Photo Credit: Mark Glaser, PBS Media Shift                          I received the 2012 Markoff Award last night from the University of California at Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program for Knight Foundation’s support of investigative reporting. 

The award was presented Saturday at the Logan Symposium by Lowell Bergman,  the former 60 Minutes investigative reporter who founded the Berkeley program and has led it to financial independence and a series of award-winning collaborative investigations. The Logan Symposium is an annual conference at UC Berkeley attracting many of the nation’s leading investigative journalists. This year’s participants include investigative leaders from the New York Times, ABC, ProPublica, Frontline, the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Financial Times, Thompson Reuters and many others. The Markoff Award is named for New York Times reporter John Markoff, whose stories about Hewlett Packard so angered  HP that it spied on  him — and got caught.   Knight Foundation has invested some $20 million in investigative reporting projects. They range from establishing an endowed chair, supporting  professional and training organizations, establishment of university-based investigative reporting projects, funding for specific investigations and direct support for independent nonprofit investigative  reporting newsrooms. 

Knight’s most recent investigative reporting grant was announced last week – $800,000 to the Center for Investigative Reporting to work with the Investigative News Network to launch an investigative reporting channel on YouTube.

Eric Newton is Knight Foundation’s senior adviser to the president.