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Professor Rosental Calmon Alves, Knight Chair in Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and founder and director of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, will receive the Press Freedom Award from the Brazilian National Association of Newspapers (ANJ) at a ceremony in São Paulo on Dec. 3.

In a statement, ANJ called Alves one of the great masters of Brazilian journalism and a role model for generations of news professionals. The organization cited his advocacy for an access to information law in Brazil, his prominence in the country’s digital journalism landscape, and his leadership in journalism training and debate through the creation of the Knight Center, which publishes LatAm Journalism Review (LJR), and the International Symposium on Journalism (ISOJ).

ANJ has given the Press Freedom Award annually since 2008 to honor individuals and institutions’ contributions to the defense of democracy and the free press. Past recipients include UNESCO and the fact-checking project Comprova.

“This award really moved me because it came as a surprise at a very special time in my life and my career,” Alves said, noting that he will soon retire after 30 years at UT-Austin. “It is also very special that this honor comes from my homeland and from ANJ, an organization with which I have been associated since the 1990s.”

ANJ Executive President Marcelo Rech said the award was a fitting recognition of an innovative journalist whose national and international career has been marked by the development of quality journalism and the defense of press freedom.

“I met Rosental in the mid-1990s, when he was the pioneer of the ANJ editorial group. As a fledgling editor-in-chief at Zero Hora, it was astonishing for me to be at the same table as a professional of Rosental’s caliber, whom I had already admired from afar after reading one of the best war reports I had ever seen when he was sent as a special correspondent to El Salvador by Jornal do Brasil,” Rech told LJR.

Born in Rio de Janeiro, Alves began his career at 16 in 1968, during the Brazilian military dictatorship. He worked in journalism for 27 years, most of them at Jornal do Brasil, where he was a reporter, copy editor, editor and director. There, he pioneered digital journalism, helping launch the Instant News System (SIN) in 1991 and JB Online, Brazil’s first newspaper website, in 1995.

“It was something revolutionary, which could only come from a visionary like Rosental,” Rech said. 

Alves moved to Texas in 1996 to take up the Knight Chair in Journalism at UT-Austin, but he continued to participate actively in discussions about press freedom and access to information in Brazil. In 2002, while he was establishing the Knight Center, ANJ invited him to a seminar in São Paulo on access to information.

“From there we worked together on various initiatives to promote the idea that a freedom of information law would be necessary to strengthen democracy in Brazil,” Alves said. He credited other journalists, such as Fernando Rodrigues, founder of Brazilian news outlet Poder360, whom he considers one of the key figures in the creation of the country’s access to information law.

Francisco Mesquita Neto, vice chair of ANJ's Press Freedom Committee, highlighted Alves' role in expanding tools for monitoring public officials and strengthening the professional organization of newspapers.

"Rosental helped transform fundamental principles of journalism into concrete initiatives. Expanded access to public data has given newsrooms more tools to investigate, challenge official versions, and hold those in power accountable,” he said in a statement.

Rech said the sustainability of professional journalism has always been one of Alves’ key concerns. 

“Without high-quality, principled, independent, diverse and robust journalism, we will have neither democracies nor AIs that do not hallucinate,” he said. Keeping all of us on our toes with his provocative ideas for so many decades is a great legacy of Rosental’s.”