Brant Houston is the Knight Chair in Investigative and Enterprise Reporting at the College of Media at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he teaches journalism and oversees local and regional investigative projects. Prior to becoming the Knight Chair, Houston served for more than 10 years as executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE), a nonprofit organization of more than 5,000 members headquartered at the University of Missouri, where he was also a professor in journalism.
He is a co-founder of the U.S.-based Institute for NonProfit News and of the Global Investigative Journalism Network. He is a former board member of the Fund for Investigative Journalism and serves on the boards of several regional investigative centers in the United States. He is the author of five editions of the Data for Journalists: A Practical Guide for Computer-Assisted Reporting and co-author of three editions of The Investigative Reporter’s Handbook. Before joining IRE, Houston was an award-winning investigative reporter at U.S. daily newspapers for 17 years.