The Knight Center for Specialized Journalism is a national program which has for 20 years offered free high-level seminars for print, broadcast and online reporters, editors and editorial writers.
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At these seminars, journalists receive in-depth training in subjects related to their coverage—law, health, science, society, demographics, national and international affairs. Participants meet like-minded colleagues, get grounded in a new assignment or rekindle enthusiasm for a long-time beat.
Fellowships
The Center has been offering intensive seminars for journalists since 1987. More than 2,700 fellowships have been awarded to journalists from nearly 500 news organizations.
Applications are sought from reporters and editors working for independent news organizations as well as from independent online and citizen journalists.
The Knight Center is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and is affiliated with the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism.
SpecializedJournalism.org
In the Spring of 2008, the Knight Center also re-launched its website, specializedjournalism.org. It contains online resources for beat journalists and the general public and features multimedia highlights from Knight seminars. The Knight Center is also offering online seminars. Innovation is a key goal of the Knight Center program and other features will be coming online throughout 2008 and beyond.
The Knight Center for Specialized Journalism at Merrill College closed December 31, 2009, citing a shift in focus to "designing new approaches to the challenges of 21st-century journalism." Other Knight Centers focusing on other topics still exist, including the Knight Digital Media Center, a partnership of USC and UC Berkeley; and the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University.