University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Knight Chair in Investigative and Enterprise Reporting

Brant Houston

Biography

Brant Houston, the executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc. (IRE), was named to the chair in May 2007. He succeeds Bill Gaines, who held the post since it was established in 2000.

Grant Background

The department's long tradition of emphasis on professional journalism will serve as the underpinning for the Knight Chair in Journalism. The program's resources will be used to teach practical application of investigative techniques through courses, workshops and seminars. Training will encompass print media and broadcasting and will be extended outside the university to staffs of newspapers and broadcast stations in need of training. It will include services to the international press in countries where investigative techniques are now unknown...As a result of the teaching and research of the Knight Chair, Illinois will serve as a new resource for investigative reporters and editors nationally, as a training center for young journalists and as an intellectual center for the public on issues involving the news media in investigative journalism. (2000)

Recent Activities

• Knight Chair Brant Houston made great strides in new efforts to integrate investigative journalism into community journalism and community engagement projects and to bring new digital technology and Web 2.0 proponents and investigative journalists together.  Through the CU-Citizen Access project, he is working with Community Informatics researchers at the Graduate School of Library Sciences and Information on covering and investigating the conditions of overlooked parts of the community and doing participatory “mapping.” This work includes development of a major news and community web site and ways of gathering, sharing, and presenting news on mobile phone devices.
• Prof. Houston worked with journalists in seven states on creating nonprofit investigative centers and moderated the meeting of 20 nonprofits that created the Investigative News Network. He now serves as chair of the group’s steering committee, which is creating membership standards, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and new ways of collaborating.
• Prof. Houston is revamping the web site for the Global Investigative Journalism Network at globalinvestigativejournalism.org to provide investigative journalism sources and contacts for journalists throughout the world. He helped secure an $80,000 grant for an African investigative conference that will be the first of the Network’s regional conferences.
• The Knight Chair created a team of four nationally renowned journalists to work with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications on a text-mining and visualization of data project supported by the Mellon Foundation that the group hopes to develop into digital tools for all journalists.

Freedom of News and Information

Brant Houston’s work on creating nonprofit investigative web-based journalism centers helps to ensure that there will be a free and aggressive press in communities and regions where accountability in news coverage is diminishing or disappearing. Internationally, he works to increase awareness of organizations such as the Committee to Protect Journalists that help journalists in danger. His training for students and professionals includes strong emphasis on the use of Freedom of Information Act requests.

Media Innovation

Brant Houston's work with the CU-Citizen Access project in Champaign on poverty-related issues and his collaboration with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications allows development of potential models for investigative reporting and basic reporting in the new digital world that will include participatory mapping by citizens and more extensive use of mobile phones.

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Brant Houston UIUC Knight Chair in Investigative and Enterprise Reporting