From our new community site Knight Pulse, a conversation with Stanford Knight Fellows Director Jim Bettinger on the program changes ahead:

Do you have a particular journalistic challenge, problem, or issue that you would like to spend a year working through to benefit everyone?

For more information and how to apply, read this post on Jim’s new Knightline blog.

Questions on the new program direction or thoughts on other ways journalism fellowships could adapt to the new media landscape?

More video conversations on the Knight Pulse blog.

Director of the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism at the University of Maryland Carol Horner died last week in the District of Columbia.

The Washington Post quotes Knight Foundation Journalism Vice President Eric Newton:

“Under Carol Horner’s leadership, the Knight Center in Specialized Journalism became the gold standard for training journalists to cover complex topics,” said Eric Newton, vice president of the journalism program at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. “Because of Carol’s work, journalists all over America know how to cover difficult-to-handle topics — everything from nuclear power to the military to the economy.”

View a photo slideshow and find out how to share your memories here.

Editor’s note: Senior Communications Officer and Secretary Larry Meyer details how Nancy Hicks Maynard was related to Knight Foundation’s Journalism program and the Maynard Institute.

Nancy Hicks Maynard – a significant pioneer in journalism – was a long-time member of Knight Foundation’s Journalism Advisory Committee. Along with John Dotson Jr. – quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle obituary – Maynard did much to ensure that our journalism grantees valued diversity.

Nancy and her husband Robert Maynard owned and co-published the Oakland Tribune starting in 1983. They practiced the diversity in staffing and coverage they had been preaching earlier in their careers. The paper remains the only major metropolitan daily to have ever been black-owned.

Knight’s Eric Newton was the last managing editor under the Maynards. He recalled that Nancy Maynard successfully reoriented the circulation and advertising departments to focus on Oakland and Berkeley. As a result, circulation was growing in those urban areas even as financial problems forced a sale.

The Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, now based in Oakland, has prepared thousands of graduates to enter the nation’s newsrooms, including at the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. Nancy Maynard was the institute’s first president and served on its board until 2002.

What are your memories of her?

Today, celebrate Constitution Day by learning more about the First Amendment.

Take the quiz, find ways to protect student journalists, and nominate a school for the First Amendment Press Freedom Award (deadline December 1st).

How else might we celebrate Constitution Day?

On Wednesday, the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) Web site, ijnet.org, relaunched with new tools for their global group of journalists.

Site users are now able to set up a profile and use tools in Arabic, English, Persian, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Knight sponsors ICFJ and funds the Knight International Journalism Fellowships; you can apply here and see where Fellows have traveled on the interactive map.

In this video, watch Knight International Journalism Fellow Arul Louis talk with Dr. R. K. Pachauri, director-general of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in New Delhi about media and climate change.

Per the IJNet.org e-learning post:

Knight International’s Louis has been working with TERI to create new online resources for media. With TERI and other partners, he is leading innovative environmental programs for regional journalists in local languages. He also has helped the Indo-Asian News Service expand its environmental coverage.

Also in e-learning, the ICFJ will offer an introductory online course on investigative reporting for Arabic-speaking journalists; applications close September 5th. Details here.

From the press release:

J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism has moved to American University’s School of Communication, where it will expand its operations with the help of a $2.4 million grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to American University.

J-Lab helps journalists and citizens use digital technologies to develop new ways of participating in public life. J-Lab provides award and seed money to professional journalists, citizens, and new media entrepreneurs for innovations in journalism and community news startups; builds e-learning Web sites for interactive and citizen journalism; and engages in training and research.

“I am excited that we have the opportunity to expand our programs in a place as full of energy and focus on innovation as AU’s School of Communication,” said Jan Schaffer, J-Lab’s executive director and one of the nation’s leading journalism reform thinkers. “Our new affiliation is a good fit for J-Lab’s mission, which is to help transform journalism for today and reinvent it for tomorrow.”

At its new home, J-Lab will use the Knight grant to:

* Renew the Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism.
* Fund 16 additional New Voices citizen-media projects.
* Create eight to 10 Knight Citizen News Network learning modules and update J-Learning, J-Lab, and J-New Voices Web sites.
* Launch five Networked Community News pilot projects, teaming five newspapers with citizen media outlets in each of their communities.
* Build a Community Media Toolkit to help foundations fund, vet, support, and measure local media projects.
* Ramp up knowledge sharing with a Re-imagining Journalism project.

J-Lab’s J-Learning and the Knight Citizen News Network are Web-based, comprehensive community journalism instruction programs; its McCormick New Media Women Entrepreneurs project provides seed funding and support for original news ideas proposed by women; and the New Voices project provides start-up funding and instruction for pioneering community news ventures in the United States. The Knight-Batten Awards recognize innovations in journalism and are one of the profession’s most prestigious honors.

What do you think J-Lab should prioritize?

This week, USC’s Knight Digital Media Center convenes their annual leadership conference in Los Angeles. Michele McLellen is liveblogging the week’s events; to begin, start with her initial explanatory post:

The top editor and the top online editor from each of 12 traditionally print organizations get together Tuesday-Friday with experts in digital journalism, technology and innovation. We hope each team will leave with a plan of next steps to take their organizations forward online.

In other posts:

Michele’s thoughts about recent trends in newsroom reorganization, culture, systems and processes, staff cuts, and technology,

Amy Mitchell’s (Deputy Director for the Project of Excellence in Journalism) overview of news audiences, including her point that “The user is NOT becoming the reporter,”

Krisztine “Z” Holly’s (Vice Provost for Innovation and Executive Director of the USC Stevens Institute for Innovation) seven myths of innovation,

Jeffrey Cole (USC Center for the Digital Future) on television and the importance of video,

Dana Chinn (USC Annenberg School for Communication) on web metrics (hint: move beyond “time spent” by site visitors and spikes),

and Nora Paul (Institute for New Media Studies at the University of Minnesota) on the importance of good design.

The conference blog feed is here, and the event continues through Friday.

Funded by Knight Foundation, the Five Freedoms Project announces its Web site launch (fivefreedoms.org) and online network.

A resource for educators, students, and citizens, the site has an “actionable five-part framework” for leadership skill development, an area about voice and the learning cycle, and identifies five categories for impact.

You can read blog posts from the inaugural Five Freedoms Leadership Academy, convened recently at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. here, and answer the Five Freedoms question for July:

When have you exercised your First Amendment rights to bring about meaningful change? (Weigh in here.)

How do you think voice for the five freedoms can be articulated?

From yesterday’s press release:

The grant will help NewsU expand in four key areas:

* Enhance the skills and digital abilities of journalists,
* Find new ways to teach and inspire journalists as well as those without access to formal journalism training,
* Increase news literacy, and
* Use the Internet to deliver training in innovative and effective ways.

Specifically, NewsU plans to offer new courses to help journalists and others make the transition to a digital world, shift its current content management system to a Web 2.0 platform, deliver course content in multiple languages, and create e-learning modules on news literacy for the general public.

“More than 73,000 participants have enrolled in NewsU courses since its introduction, vastly exceeding initial expectations and making NewsU the top e-learning destination for journalists and others interested in journalism,” said Howard Finberg, director of interactive learning at The Poynter Institute. “We are excited about taking NewsU to the next level and reaching journalists around the world.”

Here’s the current course list.

Have you taken a course? What other courses would you like to see offered?

From the press release:

Seeking to change the way journalism is taught in the United States, Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation are investing more than $11 million in the expansion of a national initiative to adapt journalism education to the challenges of a struggling news industry. Three new journalism schools are joining the effort of redefining journalism education and training a new generation of journalists capable of reshaping the news industry.

The expansion will deepen and extend:

* News21 (an experimental, online news incubator);
* Curriculum enhancement;
* and a journalism education policy task force.

Each foundation will contribute half of the new funding, and allocate it among each of the initiative’s three distinct efforts.

How do you think change can be accelerated at journalism schools?