Eric Newton is senior adviser to the president at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. As program director and vice president, during the past decade he helped build the journalism and media innovation program from a department of one into a team of seven, overseeing the development of more than $300 million in grants.

Previously, Newton was founding managing editor of the Newseum, leading the content team at the world's first museum of news. He started at California newspapers. As managing editor of the Oakland Tribune under Bob and Nancy Maynard, he helped the paper win 150 awards, including a Pulitzer Prize. 

His most popular books are Crusaders, Scoundrels, Journalists and Capture the Moment. A distinguished alumnus of San Francisco State University (BA in journalism), he was a Rotary International Scholar at the University of Birmingham, England (MA in international studies). He has taught journalism at all levels and is the co-founder of the First Amendment Project, a nonprofit law project.

Newton shared a Peabody Award for Link TV’s "Mosaic: World News from the Middle East." He won the Reddick Award at the University of Texas for service to the field of communications, the RTDNA First Amendment Award for Sunshine Week and the Markoff Award at U.C. Berkeley for support of investigative reporting.