She is an award winning broadcast journalist, former Knight Fellow in Eastern Europe and a former Benton Fellow at the University of Chicago. Benson joined the Department of Journalism at Illinois following a twenty-five year career in radio and television news. She has trained journalists in developing countries in nearly every region of the world and is committed to creating a new generation of journalists with a global perspective. Benson has been taking journalism students on reporting expeditions to foreign lands since 2005.