Blog

In 2024, the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas was honored with the prestigious Great Friend of the Press award from the Inter American Press Association (IAPA). In recognition for its “significant contribution to the growth and advancement of journalism and the media industry across the Americas,” the Knight Center and its founder and director, Rosental Calmon Alves, were celebrated Oct. 17, 2024, during the 80th IAPA General Assembly in Córdoba, Argentina.

Rosental Alves accepts the 2024 Great Friend of the Press award from the Inter American Press Association. (Photo courtesy of IAPA)

The award called attention to the Knight Center’s position as an industry leader with its successful online courses program, digital magazine, international conferences, and support for journalists and journalism organizations, all of which contributed to the Center’s continued efforts throughout 2024 to strengthen journalism in Latin America and around the world.

For example, the Knight Center in 2024 remained at the forefront of industry changes stemming from new technologies through its pioneering year-long project to explore the phenomena of “newsfluencers.” For the Knight Center, 2024 was the Year of the Influencers and their Impact on Journalism as it partnered with UNESCO on a multi-pronged global project aimed at understanding the role of digital content creators in journalism.

The project—which included a day-long roundtable discussion in Austin with journalists and content creators from around the world; an ebook available in English, Spanish and Portuguese that has been downloaded about 6,000 times (and counting); an experimental newsroom that brought together journalists, influencers and activists to jointly cover UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day conference in Santiago, Chile; and a massive open online course with nearly 10,000 people enrolled from more than 170 countries—helped strengthen the Knight Center’s position as a global leader in journalism education and outreach. Building on its successful 20-plus year history of fostering quality journalism, the Knight Center throughout 2024 expanded its initiatives and adapted to the ever-changing needs of journalists and communicators worldwide, ensuring that it will continue to live up to its name as a Great Friend of the Press.

Below we share some of the highlights of all we’ve accomplished in the past year, thanks in part to the generous support of our funders (especially the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation), partners, donors, and program participants—the Knight Center’s success is truly a collaborative effort!

Online Education and Training

The Knight Center's online courses program, which continued working to revamp its website and online platform, remained a cornerstone of the Center’s activities. In 2024 it:

• Surpassed 336,000 online course participants since 2012, reaching students from 200 countries and territories.
• Offered 25 free and low-cost courses and workshops to 29,196 participants from more than 170 countries. At the forefront of the latest trends and technologies, the professional development trainings, conducted in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French, included topics such as AI and election coverage, using Python in the newsroom, data journalism and citizen security, solutions journalism approaches to covering elections and reporting on climate change, audio storytelling, Google Sheets, OSINT, Telegram, digital content creators, and the latest digital tools for reporting.
• Launched 10 new self-directed courses, expanding the offerings available at JournalismCourses.org.
• Published a free ebook, about what journalists and influencers can learn from each other, that, by November, had been downloaded more than 4,400 times in English, 982 times in Spanish, and 500 times in Portuguese.
• Broadened our online training formats to include not just our traditional 4-week courses, but also two-week courses, 90-minute workshops, and weekly webinar series.
• Continued revamping our course website and platform to meet the needs and wants of our learning community.
• The Journalism Courses website and learning platform combined generated about 502,000 views per month over the course of the year.

LatAm Journalism Review

The Knight Center’s trilingual digital magazine, LatAm Journalism Review (LJR), and its weekly newsletter remained relevant as leading references for the latest news and analysis about journalism and journalists in Latin America:

• Each month, published an average of 65 original articles, plus their translations (English, Spanish, and Portuguese), as well news monitor posts (and their translations) aggregating breaking news stories.
• Launched a weekly newscast on YouTube highlighting the week’s stories published in LJR.
• LJR articles were republished 59 times by other organizations, such as IJNet, GIJN, and MediaTalks, and mentioned 218 times in newsletters from Nieman Lab, Reuters, Abraji, CPJ, and more.
• LJR’s site received about 44,700 pageviews per month during the year.
• New editorial manager and assistant editor hired to lead the team of writers and translators based in the United States, Latin America, and Europe.
• Find LJR’s top stories of 2024 here.
• Follow LJR on social media: Facebook, X (Twitter), and Instagram.

ISOJ and Events

The Knight Center team celebrated 25 years of ISOJ in April 2024. (Patricia Lim/Knight Center)

The International Symposium on Online Journalism (ISOJ), the Knight Center’s flagship event, celebrated its 25th anniversary April 12-13, 2024, as it continued to attract leading media practitioners and researchers from around the world to discuss the evolution of online journalism and address pressing issues in the field:

• Featured 79 speakers from 20 countries, including Meredith Kopit Levien, CEO and president of The New York Times Company; Wendi C. Thomas, founding editor and publisher of MLK50: Justice through Journalism; Galina Timchenko, co-founder, CEO & publisher of Meduza; Richard Gingras, vice president of news for Google Inc.; and Dale R. Anglin, director of Press Forward.
• Program included three keynote sessions, 11 panels, five breakfast- and lunchtime workshops, and a research session.
• Special closing address honored journalists José Rubén Zamora and Gustavo Gorriti, who are enduring imprisonment, lawsuits and harassment for their work.
• Attendees included 412 people in-person in Austin, Texas, and 567 online.
• The ISOJ Virtual Experience included a dedicated Slack channel, meet-and-greet Zoom sessions with panelists, a backstage pass, and participation badges.
• ISOJ Time Machine series launched with six videos featuring clips of ISOJ symposia going back to 1999.
• The ISOJ website garnered an average of 19,000 views per month over the year.
• Check out videos of all the 25th ISOJ sessions here.

The day after ISOJ, the Knight Center hosted the 17th Ibero American Colloquium on Digital Journalism:

• Featured 31 speakers from 13 countries throughout the Americas.
• Panels spotlighted exiled Nicaraguan journalists, transborder journalism, the deteriorating state of press freedom, and more.
• Find recordings of the Colloquium here.

The Knight Center Speaker Series continued, hosting Mexican journalist Ángel Nakamura.

Other Initiatives

Summer Harlow, associate director of the Knight Center, presents the course on digital content creators and journalists in Amman, Jordan. (Knight Center)

Since its inception, the Knight Center has helped create and develop journalist organizations throughout Latin America. This work continued in 2024, thanks to a $250,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to provide financial and other forms of support to Nicaraguan journalists exiled in Costa Rica:

• Stipends distributed to exiled journalists via the Press and Freedom of Expression Institute (IPLEX).

The Knight Center embarked on the development of a five-year strategic plan, helping us to define our mission, vision, values and goals:

• Mission: The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas is committed to strengthening quality, independent journalism and bolstering press freedom across the Americas and beyond through free and low-cost online education, groundbreaking research and reporting, and community resources for independent journalists.
• Vision: The Knight Center will become the leading destination for media professionals and entrepreneurs working to foster independent journalism across the Americas, convening a community of practitioners, academics and other stakeholders invested in the Knight Center’s vision of a free, robust and collaborative press.
• Value proposition: The Knight Center is a premier provider of multilingual free and low-cost journalism training at scale, providing affordable, continued learning options to journalists at all stages of their career (from entry level to entrepreneurial). It is also the only university-based center that bridges journalism communities across the Americas, offering a vital perspective on trends and press freedom across the continent.

The Knight Center also was invited to participate in panels at global conferences:

• Formed part of the panel “The Role of Digital Content Creators as Agents of Change for Media and Information Literate Societies” during UNESCO’s Global Media and Information Literacy Week Conference, Oct. 301-31, 2024, in Amman, Jordan.
• Participated in a panel on communication and security during the Second Citizen Security Week in Central America and the Dominican Republic, held Jan. 23-25, 2024, in Panama, Panama.

Lastly, the Knight Center worked to develop a social media marketing strategy:

• Driven mostly by LinkedIn (74%) and Instagram (32%), the Knight Center saw 12% growth in followers across its platforms.
• Be sure to follow the Knight Center on all our platforms: Facebook, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Instagram, and X (Twitter).

Ringing in the New Year

As we move into 2025, the Knight Center is preparing for another great ISOJ and an extended and expanded Colloquium. The next ISOJ will be held March 27-28, 2025; stay tuned for details about registration, speakers, and panels.

We also are making plans for new, cutting-edge courses and in-depth LJR coverage. We hope you will continue to support us in the new year and be a part of our global community of journalists, communicators, scholars, and students. Please consider making a year-end donation (which is tax-deductible for U.S. residents) to the Knight Center to help us continue to offer free and low-cost professional development to journalists around the world.

We at the Knight Center remain committed to our mission of strengthening quality, independent journalism and press freedom worldwide, and in Latin America and the Caribbean in particular. We look forward to continuing to serve as a vital resource—and Great Friend—to journalists in the coming year. Thanks for helping us make an impact in 2024, and we’ll see you in 2025!