Rosental Calmon Alves to be honored at the 6th Abraji’s International Congress

Journalist and professor Rosental Calmon Alves, Knight Center for Investigative Journalism in the Americas’ founder, will be honored during the 6th International Congress for Investigative Journalism.

Every year during the conference ABRAJI pays a tribute to a journalist for his or her long-standing experience and contributions to the standards of journalism. This year’s ceremony will take place in São Paulo, at the campus Vila Olímpia of Anhembi Morumbi University, July 1st, at 11 AM.

Abraji’s 6th Congress will be held entirely at Anhembi Morumbi University, from June 30th to July 2nd. Application period will start at the beginning of March, and attendees will apply online at Abraji’s website (www.abraji.org.br).

Rosental Calmon Alves, 59, was born in Rio de Janeiro (RJ) and started working as a journalist in 1968. At age 16, he was a reporter for “O Jornal”, a daily paper belonging to the former leading media company Diários Associados.

It was the beginning of a brilliant career. Mr. Calmon Alves is nowadays one of the most respected journalism theorists world wise. He combines his large experience as reporter and editor to his prolific academic life.

Amongst many companies, he worked at the beginning of his career for Tupi and Nacional radios, in Rio de Janeiro, and for “IstoÉ” and “Veja”, two leading Brazilian magazines. At “Jornal do Brasil”, he worked as a correspondent in Madrid, Buenos Aires, Washington and Mexico City.

In 1987, he was the first Brazilian to be awarded fellowship at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University (www.nieman.harvard.edu), in Cambridge, MA, in the USA. The Nieman Foundation was created in 1937 and is the most prestigious journalism fellowship in the world.

At Harvard, Mr. Calmon Alves got in touch with new technologies and the early days of the digital revolution that Internet was about to produce. Back in Brazil, he started in 1991 the first computerized news service in real time for Agência JB. In 1995, he excelled once more as a leader of a team of journalists behind the first internet on-line version of a newspaper in the country – the “JB Online”.

In 1996, at age 44, after more than a quarter of a century working as a journalist, he decided to make a shift in his professional life. After reading an advertisement at the British magazine “The Economist”, he applied to the Knight Chair in Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin.  He overcame 200 candidates and won the coveted chair S. and James L. Knight (http://bit.ly/gITNeF). 

At his new position, he became a benefactor for journalism in global terms. In 2002, with a US$ 2 million grant from the Knight Foundation, Mr. Calmon Alves created the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas (http://knightcenter.utexas.edu/). The center is one of the most successful projects in financing good journalism practices in the Americas and ends by influencing professionals around the world.

Rosental Calmon Alves personally participated in the creation of independent associations for journalists in various countries. He played a vital role to make entities like Abraji (Brazilian Association for Investigative Journalism) and Fopea (Foro de Periodismo Argentino) come true.

Abraji’s board of directors unanimously chose Rosental Calmon Alves to be honored this year. “The homage to Mr. Calmon Alves is a well deserved recognition to a journalist who has enormously contributed to raise the standards of the profession in Brazil and in other countries”, says Abraji’s president, Fernando Rodrigues.

The invaluable services rendered by Rosental Calmon Alves led the Spanish newspaper “El País” (http://bit.ly/d8slKP) to describe him as the “mayor theorist of journalism in the internet, great Ibero-American guru of internet advent, a man ahead of his time”.

On July 1st, at 11 AM, Mr. Calmon Alves will be honored by Abraji and will hold a conference on the state of journalism worldwide and the challenges to be faced in this era of media convergence.