Claire Austin is a Journalism intern at Knight Foundation. Freedom House released its annual survey of press freedom showing the unfortunate post 9-11 trend of decreasing press freedom around the world.

The latest: only 17 percent of people live in a country where they can express themselves freely.

Click "play". Green countries are free, yellow are partly free, and red aren't at all free. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the world starts to turn yellow and green. But then, after 9-11, it turns back to red.

To get involved in freedom of expression issues, pick a project to help out with by visiting the sites of Knight grantees working in this field. These include the International Center for Journalists, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Inter-American Press Association's Impunity Project, and the University of Miami's Knight Center for International Media.

We'll let Raquel Villagra (Columbia), Claire Austin (Georgetown), Ernesto Alvarez (Amherst), and Chelsea Roth (Michigan) introduce themselves to you below.

Welcome to these fantastic four; we look forward to our summer ahead--