The International Multimedia Institute opened its doors to an inaugural class of 30 students this summer.  The new school for journalists is located in New Delhi, but participants come from all over India, as well as Bhutan and Liberia.

Students will learn the fundamentals of journalism and digital media skills such as podcasting and web design to equip them for journalism in the digital age.  The school is led by Dean Sunil Saxena, with support from Knight Fellows Jody McPhillips and Dave Bloss.

The institute is expected to create a cadre of journalists dedicated to covering issues that need attention in a rapidly changing India.  With lower tuition requirements than other schools, the program is accessible to an economically diverse spectrum of applicants.  There are also scholarships available.

The International Center for Journalists and the Society for Policy Studies launched the project, with support from the MacArthur Foundation and Knight Foundation.  The City University of New York is also assisting the school.

In 2002 investigative reporter Tim Lopes was murdered.  He was trying to expose the violence and intimidation that residents of a Rio slum were subjected to at the hands of gang bosses.

The TV journalist’s death gave spark to a movement that would improve journalism, protect journalists in their work, and aim to hold governments in Latin America accountable.

Only weeks after the murder, Lopes’ friend and colleague Rosental Alves, Knight Chair in International Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, hosted a workshop for 75 editors and reporters to show them how working together increases safety.

Those journalists, with assistance from the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, led by Alves, went on to form the Brazilian Association for Investigative Journalism (Abraji).

Fast forward eight years:  Abraji just held its annual congress with 700 participants; it has trained more than 4,000 journalists; and it has 1,800 members.  Abraji won Brazil’s prestigious Esso Journalism Prize for Best Contribution to the Press in 2003, and is now recognized as one of the most active investigative journalism organizations in the world, attracting funding for its cause from members and other supporters.

In the 2002 Annual Report of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Alves was quoted as saying “I can only imagine that, as a journalist who dedicated most of his career to investigative journalism, [Tim] would be proud of us.”

Abraji has come a long way from its formation in 2002, improving the skills of Brazil’s journalists as it goes along.  By creating and facilitating communication among journalists, Abraji is contributing to a safer environment in which they can work and do better journalism.

Across Haiti, residents tune in to Enfomasyon Nou Dwe Konnen (News You Can Use) to find out the latest information on basic services in their earthquake ravaged country. Questions from callers center on basic humanitarian needs, such as how to get a death certificate for a person whose body was never found or whether tenants should pay rent on properties that have collapsed.

Knight-funded Internews began producing the segment the week after the January earthquake, and has answered more than 380 questions. Now, just over six months later, close to 75 percent of Haitian adults listen to Internews' humanitarian broadcasts. The spots contain information on food, shelter and employment, urgent news for the nearly two million people still living in internally displaced persons camps.

This is an important time for Haitian journalism, and Internews is working to train journalists and strengthen the news and information infrastructure. The presidential election scheduled for November will also provide an opportunity for local journalists to cover important national issues.  One of the candidates is hip hop star, Wyclef Jean, and his candidacy will increase international attention on the country and the election.

Internews is also reaching Haitians who migrated to rural areas after the earthquake through collaboration with the nonprofit organization Communicating with Disaster Affected Communities.  The partnership is implementing a traveling news service.

Knight Foundation and Communicating with Disaster Affected Communities sponsored a meeting in May looking at how the media responded to the crisis.  The event also evaluated the role technology and communications played in helping address the information needs of Haitian communities in the aftermath of the earthquake.  Other Knight grantees at the meeting included representatives from Global Voices and Knight News Challenge grantee Ushahidi.

With help from Knight Foundation, The World Journalism Education Council (WJEC) has launched a new project to help journalism educators get better organized.  The project, named the World Journalism Education Census, It aims to provide a complete directory of programs at universities worldwide with links to university websites and information about the programs.

2,338 journalism programs are currently active in the census – sorted by country.  This Knight-funded initiative provides shows students, teachers and professionals which universities do what and how to contact them.

Journalism projects that desire international assistance can use this tool to find institutional partners, and the work can also be used for further studies and research. Users have included visitors from 135 countries.

The census is constantly vetted for accuracy and completeness.  In addition to the international programs in other countries, the council has also identified 371 international programs among the 480 U.S. programs listed, and will complete this task in the fall.

WJEC also issued the Declaration of Universal Principles of Journalism Education which were approved in June 2007 as principles to serve as a standard for journalism education worldwide. The website also has a video of this declaration.

Students are learning multimedia in the field by covering stories all over the world as part of the project “My Story, My Goal.”  In response to the UN Millennium Development Goals, 14 young journalists from the University of Miami teamed up with local partners to share coverage which personifies some of the world’s most critical human issues.

The stories were integrated into a nearly 27-minute documentary called “This is My Goal.”  Led by Rich Beckman, Knight Chair in Visual Journalism, the Center has begun developing relationships with journalism schools around the world.  Tom Kennedy, Knight Center Professional-in-Residence and former managing editor of multimedia at The Washington Post, provided valuable direction and editing coaching during post production.

Each of the seven four-minute videos is available to watch separately, providing a snapshot of individual struggle.  In addition to the video, animated statistics shed light on the policy issue, and high quality still photos provide additional perspectives.

This project was produced by the Knight Center for International Media, which also houses the One Water project.  The One Water film, done in a variety of formats, including one without words, will debut on cable Aug. 2, 2010. The center focuses on finding new ways for news and information to cross cultural and political borders.

A reporter who relies only on official sources will often miss the real story. To a seasoned journalist, that may sound like a cliché. But in my Knight International Journalism Fellowship in Uganda, where independent media are very new, I’m trying to help journalists understand the need to dig deeper and find new sources, especially when it comes to health reporting. Recently, I got to see stunning results-- $130 million worth in fact.

In 2008, a reporter I was working with, Kakaire Kirunda of the Daily Monitor newspaper, set out to write a story about the country’s hospital system. On paper, it’s an orderly and well-conceived array of district, regional and national hospitals, each designed to handle certain types of cases while passing more complex ones up to higher levels. In reality, though, the system is broken. The lower-level facilities often lack manpower and equipment, so the triage system doesn’t work. Patients flock in large numbers to the higher level sites, which are overwhelmed.

Kakaire’s story became a series that the Monitor called “Our Sick Hospitals.” It worked because it relied not on official sources, who generally painted a rosy picture based on the theoretical ideal, but on patients who used the shoddy hospitals and on experts like Freddie Ssengooba, a lecturer at Makerere University School of Public Health

-- Chris Conte, Knight International Journalism Fellow

Shubhranshu Choudhary

As a Knight International Journalism fellow, I am working on a project that uses mobile technology to enable citizens in India’s most isolated regions to produce and deliver news. I am sending along a video from a Citizen Journalism Training Workshop we organized in February 2010 in Kunkuri Chhattisgarh. We trained 33 tribal citizens on basics of journalism and on how to report using mobile phones. Elisa Tinsley, Director, Knight International journalism Program in ICFJ and Bill Thies of Microsoft Research Lab in India also took part in the training.

In Chhattisgarh there are no tribal journalists or journalists who understand the tribal languages in the state. A survey showed that mainstream newspapers in the state gave only 2% of their space to news related to stories on tribal communities.

After three days of training, supported in part by UNICEF, these new citizen journalists have started reporting about important events and happenings in their villages. They are recording two- minute audio reports on their mobile phones. Once their stories get vetted, anyone from the community can simply call a number and get the latest.

A story about our new network ran in prime time on one of the top TV stations in India, so the mainstream press is beginning to notice.

Photo: Pablo Corral Vega

Harvard’s 25 newly announced Nieman Journalism Fellows for 2011 include two Latin American Fellows sponsored by Knight Foundation.

Photojournalist Pablo Corral Vega of Ecuador founded nuestramirada.org, a social network for Latin American documentary photographers, while he was a resident professional at the University of Miami School of Communications’ Knight Center for International Media. As a Nieman Fellow, Pablo plans to build on his new media focus by studying how online networks can encourage and support collaboration between journalists, as well as promote transparency and human rights.

The other Knight Latin American Nieman Fellow is veteran independent journalist Hollman Morris Rincón of Colombia. Hollman directs and produces CONTRAVIA TV, which has given a voice to indigenous people, peasants and other marginalized citizens of Colombia. As a Nieman Fellow, Hollman will focus on human rights issues, studying international criminal court procedures and strategies to negotiate conflict.

Ushahidi's page for the Haiti earthquake has become an important reference for government, aid workers and media.

On January 12, a devastating earthquake struck Haiti. Five months on, it’s time to look at how the media responded to the crisis and what role technology and communications played in helping address the information needs of Haitian communities in the aftermath of this tragedy. What worked, what didn’t and what are the lessons we can learn to improve rapid response in the future?

Earlier this week, Knight Foundation and an interagency working group called Communicating with Disaster Affected Communities (CDAC) sponsored a meeting to consider these questions. The gathering brought together Haitian journalists, international media representatives, development and humanitarian groups, technologists and response teams. Participating groups included: Association of Independent Haitian Media, BBC World Service Trust, CDAC Haiti, Global Voices, Haitian Journalists Association, InSTEDD, International Media Support (IMS), Internews, Irish Red Cross Society, Microsoft, Quartier par Quartier (QpQ), Reporters Sans Frontieres, The Miami Herald, Thomson Reuters Foundation, U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) and Ushahidi.

Participants reviewed the successes and challenges of digital and traditional media efforts following the earthquake to understand what can be done better next time the international community faces a similar humanitarian disaster. And, as Haiti rebuilds, how can international agencies further incorporate media development in their reconstruction plans?

Alongside traditional media efforts, in particular community radio, a new set of social media tools, citizen media efforts, and mapping systems were used to gather and disseminate information to individuals and media outlets. These tools – which create both new possibilities and complex challenges – largely did not exist following similar disasters, such as the catastrophic earthquake in Pakistan in 2005.

The emergence of new media applications in disaster-related communication efforts raises questions about the interaction among technology groups, humanitarian relief agencies and local media, and requires new partnerships and systems for open collaboration. Participants at the meeting discussed these and other challenges: how new tools and technologies can be better used to enable two-way communication between local communities and responders; and how these tools can be used to strengthen the role of local media during crises.

A series of recommendations generated from the discussion in Miami will be published later this summer as part of a Knight-supported report on Media, Information Systems and Communities: Lessons from Haiti. Today in Washington, D.C., the Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) is conducting a follow-up panel discussion to the event in Miami, with some of the same participants, on the role of media in humanitarian crises.

The Center for International Media Assistance has released an interesting new report examining recent trends in private U.S. funding of media development projects around the world.

U.S. foundations have funded programs in “media development” (independent news and information in general) and “media for development” (coverage of particular issues).

The report recommends donors keep consulting and continue to attract new foundations into the field.  For more, read the report.

-- Marly Falcon, Knight Foundation contributing blogger