Billionaire Michael Jordan opens a $250,000 media studio at Morehouse College

Morehouse College opened a multimedia centre funded by Michael Jordan on Wednesday, Sept. 23, at a ribbon-cutting ceremony on its campus in Atlanta.

The facility holds a modular production studio, editing bays and roughly $250,000 of professional equipment. Students will use it for digital storytelling, sports broadcasting, podcasting, filmmaking and emerging media technology, working alongside professional content creators.

It sits inside the college's Department of Journalism in Sports, Culture and Social Justice.

The money came from a commitment Jordan and Jordan Brand made in 2021. They gave more than $1 million to Morehouse for scholarships and academic programming in journalism and sports-related fields, and the college launched its journalism major the following year.

That programme has produced results. More than 60 students have taken advanced degrees in journalism since 2022, and nearly 120 alumni have gone into careers in media and sports.

Emani Saucier, the centre's inaugural director and co-founder, said it represents the college's vision for preparing students not only to take part in the future of media but to lead it. Mikki Harris, who chairs the department, said the money made it possible to expand the curriculum, and that the centre also lets faculty digitise their research and reach wider audiences.

Shauncey Mashia Stelly, senior director of global purpose at Jordan Brand, said the company hoped the space would give students opportunities to learn, create and grow.

The gift was part of something larger. Jordan Brand launched a ten-year, $100 million Black Community Commitment in 2020 to address systemic racism through education, narrative change, social justice and economic justice, and the Morehouse money came out of it alongside a parallel $1 million grant to the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting.

Morehouse is a historically Black men's college in Atlanta whose alumni include Martin Luther King Jr. and the film director Spike Lee.

Jordan has earned more than any athlete in history. Sportico put his career total at $4.5 billion in inflation-adjusted terms this month, ahead of Tiger Woods and Cristiano Ronaldo, and he still takes a share of every Jordan Brand sale more than two decades after he last played.