Niala Boodhoo, host and executive producer of Illinois Public Media’s The 21st, awarded fellowship

Niala Boodhoo, host and executive producer of Illinois Public Media’s The 21st, is one of 17 journalists named as Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellows for the 2019-20 academic year at the University of Michigan. As a Knight-Wallace Fellow, Boodhoo will spend the academic year at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor engaging in collaborative learning through fellowship seminars, training workshops, and travel.

“Illinois Public Media is honored to have one of our very own counted among a group of accomplished journalists from all over the world,” said Moss Bresnahan, CEO and president of Illinois Public Media. “We believe that Niala is a perfect choice for such a prestigious fellowship, and we are excited to see what great work comes out of her time there.”

As part of this year-long fellowship, each journalist will pursue their own individual study plan. Boodhoo will focus on creating a replicable business plan for local news podcasts.

“I’m thrilled for this opportunity to spend my fellowship year researching better ways to provide local news audio to communities,” said Boodhoo. “I feel it’s essential that journalists find ways to produce local news in an audio format that makes sense in this new digital world, and I want to help create a workable path forward for that.”

Through twice-weekly seminars, Fellows will also engage with visiting journalists, eminent scholars, and creative thinkers from a range of fields. Weeklong international news tours will provide broader context to political, economic, and social forces shaping their fields of study, and to trends and challenges facing journalism in other countries.

In recent years, Fellowship classes have also visited South Korea, Brazil, Canada, Turkey, Argentina, and Russia.

This is the 46th class of journalism fellows at the University of Michigan. The Knight-Wallace Fellows program is funded through endowment gifts by foundations, news organizations and individuals committed to journalism’s role in fostering an informed and engaged public.