From Eric Newton, VP of Journalism, Knight Foundation:

A lot of people know Haynes Johnson. He’s one of the nation’s leading political journalists. You see him on TV’s Meet The Press. He’s got a big new book out, The Battle For America, explaining once and for all the story behind the historic’election of ’08.

You can read more about it in Time, The New York Times, Politico and, of course, the Washington Post, where the Pulitzer-winning Johnson worked and where his co-author, Dan Balz, works today.’ A good sample of the press tour is this Newseum‘video.

I Googled “Haynes Johnson,” and got — in’0.15 seconds –‘96,900 hits.”There is one of particular interest to us here.’Haynes is’a Knight Chair in Journalism — one of two dozen great professors in America who not only does fantastic journalism of his own but teaches the next generations.

Most of the people who have heard of Haynes — as well as other famously-published writers such as’Michael Pollan and Sylvia Nasar — have no idea that these folks are Knight Chairs. They’produce good journalism faster than their universities can brag about their teaching roles.

Haynes holds forth at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism. As much the exploding digital age is changing news, he’tells students, “the standards don’t change: our mission is to tell the story of our time as compellingly and fairly and honestly as possible, with distinction of analysis and perspective. This has always been the lodestone of great journalism. It is even more important now at a moment when the news business is changing as never before…

The purpose’Knight Chair program aims’to strengthen American journalism education by infusing academia with’top professionals. Virginia Dodge Fielder, our journalism program consultant, takes an independent look each year’at the Knight Chair activities.’Here’s her latest report.