Monday, October 15, Alberto Ibarguen, the president of the United States based Knight Foundation which publishes the Akron Beacon Journal and The Miami Herald was this year’s guest speaker at Tsinghua young global leaders’ forum. The Knight Foundation is one of the sponsors of the Global business journalism degree program offered by Tsinghua school of Journalism and Communication. The course which is taught in English is also sponsored by Bloomberg and Merrill Lynch among others. Ibarguen commended the global nature of the school’s syllabus and recruitment policy which has seen it drawing its teaching staff and students from all corners of the world including America. In his key note address, Albarguen stressed the Knight Foundation’s commitment to its founding dream of providing information needed to educate communities.

“Founders John Shively Knight and James Landon Knight created a newspaper by harnessing the telephone technology, but, today journalists have to figure out how to use the digital technology to tell the story which fosters community development, interactivity and knowledge exchange”, Ibarguen said. In keeping with its vision as envisaged back in 1940, the knight Foundation is spearheading research in innovative use of digital technology and multimedia platforms focusing at social transformation and entrepreneurship in communities. “We are investing in young leaders who are courageous enough to take risks in thinking creatively on how the digital revolution can power development in communities,” Ibarguen said. These include the use of mobile phones and the internet in news gathering and information exchange by the youth.

In the fall of 2006, the foundation launched the Knight News Challenge, a $25 million, five-year contest open to anyone, anywhere with an idea for using digital media to transform community news. The project seeks to reward young people’s discovery, vision, courage, know-how and tenacity in the field of digital media communication. Ibarguen called on the students to apply for grants worth US$5 million currently on offer from the Foundation for experiments in the use of innovative digital journalism.

He urged students to think of themselves as leaders of tomorrow and draw insight from the vision, courage, and tenacity of the founding fathers of the Foundation who successfully experimented with the telephone technology in their time and transformed both journalism and the communities it served. Ibarguen also revealed that his organization spent over 2 million dollars between 2006 and 2008 on journalism focused programs.

While encouraging students to make use of the training they were receiving at Tsinghua University he reminded all that intelligent journalism was not about discovering the facts only, but also about being able “to put the facts into context” to enable readers’ to make informed decisions. During the question and answer time Ibarguen gave the student some tips on ethical reporting and managing media organizations.