knight News Challenge, a contest awarding millions of dollars for innovative ideas using digital experiments to transform community news. The foundation plans to invest at least $25 million over five years in the search for bold community news experiments.
Knight Foundation Web site: www.knightfdn.org
Knight Foundation contact: Bud Meyer, (305) 908-2610 or Meyer@knightfdn.org
School of Journalism and Mass Communication contact: Kyle York, (919) 966-3323 or skyork@email.unc.edu
News Services contact: Susan Houston, (919) 962-8415 or susan