Newswise — The only national training program to help American journalists better understand how the nonprofit community operates will continue and expand at the University of Mississippi with support from a national foundation.
The program, created in 2001 with a three-year grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, has been funded through 2007 with a $500,000 grant from Knight. Under the new grant, the university will continue to host five-day workshops for journalists at its Oxford campus. And for the first time, UM will conduct conferences with nonprofit themes in Washington, D.C., and other cities.
Burnis R. Morris, associate professor of journalism and Samuel S. Talbert Lecturer at UM, said the grant strengthens support for The Fourth Estate and the Third Sector, the only national training program for journalists who cover tax-exempt organizations and issues involving charities and philanthropy. Several universities have presented one-day conferences on nonprofits, but only Ole Miss has a national training program, he said.
Morris, on leave as the Carter G. Woodson Professor at Marshall University, created the program with Knight's support and serves as its director.
"This program has made great strides in helping America's journalists " and by extension, their readers and viewers and listeners " understand the scope, depth and importance of the nonprofit sector," said Hodding Carter III, president and CEO of Knight Foundation.
The Oxford workshops involve in-depth sessions on philanthropy, charities, trends in the sector, tax returns and financial analyses. The first conference under the new grant " a post-election, nonprofit update in the nation's capital " is scheduled for Dec. 15 at the National Association of Broadcasters. The next workshop in Oxford is scheduled for June 16-20. Journalists and nonprofit experts from across the country are invited to participate in each program. Content from several of the programs will be available on the Web at http://www.jour.olemiss.edu.
The first grant for $338,000 was awarded in 2001. About 70 journalists from more than 60 news organizations have completed the program.
"Funding from the Knight Foundation affirms the significance and high quality of the work of Professor Burnis Morris of our journalism faculty," UM Chancellor Robert Khayat said. "The university community is profoundly grateful to President Hodding Carter III and the trustees of the Knight Foundation for this generous gift and their confidence in our ability to train journalists who cover nonprofit organizations."
The program is an outgrowth of Morris' work with Independent Sector, a Washington nonprofit that serves as a national leadership forum for the nonprofit community and remains a partner in the new program. From 1993 to 1997, Morris helped Independent Sector conduct conferences at five journalism schools on improving news coverage of the tax-exempt community. He also wrote two books for journalists on covering nonprofits.
Morris proposed a national training program after joining the UM faculty in 1998.
"Journalists know nonprofits exist, but there are so many nonprofits (more than a million), they don't know how to cover them as a group like business and government," the former reporter and editor said. "They know how to cover their scandals, but journalists rarely do a good job covering the business of nonprofits.
"I see stories all the time discussing 'the two sectors' " public and private " ignoring a third, the nonprofit sector."
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation promotes excellence in journalism worldwide and invests in the vitality of 26 U.S. communities. Over the past 50 years, it has invested nearly $250 million in journalism initiatives.
For more information about the The Fourth Estate and the Third Sector, visit http://www.jour.olemiss.edu/
RSS