StoryReach U.S. Fellowships

Position description

The Pulitzer Center’s StoryReach U.S. reporting and engagement accelerator seeks newsroom partners who value collaboration and audience engagement as much as powerful enterprise reporting. This is a chance to innovate with your peers and the Center’s team on high-impact projects that combine breakthrough reporting and effective audience engagement.

The part-time, yearlong Fellowship is designed for reporters from all beats, desks, and media formats. The ideal candidate will have at least three years of experience with ambitious investigative or in-depth enterprise reporting projects. We’re eager to find candidates who also have some experience with audience outreach or a partner newsroom with creative and effective ideas for engaging audiences beyond publishing. 

Through funding and resources for reporting and outreach, exclusive training and support, and monthly virtual cohort gatherings, our Fellows will gain valuable insights and practical tools to connect their reporting with their communities in innovative ways. 

Current Fellows have experimented with audience engagement such as public listening sessions, QR poster campaigns, radio amplification, and even informal gatherings like mimosa brunches. They’ve also identified trusted community messengers and tailored their outreach strategies to suit the favored platforms of different audiences and demographics, whether that’s Facebook LIVE, TikTok, or issue-oriented newsletters. 

While we welcome proposals on a broad range of local underreported issues, this year we are also placing special emphasis on a few topics:

• Health: Reporting on scientific progress, cutting-edge research, and policies important to global health and financial support for health programs. Projects can include underreported health conditions and the effect of health policy changes and challenges in the U.S. or abroad. Proposals that include travel outside the U.S. are welcome.
• Marine Fisheries: Any underreported topics related to the management or stewardship of marine fisheries or topics, as well as issues, related to the overall health of fisheries, supply chains, or environmental impacts affecting the Great Lakes or vital watersheds or waterways in your region.
• Human Rights: Stories highlighting the intersections of racial justice with issues like sexual and reproductive rights, gender-based violence, migrant rights, excessive force, arbitrary detention, and hate crimes.
• Climate and Jobs: Reports on how Midwest work sectors are affected by climate change, exploring worker and employer experiences, job risks, and community responses to rising temperatures and extreme weather events.

Applicants with ideas for reporting projects related to the above topics are strongly encouraged to apply.

The 12-month, part-time Fellowship will provide journalists with up to $30,000 to pursue their reporting project and innovative engagement activities that expand the reach and impact of their reporting. In addition, Fellows will have access to data and research support and training with a group of peers that will help strengthen their reporting projects and related engagement activities.

Successful applicants will be expected to join a mandatory, 90-minute meeting held every month and to engage with other Fellows in virtual meetings and on the community’s dedicated online platform.

We require the sharing of methodologies, engagement plans, and lessons learned so each reporting project may serve as a blueprint for other newsrooms pursuing similar projects.

TO APPLY, YOU WILL BE ASKED TO PROVIDE THE FOLLOWING:

• A short statement of purpose: How this particular Fellowship fits in your career path and why you are best positioned to be a StoryReach Midwest Reporting Fellow. (500 words)
• A detailed description of the reporting project you seek to pursue during your Fellowship, including a plan for audience engagement activities. Please do not propose general themes, but a concrete project that shows pre-reporting on the subject. A compelling, well-researched project proposal with a reporting plan will help you stand out. (500 words)
• Your plan for audience engagement should include the distribution channels for the reporting and a brief strategy for identifying and reaching key audiences (both online and offline) that need to engage with your project. Reference your pre-reporting to outline the key audiences for your project and how your publication and engagement strategies will connect reporting to those audiences. Think: Who will need this information and why? What information do the target audiences for this story need to be equipped with to engage with the issue? Where do these audiences get their information, and how might an engagement plan meet audiences where they are?  Your engagement strategies can include the production and distribution of explainer or informational materials; digital assets that are easily distributed in platforms your target audiences use; community events and exhibits in locations and/or with partners your target audiences are familiar with; collaborations with schools and universities; and more. Be bold! Also, see examples in the FAQs section. (Up to 500 words)
• We also will ask for a budget that lays out the anticipated costs of the project. Categories may include records requests, software, data analysis, multimedia production, travel and lodging, salaries/stipends, and engagement activities. Up to a third of the $30,000 Fellowship funds may be allotted to salaries with the remainder earmarked for reporting project costs and ideas for audience engagement for the Fellowship project.
• Three examples (links) of your best stories published in the past three years.
• A letter of commitment or interest from a media organization(s) that would publish your story(ies). If you are a staff reporter, please get a signed letter from your editor or newsroom manager confirming you have their support in applying for the Fellowship. This letter should explicitly state that your newsroom will allocate time for you to participate in Fellowship activities and the newsroom will support publishing and an engagement campaign for the stories you produce through this Fellowship. It can also include why your manager thinks you would be suited for this Fellowship.
• Three professional references: These can be either contact information or letters of recommendation.
• A copy of your resume or curriculum vitae.

Application instructions

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