The John S. Knight Professional Journalism Fellowship Fund was created in 1982 with a grant to Stanford University.’ Originally, the opportunity was to provide training to mid-career journalists.’It made perfect sense at the time. Daily newspaper newsrooms were growing’across America. New coverage “beats” were being born. Journalists needed new knowledge.

Today, the’opportunities’in journalism are even greater, stretching’beyond the stories themselves to the context in which they are created and distributed. And in’recent years the Stanford’program retooled to prepare journalists for the circumstances of the digital age, assisted by a Knight Foundation grant to emphasize innovation, entrepreneurship and leadership.

The 2010 John S. Knight Fellows have created smart phone apps, researched data visualization tools, experimented with location-based journalism tools, and one is seeking funding for a China-focused online news project.

One of the 2010 fellows was Teru Kuwayama.’ Teru created the project One-Eight which uses an online journal to chronicle the events of a military battalion by connecting the personnel, their families and other stakeholders and share information through their online social network.’ The new portal is set to launch’Nov. 11.

Teru was one of the first fellows with this new entrepreneurial and digital emphasis, and said his project was an outgrowth of his year at Stanford.’ He became a 2010 Knight News Challenge Winner, with a grant of $202,000 to work on his project.’ Incidentally, the 2011 News Challenge is open for entries ‘ submissions are due by Dec. 1.

Check out the new batch of’ 2011 John S. Knight Fellows‘at Stanford.