Rosemary Pennington | Oct. 26, 2007
Note: Graduate student and Web reporter Rosemary Pennington was a Knight Fellow in February and attended the follow up session Oct. 17-19.
What can prod almost 30 busy journalists to abandon their duties to head back to the classroom? How about a week in the Washington, D.C., area replete with access to experts, field trips to governmental agencies and the chance to shoot the breeze with other journalists.
What can prod almost 30 busy journalists to abandon their duties to head back to the classroom? How about a week in the Washington, D.C., area replete with access to experts, field trips to governmental agencies and the chance to shoot the breeze with other journalists.
“It’s extremely helpful,” former Press-Enterprise reporter and current Fulbright Fellow Naomi Kresge said of the Knight Center for Specialized Journalists. “It’s real work. You go to school, sit in class all day. It’s really rigorous.”
Every few months, the Knight Center brings about 30 journalists to the University of Maryland campus in College Park for a weeklong fellowship. The reporters and editors spend that time immersed in a particular issue. The idea is to help journalists covering a particular beat develop a better expertise.
The focus in February was on development during the “Cities, Suburbs and Beyond” fellowship. In mid-October, most of the reporters from February were back at the Knight Center for an intensive two-day follow up, among them St. Louis Post-Dispatch real estate reporter and IU alumna Riddhi Trivedi-St. Clair (M.A. ‘01).
“It’s a great chance to brush up on information and resources,” St. Clair said of the fellowship program. “I used several of the people who talked to us in February in stories I did.”
That’s what Knight Center director Carol Horner wants to hear. She spent 27 years in the newspaper business before moving to the center seven years ago. Horner said she thinks the journalists who go through the Knight Center fellowships, and training like it, come out the other end better reporters.
“Sources. Insight. Context,” Horner said in an e-mail interview, quoting the center’s slogan. “That says it, what we try to provide to working reporters and editors, again, with the aim of elevating the quality of information that reaches the public. Not to put too fine a point on it, or to be overly lofty, but we think our work enhances our democracy.”
And while it might enhance democracy, many of the fellows say it enhances their creativity. Journalists often do not want to share their ideas and sources with colleagues in their hometowns as there’s always the worry someone will steal a story idea. The ability to bounce ideas off reporters without that worry is a big draw for Arizona Republic city hall reporter Katie Nelson.
And while it might enhance democracy, many of the fellows say it enhances their creativity. Journalists often do not want to share their ideas and sources with colleagues in their hometowns as there’s always the worry someone will steal a story idea. The ability to bounce ideas off reporters without that worry is a big draw for Arizona Republic city hall reporter Katie Nelson.
“More than anything, this is a chance to network and listen,” Nelson said. “You can really enhance stories, it’s my favorite part about it. It’s rejuvenating.”
The weeklong meetings in College Park will certainly always be part of what the Knight Center offers, Horner said. But she’s trying to broaden the scope of the program.
“We’ll be reaching out all the more to online and citizen journalists, expecting to foster a mutual sharing of perspectives and procedures,” Horner said. “We’ll also be putting more of our material online, making it available not only to our fellows for sharing with their newsrooms, but to anyone interested in a particular subject.”
