Rate My Professor Rosental Alves

Rosental Alves is a professor in the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Texas at Austin's Moody College of Communication, where he holds the Knight Chair in Journalism as its inaugural holder since 1996 and the UNESCO Chair in Communication. A veteran Brazilian journalist, he began his career at age 16 and became a journalism professor at 21 in Rio de Janeiro. Alves served as a foreign correspondent in Europe, North America, and South America before returning to Brazil as an editor, executive editor, and director of Jornal do Brasil, a leading national newspaper. He pioneered online journalism in Brazil by launching the country's first online financial news service and Jornal do Brasil Online, Latin America's first web-based newspaper. In 2002, he founded the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at UT Austin, directing its innovative massive open online courses that have reached over 320,000 students from 200 countries and territories. He also founded the International Symposium on Online Journalism.

At UT Austin, Alves teaches and researches international reporting with emphasis on foreign correspondents in Latin America, Latin American journalism and press freedom, digital journalism, online journalism, and entrepreneurial journalism. His influential publications include the book Jornalismo digital: Dez anos de web… e a revolução continua (2006); the article 'From product to service: The diffusion of dynamic content in online newspapers' (2007, with M. Tremayne and A.S. Weiss); 'The role of the press in Latin America’s democratization' (2005); 'Sharing the stage: Analysis of social media adoption by Latin American journalists' (2017, with M. Saldaña, V.M. Higgins Joyce, and A. Schmitz Weiss); and Reinventando o jornal na Internet (2001). Alves chairs the board of the Maria Moors Cabot Awards at Columbia University and serves on boards including the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. He is a former president of Orbicom, the global network of UNESCO Chairs in Communication. Through the Knight Center, he has significantly impacted global journalism training and innovation.