The University of Missouri has announced a gift of $6.7 million from alumnus and reality television producer Jonathan Murray to establish a documentary journalism program at the MU School of Journalism.

Created in response to the increasing demand for video content across multiple media platforms, the program will offer both bachelor and master of arts degrees in journalism and will feature three new faculty positions as well as visiting professionals from the documentary journalism community. The gift also will support an annual summer workshop where, in keeping with the "Missouri method" of learning by doing, students will receive hands-on documentary project experience. The bachelor's degree program will be offered beginning in the fall of 2015, with coursework focused on the history, business models, advocacy, and advanced production of documentary journalism, while a start date for the master's degree program has yet to be announced.

"Mr. Murray's gift makes it possible for the School of Journalism to launch an exciting new program in documentary journalism, a field with growing audiences and, thanks to the Internet and other new technologies, infinite potential for reaching those audiences," said Dean Mills, dean of the MU School of Journalism. "It will give us the chance to marry the innovative approaches of documentary storytelling and presentation with the strong tradition of accuracy and fact-finding that has always been a hallmark of the School of Journalism."

"It's an honor for me to give back to the University of Missouri, an institution that helped build my journalistic foundation, upon which I shaped my career in news, documentaries, and television before creating Bunim/Murray Productions," said Murray, who is credited with inventing the modern-day reality television genre with the launch of The Real World on MTV in 1992. "The establishment of this new documentary journalism program is my way of helping to ensure that we've prepared the media and entertainment industry's future documentary film makers to do great work, a goal that I share with MU."