Vegas charity gives $10 million to U Missouri

COLUMBIA, Mo. — The University of Missouri’s journalism school on Friday announced a $10 million gift from a Las Vegas-based charitable foundation whose total contributions now exceed $100 million in a first for the flagship Columbia campus.

The donation by the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation will pay for faculty fellowships. Previous contributions of more than $30 million by the charity helped create the university’s Reynolds Journalism Institute in 2004 and fund its continued research into the digital future of news.

Donald Worthington Reynolds was a 1927 graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism whose early newspaper purchases grew into the Donrey Media Group. The company’s properties included the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Reynolds sold his properties to their current owner, Stephens Media LLC, shortly before his death.

His alma mater’s alumni center is also named after the late Reynolds.