The University of British Columbia school of journalism — my alma mater — just received a $1 million investment to fund not-for-profit international reporting. The idea is to send ten students a year to underreported areas, to learn about international reporting and write stories for major news outlets.
There’s no word here about whether the money will go into an endowment or how it’ll become a sustainable program. It’s an interesting idea, though I’m a big proponent of having international correspondents who actually live in the country they report on. Hopefully this won’t be a replacement. We’ll try to find out in coming days more about how this program will work.