Volume 48, Number 3, Fall 1999


$2.2M KNIGHT GRANT ADDS TO MIT PROGRAM FOR SCIENCE WRITERS

by Boyce Rensberger

The Knight Science Journalism Fellowships program at MIT will grow and diversify, thanks to a new $2.2 million grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation announced last Fall.

MIT's Knight Fellowship is the only nine-month-long, mid-career program designed specifically for working journalists who cover science. Knight Fellows study for a full academic year at MIT and, two subway stops away, at Harvard.

Of the grant, $2 million (plus another $1 million in matching funds to be raised by MIT) will be used to increase the program's endowment by approximately 25 percent and $200,000 to enable the program immediately to increase the number of stipends it can award fellows while the new money is phased in over four years. The plan is to offer 10 fully funded fellowships, up from seven in the current year, each including a $35,000 stipend for the nine months. The grant also will allow the program to lift the old restriction that limited stipends to Americans.

Further, the enlarged endowment ensures long-term support for the program's new series of one-week mini-fellowships that bring journalists to MIT for intensive courses in specific fields. The first of these, started with soft money, is Genes & Cells: Boot Camp for the Genetic Revolution and it is being staged in December 1999.

Of the 54 science writers who applied for the boot camp, 12 were chosen to attend along with this year's ten regular Knight Fellows. The minifellows are Tom Abate of the San Francisco Chronicle, Patricia Anstett of the Detroit Free Press, Philip Boffey, deputy editorial page editor at the New York Times; Cheryl Clark, a San Diego Union-Tribune medical writer; Justin Gillis, who covers the biotech industry for the Washington Post; Julia Cort, a producer at Nova; Reg Gale, health and science editor at Newsday; Peter Gorner of the Chicago Tribune; Robin Henig, a freelance; Claudia Kalb of Newsweek; Marcelo Leite of Folha de S.Paulo in Brazil; and Sharon Schmickle of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

During the week, they'll be joined by the ten regular Knight Fellows: David Chandler of the Boston Globe, W. Wayt Gibbs of Scientific American, freelance writer Karen Hopkin, Susan K. Lewis of Nova, Ganapati Mudur of the Telegraph in India, Melissa Schorr of the Las Vegas Sun, Andreas Scriber of Swiss National Television, Dong Ho Shin of the Hankyoreh in Seoul, Peter Spotts of the Christian Science Monitor and David Talbot of the Boston Herald.

The Genes & Cells program will be repeated next year, even as a second mini-fellowship is added. The most likely subjects for the second boot camp are global environmental change, digital technology and neurobiology.

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Boyce Rensberger, former science editor of the Washington Post, directs the Knight Fellowship Program at MIT.


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