he JSK Journalism Fellowships supports diverse journalists from around the world who are deeply engaged in exploring solutions to journalism’s biggest problems. We focus on accelerating change in the journalism industry to improve the access to information people need to create and sustain democratic communities.
Journalism fellowships at Stanford started in 1966 with a powerful idea: giving journalists broad access to a great university, which would pay off in superb journalism. We grew through the next decades, and in 1984 a $4 million grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation provided a permanent endowment for the program, which we renamed for John S. Knight, who, with his brother James L. Knight, once operated a company that became the largest newspaper chain in the United States.
In recent years, huge disruptions to journalism and the growing role of technology in society inspired us to evolve the program. Today, our fellows collaborate with each other and with our partners throughout Stanford and Silicon Valley to develop solutions to journalism’s biggest problems, helping to transform the industry.