Potentially big news across town at MIT: According to a current grad student in the Comparative Media Studies program there, co-director Henry Jenkins is leaving MIT at year’s end to head to USC. (Southern Cal, not South Carolina.) MIT “will in all likelihood end its graduate program” in CMS, the student, Whitney Anne Trettian, writes on her blog. No announcements yet from either university that I can see, much less Jenkins himself.

This could matter in journalism circles because Jenkins was one of three MIT profs who won the largest Knight News Challenge grant ever — $5 million — to start the the Center for Future Civic Media, which just launched its site a couple weeks ago. It’s headed by the very talented Ellen Hume, the ex-LA Times and ex-Wall Street Journal reporter. No word on how Jenkins’ departure might affect the center’s plans. Hume is set to speak at MIT Tuesday night on “the future of the news;” perhaps she might add a couple sentences about the future of her employer.