The fight to preserve freedom of the press is getting a $60 million war room.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and Columbia University announced on Tuesday that they would team up to create an institute at the university’s Manhattan campus dedicated to expanding in the digital age the freedoms of speech and the press outlined in the First Amendment.

The Knight First Amendment Institute would take on legal battles that newsrooms have found increasingly too costly to pursue on their own, the groups said in a statement.

“While the digital age has opened up new opportunities for accountability journalism, we need to fill the void and continue to champion free expression through litigation, research and education,” said Lee C. Bollinger, a First Amendment scholar and Columbia’s president.