3/31/97
CONTACT: Stanford University News Service (650) 723-2558
Stanford's John S. Knight Fellowships program for professional journalists has been awarded $1.25 million by the Knight Foundation of Miami to bolster two of its international fellowships.
The foundation said it would provide $1 million to endow a fellowship for a Latin American journalist, thereby making permanent a fellowship that it had been supporting annually for the past 10 years.
In addition, the foundation trustees approved a $250,000 grant to the Lyle and Corrine Nelson International Journalism Fellowship, which was begun three years ago by former fellows in honor of the retired director of the Knight Fellowships and his wife.
In announcing the Stanford grant, the Knight Foundation noted that it "has provided more than $6 million over a quarter-century to this prestigious mid-career journalism program."
In 1982 the foundation permanently endowed the portion of the program that brings 12 U.S. professional journalists to campus each year for classroom study, research and special seminars. The half-dozen international journalists have been sponsored on a year-to-year basis by the Knight Foundation, the Reuter Foundation and other organizations.
"We're extremely grateful to the Knight Foundation for solidifying our relationship with Latin American journalism by endowing a fellowship," said communication Professor James V. Risser, director of the Knight Fellowships. "We believe our program is playing a small but important role in improving the quality of journalism in a region where there has been a strong move toward press freedom in recent years.
"We're also pleased that the foundation has chosen to make a substantial gift in honor of Lyle and Corrine Nelson, who have done so much over the years to establish and nurture international fellowships in our program," said Risser. "The Nelson fellowship already has been used to bring to Stanford outstanding journalists from China, Hungary and Poland."
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By Jim Bettinger