The John S. Knight (JSK) Journalism Fellowships at Stanford is celebrating its 50th year. Its focus on journalism innovation, entrepreneurship and leadership is aimed at meeting the particular challenges and opportunities of 21st century journalism. Its mission is to improve the quality of news and information reaching the public.
There are 19 JSK fellows in the 2015-16 group — 12 from the U.S. and seven from outside the U.S. This number is consistent with the numbers in recent years.
The seven international fellows come from Australia, Brazil, China, Germany, India, Ukraine and Venezuela. The fellows come from a mix of organizations, including established newspapers like the Washington Post and newer platforms like Vox Media. Brief biographies of the fellows are posted on the JSK Meet the Fellows page.
Fellows participate in several activities as a group, including All Hands gatherings once a week, which range from discussions to skills workshops and brainstorming sessions. Over the years discussion leaders have included top Stanford professors, technology leaders, political figures, writers and artists. Workshops have included technical skills, public presentations, leadership learning and organizational effectiveness.
Most of a fellow's time and energy is spent in self-directed activities (with a healthy dose of guidance and advice from the fellowship staff). Each fellow comes to Stanford with a challenge in journalism that they want to work on addressing: a question to answer, an obstacle to overcome, an opportunity to take advantage of. The journalism challenge is a key element of a fellow’s application, but fellows are not restricted to it: especially in the early part of the fellowship year, fellows are encouraged to explore and reframe their challenge or even abandon it altogether in favor of something more promising. Fellows post publicly their progress three times during the year. Because 2015-16 Fellows are in the initial phase of their year, they have not posted publicly about their challenges. On the JSK Journalism Challenges page you will find the posts of 2014-15 JSK Fellows, each of which is accompanied by a short video.
Fellows also attend classes, under an arrangement with the university, and they participate in various academic and cultural activities around campus and in the surrounding area.
The leadership and staff of the program includes a director, a managing director, an innovation director, a fellowship impact leader, a marketing and outreach manager, an administrative manager, a selection and office coordinator, an events and resources coordinator, a website and software developer (half time) and a language and culture coach (quarter time). Brief biographies of the staff can be found on the JSK Staff page.
The JSK program is housed in the Department of Communication and the director reports to the Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences. The program’s operations are overseen by a Board of Visitors, which sets policy for the program and is a major liaison to the worlds of journalism and technology.
JSK fellows are selected in a rigorous process, from a large pool of candidates. The 2015-16 group was chosen from a total of 542 applicants — 106 from the U.S. and 436 from other countries. The application deadline for both categories is December 1. The program uses a network of outside readers to narrow the group of candidates. International fellows are chosen by the program’s three directors, with the help of the International Center for Journalists. U.S. fellows are selected by the JSK Program Committee, comprising Stanford faculty and journalists.
Journalism fellowships started at Stanford in the fall of 1966, with a grant from the Ford Foundation. Over the next several years, it grew with support from a variety of sources. Beginning in 1973, U.S. Fellows were supported by the Endowment for the Humanities. The program was known as the Stanford Professional Journalism Fellowships program.
Herbert Brucker, a former editor of the Hartford Courant, was the first director of the program. He was succeeded by Lyle M. Nelson, professor of communication, who was director from 1969-85. James V. Risser, Washington bureau chief of the Des Moines Register and a 1974 Stanford journalism fellow, was director from 1985-2000. James Bettinger, a 1983 Stanford fellow, has been director since 2000; he will leave at the end of the 2015-16 academic year.
In 1984, a major gift from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation doubled the program’s endowment, putting it on a stable financial footing, and it was renamed for John S. Knight, the head of Knight-Ridder Newspapers, who had died in 1981.
In its first four decades, the program operated on a simple and powerful idea: if you give reporters and editors free rein in the classrooms and libraries of a great university, the payoff will be superb journalism. That worked extremely well — and then the major disruptions to journalism in the first decade of the 21st century prompted the program’s leaders to make major changes.
The program’s leaders and its Board of Visitors decided in 2006 that the existing program model, which had worked well for more than 40 years, could not be the only model for the future. They created a Strategic Plan Task force, consisting of board members, fellowship program alumni, other journalists and Stanford faculty, to determine what the program should look like in the future.
The Task Force met several times from May 2007 to May 2008, when it issued its findings and recommendations in a document titled, “Roadmap for Change.” The findings had five key elements:
The program would focus on innovation, entrepreneurship and leadership to foster high quality journalism during a time of profound transformation. And, as a corollary, given the emphasis on innovation, the program would expect fellows to come to Stanford with a coherent proposal that would lead to a tangible result.
Fellows would embody a broader range of experience, media and skills, both in the U.S. and abroad.
The program would pay particular attention to selecting international fellows who could have a direct impact on the development of a free press and flow of information in their countries.
The program would rely more on Stanford faculty and regional resources.
The program would enlist fellowship alumni more directly in the program and in the improvement of journalism.
The changes were implemented in the 2009-10 fellowship year. The program’s leadership and staff have continuously modified and tweaked the program — the “coherent proposal that would lead to a tangible result” has evolved to what is now referred to as a “journalism challenge,” for example. But the core elements remain the same.
In October 2014, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation awarded the program a three-year grant to strengthen its curriculum and help spread the program’s impact into newsrooms and beyond. The grant was designed to support these initiatives:
Add a new staff position: fellowship impact leader. This person helps increase the impact of fellows’ work after their year at Stanford, by helping them build on the innovative ideas they examined during their year, as well as explore ways that they can create organizational change within newsroom and in other workplaces. An interim fellowship impact leader has been on staff since December 2014.
Hold a yearly workshop for up to 20 former fellows. This networking and mentoring event is geared toward fellows who are at a pivot point in their post-fellowship careers. They meet at Stanford for an intensive workshop aimed at helping them develop their next venture, as well as examining how to drive change in existing organizations. The first workshop was held in July 2015.
Establish a workshop at Stanford on transformative newsroom leadership. The workshop is open to a small group of editors and publishers to learn alongside fellows, and to introduce them to new innovations and thinking. The first workshop was held in March 2015, with participants from the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, The Santa Rosa Press-Democrat and KQED Public Media.
Develop an evolving, living technology curriculum for journalists. It is designed to address the sorts of questions journalists face when envisioning an innovative project, and includes content that can be shared widely with the field. The development of this curriculum is underway.
When director Jim Risser retired in 2000, fellowship alumni and others raised seed money to create the James V. Risser Prize for Western Environmental Journalism. The prize recognizes excellence in reporting on environmental issues in the North American West, from Canada through the United States to Mexico. Risser, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, had focused on environmental issues throughout his journalism career.
The prize was first awarded in 2005. As part of the prize, each winner is invited to come to Stanford to participate in a symposium focusing on the issues highlighted in the winning entry.
In 2010, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation pledged $200,000 toward endowing the prize, contingent on $100,000 being raised as matching funds. The necessary funds were raised by September 2011, and the prize was renamed the Knight-Risser Prize for Western Environmental Journalism.
The prize is jointly administered by the JSK program and the Bill Lane Center for the American West.
— September 2015