The Knight Center for Specialized Journalism will close at the end of December, the University of Maryland announced last week.

The Center offers free, intensive training to journalists, and seeks applications from reporters working for independent news organisations. It has been running for 22 years and has awarded over 2700 fellowships to journalists in that time. It provides in-depth, subject-specific training, as well as shorter seminars.

Its funding from philanthropic organisation the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation covers tuition and board for students. Its last grant was for $1.52 million and terminates on December 31, but the funding was not renewed for 2010, BusinessJournalism.org reports.
A press release from the school played down the lack of funding. In it, Dean Kevin Klose of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism, with which the Center is affiliated, thanked the Knight Foundation for its support. "We are in active discussion with the Knight Foundation about future collaborations to provide essential, forward-looking and dynamic multimedia specialized journalism education," he said.

"The rapid changes in news media technology and economics require new thinking," he added. "This move will enable us to focus fully on designing new approaches to the challenges of 21st-century journalism."

The Knight Foundation has also made grants to non-profit news organisations ProPublica, California Watch, Spot.Us and The Texas Tribune, as well as a variety of other national, community and media organisations.

Source: BusinessJournalism.org