Knight Center names Tom Kennedy as next Resident Professional

The University of Miami School of Communication’s Knight Center for International Media has selected multimedia news veteran Tom Kennedy as its next Resident Professional. Kennedy, former managing editor for multimedia at Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive and a former director of photography at National Geographic Society, will work at the Knight Center over the 2010 spring semester. He will work closely with Knight Chair for Visual Journalism Rich Beckman and visual journalism graduate students to create an innovative website that will evaluate the State of the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals in seven Asian and African cities. “The main goal of the project will be to give a human face to the Millennium Goals” said Rich Beckman.

Kennedy’s acceptance of the residency comes at an opportune time as his project will become part of the Center’s current anchor project: Our City. As a component of the project, graduate students from the visual journalism program at the University of Miami will work with faculty and students at journalism institutions in Africa and Asia creating local stories about global issues like poverty, environmental sustainability, HIV AIDS, maternal health and primary education.

“I am very excited to have this opportunity to work with faculty and students at the University of Miami. This is a unique project focused on helping improve the living conditions for a large number of people around the globe. I believe in the power of digital journalism in effectively informing people about issues that have been traditionally under reported in the media” said Tom Kennedy.

The Our City project is focused on creating a model for global journalism by enabling journalists to collaborate and report on global issues through local stories. In its first phase, the project is creating a network of partnerships with schools of journalism around the world. The Center provides multimedia training for journalism teachers who will then return to their classrooms to create content about global issues in their own city. A common online portal for selected stories and projects will be launched in early 2010 and is expected to grow into a prime venue for rich cross-cultural content about some of the most underreported issues that affect urban life.

The Center completed multimedia workshops in Asia and Africa in 2009 and has established partnerships with 23 institutions on those continents. Kennedy’s project will be one way to begin generating multimedia content and moving these cross-border relationships to the next level.

Kennedy will give up his position as a member of the Center’s advisory board and dedicate his efforts to this residency.