Continuing its efforts to improve coverage of religion around the world, ICFJ has launched a two-year program for American and international journalists who cover religious issues. By improving professional skills and increasing the dialogue around religion, ICFJ hopes to encourage journalists to engage the subject more openly and free of bias, and simultaneously more respectfully and critically.

The program is designed to:

• Improve U.S.

Harry Surjadi has recruited and trained more than 150 citizen journalists living in the most-remote areas of Borneo to send news reports via text messaging using the FrontlineSMS system to Ruai TV, a station in the provincial capital. The service also allows subscribers from mainstream media, the government, and activist organizations to receive the news reports.

Joachim Buwembo helped to create Kilimo Kwanza (Agriculture First), now a financially vibrant weekly publication focusing on agriculture issues. The eight-page supplement is published in English and Kiswahili by the Guardian Newspapers, the country’s top independent newspaper group.

Since it began, the supplement has featured more than 200 stories. Some reports led to new bank loans for farmers to buy imported tractors that lay idle as well as to increased government investment in dairy equipment and irrigation.

How well prepared are journalists from the U.S. Hispanic media and the media organizations of Latin America, which typically have far fewer resources, to provide ample coverage? How much less prepared are the people whom these journalists serve when they confront disaster? How well prepared are the journalists themselves, who are after all among the ranks of “first responders” at the scene of any disaster?

To provide answers to these questions, ICFJ developed an 8-day training program for 14 U.S.

In India, Knight International worked with TERI, one of the world's premier environmental research organizations, to raise the level of environmental reporting in a country seriously affected by global warming. Along with TERI, Knight Fellow Arul Louis held a summit on the environment for top editors and convinced many to expand coverage.

Sponsored by the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund, this program was designed to boost the capacity and motivation of journalists in the Caucasus region to report on conservation of biological diversity. The program was tailored to address the key issues facing each country, such as better management of protected areas, increasing the number and size of protected areas, controls on damaging activities, and other conservation issues of public interest.