Issue link: http://maconmagazine.uberflip.com/i/1527947
October/November 2024 | maconmagazine.com 37 actors. And the story most involves the power of giving – read on to see how Knight Foundation's community support has changed your life. A N EW S PAP E R E M P I R E John S. (Jack) and James L. (Jim) Knight were newspapermen who had taken over the Akron Beacon Journal. It was a family business – their father, Charles Landon Knight, had first owned the Journal and was a Central Georgia native, born in Milledgeville. The pair started their philanthropy out small, giving money to students in Akron to go to college as the Knight Memorial Education Fund. But then they bought the Miami Herald. And the Philadelphia Inquirer. And on and on in a special network of local papers until they added the Macon Telegraph and News and the Milledgeville Union-Recorder to their portfolio. This was in the golden age of local reporting, when trained journalists would be attuned to school board meetings and knew city council members by name. A paper boy might hit every other house in a given neighborhood as a subscriber to their local newspaper. "Throughout most of the twentieth century, John S. and James L. Knight built and ran one of the most successful O ne year ago, under the copper dome in Macon's historic City Auditorium, the Knight Foundation board announced a jaw- dropping $14 million investment in many of the institutional engines that power our city, in the midst of the fanfare around Macon's bicentennial celebration. Representatives from Miami, Knight's headquarters, met with Maconites and murmured about strong investments in Mercer University's School of Medicine, the National Trust for Local News, Wesleyan College's downtown Leadership Lab, the Otis Redding Center for the Arts, Ocmulgee Mounds National Park and Preserve Initiative, and NewTown Macon. "At Knight, we have spent decades studying what makes cities work and when we look at Macon, we see a shining example," said Alberto Ibargüen, the outgoing president of Knight Foundation. But amidst all the fanfare, how did Macon get these opportunities? Our relationship with one of the strongest philanthropic organizations in the country has a story behind the generous giving. It's one of teenage boys riding through their neighborhood on paper routes. It's one of carefully laid plans made by bureaucratic Journalists from around the world tour Macon during a Knight-affiliated visit during the Online News Association 2024 conference.