The USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism is now accepting applications for the Knight Luce Fellowship for Reporting on Global Religion.

The stipend is $5,000 - $25,000 to allow American journalists to report and write stories illuminating how religion crosses geographic, temporal and ideological borders.

From the USC Annenberg site:

Applicants should consider what these dynamics reveal about personal identity, political power, the search for meaning, the nature of conflict and the construction of community. Their stories can explore how religion, religious institutions and religious people (1) effect change in on-the-ground social, political, and economic conditions; (2) circulate ideas and ideologies among home and diaspora communities; and (3) promote or inhibit religious and political coexistence and cooperation. Stories must be reported outside the U.S., although they may include an American context for contrast or comparison.

Successful applicants are required to do at least three stories for multiple delivery platforms: print, radio, TV, online. All work is to be completed within six months of getting the award and must be finished by December 31, 2011. Read more »

First posted at Journalism, Journalists and the World and Journalism and the World.

It's not often I can blend two of my favorite things: Information from the Census Bureau and rants about why local news organizations need to start looking at the global connections to local stories and local connections to international stories.

The Census Bureau just released a new report on foreign-born in the United States.

This report DOES NOT reflect the legal status of this group. The questioners can ask if the respondent is a citizen or not, but not how that person entered the States. (Yep, it's the law.)

So besides all those Korean restaurants in Annandale, Va., or the stores featuring halal food in Dearborn, Mich., what does this all mean? Basically it means that there is a large audience that would like to know what is going on in other parts of the world. And if those events can be "localized," all the better. Read more »

Many thanks to Robert Buckman, j-prof at University of Louisiana,for sending around a brief note and some pictures from the national SPJ convention. (I hope to get some pictures posted soon. Having a disagreement with the website operation. - DEK)

Just more evidence -- as if more was needed -- that there is much much more to the national conventions than just attending meetings and dinners.

Hope: Las Vegas Review-Journal

By Robert Buckman

For me the high point of [the convention] experience was the tour of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Read more »

As noted earlier on this site, a Gallup survey showed that 57 percent of the American do not trust news organizations to report the news fully, fairly or accurately.

What do you think about this?

I created a quick and dirty survey of my own to see what followers of the DC SPJ chapter think. Just click on the link below to answer the three simple questions.

Media Trust Survey