Eric Newton is Senior Adviser to the President of the Knight Foundation. He joined the Foundation in 2001. Since then, as both journalism program director and later vice president for journalism, he has developed some $300 million in grants to advance quality journalism, freedom of expression and media innovation worldwide.  Before Knight, he was founding managing editor of the Newseum, the world's first major museum of news in Washington, D.C.

Eric began his journalism career as a newspaper editor in Northern California. At the Oakland Tribune, he was managing editor, when the newspaper won 150 journalism awards, including a Pulitzer Prize.

Eric’s book projects include Crusaders, Scoundrels, Journalists; Capture the Moment and News in a New America. He co-founded the First Amendment Project, shared in a Peabody Award for "Mosaic: World News from the Middle East" and is a four-time Pulitzer Prize juror.