James Breiner is a Knight International Journalism Fellow who created Latin America's first digital journalism center at the University of Guadalajara.

Project Goal: Create Latin America’s first digital journalism center to teach a new generation of Spanish-language journalists to produce quality interactive news.

Breiner was a business journalist for 19 of his 32 years in the news business, first as editor of a weekly in Columbus, Ohio, and then 11 years as president and publisher of the weekly Baltimore Business Journal, with a 30-person staff and readership of 65,000 in Baltimore, Md.

He left the newspaper in 2006 to accept a Knight International Journalism Fellowship in Bolivia, where for nine months he trained editors on newsroom leadership and lectured at universities on a variety of journalism topics. He worked 100 percent in Spanish.

From August 2007 until January 2008, he worked in Manchester, England, as editorial consultant on a startup business weekly, Crain's Manchester Business. Breiner reported on politics, government and public affairs for the Columbus Dispatch from 1977 to 1988. During that time, he also started a team of investigative reporters that won five statewide awards from the Associated Press.

Breiner has a master’s degree in English literature from the University of Connecticut and a bachelor’s degree from the College of Wooster in Ohio. Contact: jbreiner@knight.icfj.org 

Partner Organization: University of Guadalajara