Video: Report on the coffee economy of Berkeley by NPR’s Chip Grabow in a KDMC workshop.

MIAMI — The Knight Digital Media Center will increase its training and become a “virtual center” to help journalists succeed in the 21st century, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation announced today. A key part of that effort: helping NPR retrain its workforce to be increasingly competitive and effective in the digital age.

The foundation has awarded $2.8 million to the University of California, Berkeley to increase its multimedia workshops for journalists and $2.4 million to the University of Southern California to increase its leadership workshops and special topic seminars for journalists. An additional $1.5 million grant will help NPR work with the Knight Digital Media Center as the non-commercial news organization increases its expansion into digital news.

“Digital technology poses major challenges and opportunities to journalism,” says Alberto Ibargüen, Knight Foundation’s president and CEO. “These grants help the Knight Digital Media Center play a leading role in training journalists to meet these challenges. They will help NPR bring its quality journalism forward in this new digital age.”

Over the next five years, the Knight Digital Media Center will provide:

• 400 diverse journalists with multimedia storytelling training.
• 160 editors with special technology training.
• Four newsrooms with on-site transformation workshops.
• A redesigned portal web site to train more than 20,000 web users with distance learning and offer an array of Knight-funded training/learning programs focused on transforming journalists and news organizations for the digital future.
• An annual “New Leadership Conference’’ with editors and online managers from leading news organizations.
• Annual seminars on “Decision-making for Portal Editors,’’ “Best Practices of Specialized Journalists Online” and “Timely Topics for Digital Journalists.”
• An annual workshop on “Managing Multimedia Multiculturalism’’ for 20 newsroom leaders, sponsored by USC and The Maynard Institute.

Within two years, the grant to NPR, working with the Knight Digital Media Center, will train:

• About 600 NPR staff in its new audio production and content management systems.
• 40 NPR senior managers, leaders and training staff to support’s NPR newsroom of the future project, “Newsroom 2.0.”
• 400 NPR reporters, producers, editors and other staff in multimedia skills.

NPR will work with the Knight Center to implement the training and ensure that it is relevant to each staff member’s responsibilities.

“With the increased funding, the Knight Digital Media Center will become a highly visible model of a collaboration between the academy and the industry designed to help bring our national media into the digital age. We are so enthusiastic about the opportunity to work with our colleagues at NPR and help speed the transformation of an extraordinary radio organization into a national media company,” said Dianne Lynch, dean of the U.C. Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

“Thanks to the vision and generosity of Knight Foundation, the Knight Digital Media Center will help journalists and news organizations get the training they need to serve their readers, listeners and viewers as technology transforms the way we get news and information,” said Ernest J. Wilson III, dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication.

“We are honored that Knight Foundation recognizes the public service mission of NPR News and the American public’s interest in finding our journalism on all platforms and in all the places they want it,” said Ken Stern, chief executive officer, NPR.  “NPR has made a significant commitment to transforming our reporting, storytelling and production efforts to multimedia, and this grant will play a critical role in the comprehensive project we have launched.  Knight Foundation has supported NPR and our journalism in the past, and today’s grant will be integral to NPR’s future.”

The Knight Digital Media Center is a partnership between two top journalism schools, USC’s Annenberg School and U.C.  Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. The center has trained hundreds of midcareer journalists to better cover complex topics ranging from immigration to water quality. Its alumni have won numerous reporting and editing awards. Their improved journalism has been read, heard or viewed by millions of Americans.

Since its launch in 1970, NPR has become an award-winning primary news provider and dominant force in American life.  NPR produces and/or distributes more than 1,300 hours of programming weekly. This includes more than 150 hours of news, information and talk shows for 800-plus NPR Member stations, attracting 26.5 million listeners weekly.  NPR.org offers extensive original video and audio content, hourly newscasts and free streaming audio of NPR programs. 

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation invests in journalism excellence worldwide and in the vitality of 26 U.S. communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers. Since 1950 the foundation has granted more than $300 million to advance quality journalism and freedom of expression. It focuses on projects with the potential to create transformational change. For more, visit www.knightfoundation.org.