The Miami-based John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has announced a $3.3 million, four-year initiative to increase and improve professional training and press freedom in Latin America. The initiative includes a $2 million, four-year grant to create the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at the University of Texas at Austin.

Envisioned as an incubator for new training programs, the center will be advised by a committee made up of leading U.S.-based organizations active in Latin American journalism, including the Inter American Press Association and the International Center for Journalists. Rosental Alves, Knight chair in International Journalism and a former reporter in Mexico and editor in Brazil, will direct the center, organize workshops for more than five hundred journalists, and oversee trilingual distance-learning efforts over the Internet. In addition to Alves, Knight environmental journalism chair Jim Detjen of Michigan State University and new media chair Mindy McAdams of the University of Florida will participate in various training projects.

"This initiative brings the unique resources of Knight journalism chairs together with the great network nurtured for decades by organizations like [the] Knight Foundation and the McCormick Tribune Foundation," said Eric Newton, director of Journalism Initiatives for the foundation. "The cooperation here between journalism groups has been extrordinary."

Other projects to be introduced under the initiative include a Web-based clearinghouse for Latin American journalism training opportunities, a pilot project sponsored by the World Affairs Council that will send U.S. news editors to Latin America in an effort to improve U.S. media coverage of the region, and the awarding of three-year Neiman Fellowships to two Latin American journalists.