Eric Newton, the winner of the Markoff Award for 2012, comments on the state of investigative reporting. Since 2007, the U.C. Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program has hosted a “by invitation only” symposium each spring in honor of the Reva and David Logan Foundation, which endowed the program. The only symposium of its kind in the country, it routinely brings together a veritable “who’s who” of top journalists, law enforcement and government officials to address the critical issues confronting this specialized field. The symposium also unites media executives involved in both non-profit and commercial outlets, as well as media attorneys, academics, major foundations, and philanthropists who support journalism in the public interest."
Bio
Eric Newton
Eric Newton joined the Knight Foundation in 2001. Since then, as both journalism Program Director and later Vice President for journalism, he has developed some $300 million in grants to advance quality journalism, freedom of expression and media innovation worldwide. Before Knight, he was founding Managing Editor of the Newseum, the world's first major museum of news in Washington, D.C. Newton began his journalism career as a newspaper editor in Northern California. At the Oakland Tribune, he was Managing Editor when the newspaper won 150 journalism awards, including a Pulitzer Prize. Newton's books include Crusaders, Scoundrels, Journalists; Capture the Moment; and News in a New America. He co-founded the First Amendment Project, shared in a Peabody Award for "Mosaic: World News from the Middle East" and is a four-time Pulitzer Prize juror. He has a bachelor's degree in journalism from San Francisco State University and holds a master's degree in international studies from the University of Birmingham, England, where he was a Rotary International Scholar.