The UF College of Journalism and Communications (UFCJC) announced Monday that Gainesville developer Nathan Collier gifted $8 million to sustain the Collier Prize for State Government and Accountability and create a new local journalism symposium.

The gift is the largest ever given to the UFCJC, according to the press release.

Collier, the chairman and founder of The Collier Companies in Gainesville, is a descendant Peter Fenelon Collier, who founded Collier’s in 1888. Collier’s was a weekly magazine that focused on investigative journalism and published stories from renowned journalists such as Upton Sinclair, Ida Tarbell, Jack London and Samuel Hopkins Adams.

In 2019, Nathan Collier provided an initial gift to establish the Collier Prize, which is one of the largest journalism awards in the country. The Collier Prize, announced annually at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, recognizes the top U.S. professional reporting on coverage of state-level government accountability in any platform or any medium. Since its inception, the Collier Prize has drawn more than 350 entries from a wide range of news organizations.

“I have supported the Collier prize for several years on an annual basis and it has become all that I wanted it to be,” said Collier in the press release. “The support of the College and the University of Florida has been extraordinary and it’s having an effect, and I want it to have a lasting impact.”

Collier’s gift will provide an endowment that will fund the prize in perpetuity, along with hiring a director to administer the prize and to create an annual symposium dedicated to state and local journalism.

“We are extremely grateful to Nathan Collier for this generous and impactful gift,” said UFCJC Dean Hub Brown in the press release. “The College is already recognized for its support of journalism and news organizations, including the Collier Prize, the ONA Prize for Investigative Data Journalism, Fresh Take Florida and other initiatives, and this gift will help take that support to the next level.”

According to the press release, the annual Collier Symposium will highlight the best in local accountability journalism, examining the challenges to producing the best reporting and exploring solutions to improve the journalism and the environment that supports it. The event will bring Collier Prize winners and top-tier journalists to campus to interact with students and faculty and help enhance the College’s reputation as an incubator for excellence and innovation in journalism and inspire students to pursue local accountability journalism as a career.

“I’m looking forward to the establishment of the annual symposium and the convening of journalism thought leaders across the country,” Collier said in the release. “My goal is to help the College of Journalism and Communications become a city on the hill, a mecca for investigative journalism, the place where people turn to for standards on how best to do it. And I hope that really becomes something that the University of Florida is well known for.”