Yale Law School won a $2.5 million challenge grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to train the next generation’s leading legal journalists and media lawyers by creating the Knight Law and Media Scholars Program. The challenge will leverage matches to create a total $5 million endowment to keep the program going in perpetuity.
The program includes law and media courses, the scholars, research fellowships, summer internships, career counseling, and an annual training program for midcareer journalists. It also will feature a speaker series and a student organization focused on law and media.
“We think Yale is positioned to become the center of media law thinking in the nation,” said Eric Newton, vice president of Knight’s journalism program. “We congratulate the work of its amazing alumni, notably Steve Brill, as well as Yale Law’s dean, Harold Hongju Koh.”
The Knight Media Scholars will be chosen from all Yale J.D. and graduate law students. The program is designed to increase the number of Yale Law School graduates prepared to be leaders in media law and the media industry.
The program will also bring a wide range of working journalists and interested scholars to the Law School for an annual training session. These workshops will address cutting-edge issues in law and media and create opportunities for journalists, scholars, and lawyers to work together.
“Yale Law School has long been a place where the study of law has been embraced in an interdisciplinary fashion,” said Dean Koh. “This new program will build upon our remarkable history of producing leading legal journalists, First Amendment lawyers, and media entrepreneurs uniquely able to explore the common intellectual space where the law and media intersect.”
Knight Foundation for years supported a master’s degree program for midcareer journalists at Yale. Graduates of that program include Lucy Dalglish ’88 M.S.L., executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Linda Greenhouse ’78 M.S.L., Supreme Court reporter for The New York Times, and Charles Savage ’03 M.S.L., Washington, D.C., reporter for the Boston Globe who recently won a Pulitzer Prize in the national reporting category. The foundation also established the Knight Chair in Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at the Law School, a chair that has been held by Professor Jack M. Balkin.
Joining the Knight Foundation as co-investor is Steven Brill ’75, founder of Court TV and The American Lawyer magazine. He has pledged to support the Law School’s program, in addition to a recent $1 million donation to Yale College to infuse journalism into undergraduate classes.
“Tomorrow’s news stories will benefit from the incisive research and writing of journalists trained in legal thought at Yale,” added Dean Koh. “Law plays a pervasive role in the emerging global society, and legal training for journalists and media entrepreneurs at all levels will ensure the thoughtful, creative, and accurate development of tomorrow’s news.”