The Poynter Institute is a non-profit school for journalism located in St. Petersburg, Florida.
The school began on May 29, 1975, when Nelson Poynter, the owner and chairman of the St. Petersburg Times (now the Tampa Bay Times) and Times Publishing Company, announced that he planned to start a small journalism school called the Modern Media Institute. (The name of the school was changed to the Poynter Institute almost a decade later.)
In 1977 Nelson Poynter willed ownership of the Times Publishing Company to the Institute so that after his death the school would become the owner of the St. Petersburg Times. Poynter died on June 15, 1978 at the age of 74. He had become ill in his office just a few hours after he helped break ground for the new St. Petersburg campus of the University of South Florida.
At that point the Institute began to grow into the larger school that exists today. The current building and campus officially opened in December 1985.
Read more about Poynter Institute: News University, The Kelly McBride Incident
Famous quotes containing the word institute:
“Whenever any form of government shall become destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, & to institute new government, laying it’s foundation on such principles & organising it’s powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety & happiness.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)