Knight Foundation Chair in Investigative and Enterprise Reporting (Illinois)

Professor Brant Houston holds the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Chair in Investigative and Enterprise Reporting and teaches investigative and advanced reporting in the Department of Journalism in the College of Media at Illinois.

Houston became the Chair after serving for more than a decade as the Executive Director of Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE), a 3,500-member organization, and as a Professor at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. Before joining IRE, he was an award-winning investigative reporter at daily newspapers for 17 years.

Houston also is the author of three editions of the textbook, Computer-Assisted Reporting: A Practical Guide, and co-author of the fourth edition and fifth edition of The Investigative Reporter's Handbook.  Currently he is working on projects involving nonprofit journalism, ethnic media newsrooms, and new technologies for news-gathering. 

Houston serves at the Chair of the Steering Committee of the newly-formed Investigative News Network, a coalition of nonprofit journalism centers, and as Co-ordinator for the Global Investigative Journalism Network, which he co-founded in the year 2000.