7/30/2016

Announcing the Jim Bettinger Challenge Fund for Newsroom Innovation | JSK

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DAWN GARCIA, MANAGING DIRECTOR | Jul 11, 2016 | News & Notes

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JSK Journalism Fellowships Director Jim Bettinger (right). photo: Doug Zimmerman

Creating innovative ideas from scratch to advance the eld of journalism and make a dierence in peoples
lives isnt easy.
Encouraging newsrooms to evolve and adopt fresh innovations can be even harder.
The John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships program at Stanford University aims to foster new ideas in
journalism through innovation, entrepreneurship and leadership. Each year it brings up to 20 journalists and
journalism innovators from the United States and around the world to spend the year at Stanford.
But sometimes fellows meet roadblocks to creating change and getting traction on new innovations when
they go back to their news organizations or join new ones.
Thats why were announcing a new initiative to support alumni of our fellowship program the Jim
Bettinger Challenge Fund for Newsroom Innovation. The fund will help fellows create disruptive and
innovative journalism experiments in their newsrooms after they leave their 10-month program at Stanford.
http://jsk.stanford.edu/news-notes/2016/announcing-the-jim-bettinger-challenge-fund-for-newsroom-innovation/

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7/30/2016

Announcing the Jim Bettinger Challenge Fund for Newsroom Innovation | JSK

It will provide support of $5,000 to $20,000 to U.S.-based alumni for innovative journalism experiments,
digging into topics that are relevant to the current needs of newsrooms. Knight Foundation is providing
$100,000 in seed funding to help launch the initiative.
The support is aimed specically at those who are working in newsrooms. Using the funding, they can
launch new storytelling formats, digital tools or other disruptive ideas that might not have been tried due to
newsroom budget constraints. Projects will be chosen by fellowship program leadership and lessons will be
shared widely.
We are launching this new initiative on the 50th anniversary of journalism fellowships at Stanford. The
program was founded in 1966 as the Stanford Professional Journalism Fellowships program; it was renamed
for Knight Foundation co-founder John S. Knight in 1984, after the foundation made a major gift to endow
the program.
It honors JSK Journalism Fellowships Director Jim Bettinger, who is retiring after 27 years at Stanford.
During his tenure, Bettinger held leadership roles with the fellowship program and headed a major shift in
2009, which dramatically enhanced the programs impact. With strategic planning support from Knight
Foundation for that shift, we have worked to develop leaders who pursue transformative ideas and
approaches that they can use throughout their journalism careers.
With some extra nancial incentive from the Jim Bettinger Challenge Fund for Newsroom Innovation, we
hope more news organizations will embrace experiments that change the way they approach problemsolving and encourage them to think in new ways.
Weve seen some good outcomes when our fellows innovate in existing news organizations. Michelle
Holmes, a 2012 fellow, has led the transformation of the Alabama Media Group from a scattered set of local
newspapers and websites into a statewide, digital-rst source of news. As vice president of content, she has
brought to life a series of collaborative projects, working with organizations such as the Center for
Investigative Reporting, the Center for Collaborative Journalism and Auburn Universitys computer science
department. Wed like to see other alumni have the same success in newsrooms, even if theyre not the
boss.
Weve been squarely focused on helping to reinvent the future of journalism by supporting our fellows as
they tackle specic challenges and share solutions with the eld. This initiative is one of a number of ways
we are extending our commitment to journalisms present and, most importantly, to innovation within
newsrooms.
It is our hope that the lessons from these experiments will inspire other news organizations to be more open
to disruptive innovation and our fellows will continue on their paths as journalism change agents for years to
come.
This post also appears on the John S. and James L. Knight Foundations Knight Blog. View the press
release. JSK Managing Director Dawn Garcia will become the programs director on Sept. 1.

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The John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford foster journalistic

innovation, entrepreneurship and leadership. Each year, we give twenty
outstanding individuals from around the world the resources to pursue and test
their ideas for improving the quality of news and information reaching the public.
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http://jsk.stanford.edu/news-notes/2016/announcing-the-jim-bettinger-challenge-fund-for-newsroom-innovation/

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7/30/2016

Announcing the Jim Bettinger Challenge Fund for Newsroom Innovation | JSK

http://jsk.stanford.edu/news-notes/2016/announcing-the-jim-bettinger-challenge-fund-for-newsroom-innovation/

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