Here’s a list of current media and journalism fellowship programs, including the deadlines for applying. If we’re missing any major programs, or you would like your program to be in the featured fellowship slot, please let us know by contacting Mark Glaser at mark [at] mediashift [dot] org and we’ll add them to the list. All featured fellowships are paid promotional slots. Fellowship descriptions are excerpts, edited for length and clarity.
MARCH 2018
Spotlight Investigative Journalism Fellowship
Open Road Films and Participant Media, with support from First Look Media, are sponsoring a fellowship of up to $100,000 to be awarded by The Boston Globe for one or more individuals or teams of journalists to work on in-depth research and reporting projects. The chosen journalist(s) will collaborate with established investigative reporters and editors from The Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Spotlight Team.
Deadline: March 31, 2018
APRIL 2018 & BEYOND
Mother Jones Ben Bagdikian Fellowship
The Ben Bagdikian Fellowship Program offers a crash course in investigative journalism. Mother Jones fellows dive deep into every aspect of a national multimedia outfit—from making news to making it pretty, ensuring its impact, and mastering the inner workings of nonprofit publishing. Fellowship positions include:
Deadline: April 1, 2018
Economics of Aging and Work Journalism Fellowship
During a 10-month fellowship period, the selected journalist will develop the analytical research skills needed to create a series of news reports dealing with the economics of the aging workforce in the United States to be distributed by AP to its global worldwide audience of thousands of subscribers and customers across all media platforms.
Deadline: April 2, 2018
IRE Freelance Fellowship
Awards of $1,000 or more are available to assist in conducting investigative projects. These fellowships for journalists who make their living primarily as freelancers were created in 2008.
Deadline: April 2, 2018
MacDowell Colony’s Art of Journalism Fellowship
The Art of Journalism is advancing MacDowell’s legacy of supporting some of the finest voices in non-fiction, from the essays of James Baldwin to Frances Fitzgerald’s investigations into the Vietnam War.
Deadline: April 15, 2018
IRE Diversity Fellowship
Established by the Philip L. Graham Fund to send a limited number of professional journalists to attend IRE’s conferences. These fellowships are aimed at increasing the diversity of IRE’s membership. Applicants for this award should identify themselves with one of the following minority groups: Black/African American, American Indian/Alaskan, Native American, Asian-American, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, Hispanic/Latino.
Deadline: April 23, 2018
Jennifer Leonard Scholarship
The award sends women of modest means who are college students studying journalism or professional journalists with three or fewer years of working experience to IRE’s conferences.
Deadline: April 23, 2018
James Richard Bennett Scholarships
The scholarship sends a limited number of college students in Arkansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma or Louisiana to attend the annual IRE conference. The scholarships are made possible by a donation to IRE by Dr. James R. Bennett, professor emeritus of English, University of Arkansas.
Deadline: April 23, 2018
American University Graduate Fellowship with The Washington Post
Location: Washington D.C.
Applicants must apply and be accepted to American University’s Journalism & Public Affairs master’s program. “The successful launch of an ongoing fellowship program offers Fellows full tuition plus a $30,000 yearly stipend and the chance to work side-by-side with top journalists at The Washington Post, one of the world’s leading news organizations.”
Deadline: April 30
Greenberg World Fellows Program
The Greenberg World Fellows Program, which is part of Yale’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, provides the opportunity for World Fellows to contribute to Yale’s intellectual life, participate in events, and collaborate with peers, audit classes, mentor students and lead round-table discussions. The mission of Yale World Fellows is to cultivate and empower a network of globally engaged leaders committed to making the world a better place. The 2017 program will run from mid-August to mid-December and fellows will get a stipend to cover the costs of living in New Haven.
Deadline: Varies
ROLLING DEADLINES
Gender and LGBTI Rights Reporting Fellowship
The International Reporting Project is accepting applications from professional journalists to report on gender and LGBTI rights around the world. Applicants may propose any stories that focus on gender rights or LGBTI rights (or both).
Deadline: TBD
Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellowship
To foster, promote, sustain and improve the best traditions of American journalism, the Alicia Patterson Foundation will provide support for journalists engaged in rigorous, probing, spirited, independent and skeptical work that will benefit the public. The foundation will support journalism and will foster a community of journalists engaged in truthfully informing the public.
Deadline: Rolling
International Reporting Project Religion Fellowship
The International Reporting Project (IRP) is accepting proposals to report on global religion issues. Possible topics include conflict and peace; environment and sustainability; political economy and development; health and education; gender, race and sexuality; law and human rights; social movements; migration; and humanitarianism.
Deadline: Rolling
Outside Editorial Fellowship
The fellowship is a six-month, paid position in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Duties include fact-checking, reporting, research, proofreading, and assorted support chores for the editorial department. Fellows occasionally have the opportunity to write short pieces for the magazine and website, and they will attend editorial meetings, work closely with top editors, and gain hands-on experience at an award-winning magazine.
Deadline: Rolling
Holly Whisenhunt Stephen Fellowship, Investigative Reporters & Editors
Send broadcast and/or radio journalists to IRE’s week-long Computer-Assisted Reporting (CAR) Boot Camp series. The fellowships were established by IRE and WTHR-Indianapolis to honor Stephen, an award-winning journalist and longtime IRE member who died in Nov. 2008 after a long battle with cancer.
Deadline: Rolling — 60 days before the Boot Camp you are applying to attend.
Ottaway Fellowships, Investigative Reporters & Editors
Established by David Ottaway and the Ottaway Family Fund to send a limited number of professional journalists to IRE’s week-long Computer-Assisted Reporting (CAR) Boot Camp series. These fellowships are aimed at increasing the diversity of IRE’s membership. Applicants for this award should identify themselves with one of the following minority groups: Black/African American, American Indian/Alaskan, Native American, Asian-American, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, Hispanic/Latino.
Deadline: Rolling — 60 days before the Boot Camp you are applying to attend.
R-CAR Fellowship, Investigative Reporters & Editors
The Fund for Rural Computer-Assisted Reporting helps a journalist from a news organization in a rural area attend one of IRE’s week-long CAR boot camps. It was established by IRE member Daniel Gilbert to give rural reporters skills that will help them uncover stories that otherwise would not come to light. The fellowship is offered in conjunction with The Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues.
Deadline: Rolling — 60 days before the Boot Camp you are applying to attend.
IN PROGRESS OR FUTURE FELLOWSHIPS
California Endowment Fellowship
Latino USA, a weekly show distributed by NPR and produced by The Futuro Media Group, is taking applications for the first of two (2) year-long California-based fellowships. We are seeking graduate students, recent graduates from a journalism program or young professionals with a passionate interest in reporting on California communities and health inequities.
Martha’s Vineyard Fellowship for Innovation in Journalism
The Martha’s Vineyard Fellowship for Innovation in Journalism, created in association with the Noepe Center for the Literary Arts, will select a fellow who will work with reporters, editors and the Gazette’s webmaster in the Vineyard Gazette newsroom on a specific project that draws on publicly available data sources to create a dynamic news page. The Gazette has created the fellowship to promote experimentation and to cultivate the use of technology and multimedia in a traditional newsroom setting. Now in its second year, the fellowship is designed to give the fellow the experience of working in a small community newsroom while introducing the newspaper staff to new ideas and skills.
The Charles Koch Institute’s Media and Journalism Fellowship
The Charles Koch Institute’s Media and Journalism Fellowship provides promising writers, reporters, and multimedia professionals the opportunity to develop and refine their professional skills while working full-time in the industry. The year-long fellowship offers world-class curriculum and an individualized experience—including summits, online webinars, professional skills training, industry speakers, and mentoring—for the next generation of journalists and storytellers.
Public Interest Technology Fellowship
New America’s Public Interest Technology Fellowship Program is an ambitious new initiative designed to support an emerging public interest technology sector in America—the application of technology knowledge skills in policymaking and public service to help solve public problems.
2017 Next Gen Radio Early Career Fellowship
The Next Generation Radio Fellowship is a week-long digital journalism training project designed to give competitively selected participants, who are interested in radio and journalism, the skills and opportunity to report and produce their own multimedia story.
ICFJ Bringing Home the World Fellowship
The Bringing Home the World Fellowship helps U.S.-based minority journalists cover compelling yet under-reported international stories, increasing the diversity of voices in global news. The program helps level the playing field and redress the inequality minority journalists often face by giving them the opportunity to report from overseas and advance their careers.
Gwen Ifill/PBS NewsHour Journalism Fellow
The Gwen Ifill/PBS NewsHour Journalism Fellowship for current undergraduate and graduate students is a 10-week, paid position where you can gain hands-on, real-world experience working on “PBS NewsHour.”
Global Religion Issues Reporting Fellowship
The International Reporting Project accepts applications from professional journalists to report on global religion issues. Some of the areas on which proposals might focus include the relationship of religion to conflict and peace, environment and sustainability, political economy and development, health and education and gender, race and sexuality.
JAWS CAMP Fellowship
Each year the Journalism and Women Symposium (JAWS) brings fellows to its annual Conference and Mentoring Project (CAMP) for three days of training, networking and professional development.
Naughton Fellowship
After two years, Poynter is reopening its Naughton Fellowship, a one-year position allowing the recipient to create journalism about journalism alongside the team of media reporters in St. Petersburg, Florida. The fellowship, which is named after former Poynter president and New York Times correspondent Jim Naughton, has been retooled this year to focus on visual journalism.
N.S. Bienstock Fellowship
An award established in 1999 by Richard Leibner and Carole Cooper, the original owners of N.S. Bienstock. Acquired by United Talent Agency in 2014, the firm now known as Bienstock, a UTA Company has been a leading talent agency in news and reality-based programming for more than 50 years and is a long-time member of RTDNA. This award recognizes a promising minority journalist in radio or television news.
Michele Clark Fellowship
RTDNF’s first fellowship is named for Michele Clark, the CBS News correspondent who was killed in a plane crash while on assignment in 1972. This fellowship is awarded to a young, promising minority professional in television or radio news.
Vada and Col. Barney Oldfield National Security Reporting Fellowship
Established by the RTDNF Board of Trustees in honor of Vada and Col. Barney Oldfield. Barney and Vada served in WWII and both had illustrious military careers. Barney’s long and impressive career included a stint as a Hollywood studio publicist, WWII Army and post-war Air Force public relations officer, author, and lecturer. Col. Oldfield was also a businessman and philanthropist who founded over 40 private foundations including RTDNF. This fellowship is awarded to a reporter or producer in radio or television news engaged covering national defense and security
This award was created to honor former news director and MedStar executive Jacque Minnotte, who died in 1993. This fellowship recognizes excellence in health or medical television and radio reporting.
McGraw Fellowship for Business Journalism
The aim of the McGraw Fellowship for Business Journalism is to support in-depth, ambitious coverage of critical issues related to the global economy and business. In an age when many news organizations no longer have the resources to tackle complex, time-consuming stories, the Fellowships enable experienced journalists to do the deep reporting needed to produce a serious piece of investigative, analytic, or narrative journalism.
Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator
Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator combines seed capital, hands-on help and a great co-working location with an expert team to positively impact the trajectory of early-stage startups. ERA runs two, four-month programs per year.
AAAS Mass Media Science & Engineering Fellowship
This 10-week paid internship places scientists, mathematicians and engineers (undergraduate, graduate and postdocs) at sites like the Washington Post, NPR, Slate, Scientific American etc for the summer. Scientists use their research skills to report, produce, and write science news while they learn how to make science accessible to the public.
Google News Lab Fellowship
The Google News Lab Fellowship offers students interested in journalism and technology the opportunity to spend the summer working at relevant organizations across the US to gain valuable experience and make lifelong contacts and friends. While the work of each host organization is unique, Fellows have opportunities to research and write stories, contribute to open source data programs, and create timely data to accurately frame public debates about issues in the US and the world.
IWMF Reporting Grants for Women’s Stories
The IWMF’s Reporting Grants for Women’s Stories, sponsored by The Secular Society, is a new funding initiative supporting journalism produced by and about women. In an era of increased globalization, the need for varied coverage of gendered topics is critical to a free and representative press. These grants will be a catalyst for reporting on untold stories surrounding issues that impact women and girls’ daily lives worldwide. These grants provide opportunities for women journalists to pursue international stories of importance through gender-sensitive coverage of underreported topics.
IWMF Under-Reported Stories Grants
The IWMF’s Underreported Stories Grants is a new funding initiative to support journalism produced by women journalists on underreported issues around the world. This round of funding will support journalism covering the issue of forced labor in the U.S. agriculture sector in Texas.
O’Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism
Milwaukee, Wis.
The O’Brien Fellowship fully funds investigative projects involving local, state, national or international issues. Fellows receive a $65,000 stipend and allotments for housing, travel and research. Based at Marquette University, the fellowship pairs journalists with a team of student researchers. O’Brien projects have tackled issues around water pollution and drought, workplace dangers, firearms lethality, poor access to health care, mistreatment of persons with mental illness, government secrecy, animal-borne disease threats, fugitives from justice and more.
Nieman-Berkman Klein Fellowship in Journalism Innovation
The Nieman-Berkman Klein Fellowship in Journalism Innovation brings individuals to Harvard University to work on a specific course of research or a specific project relating to journalism innovation.
Data & Society Fellow
New York City
The fellowship brings together researchers, entrepreneurs, activists, policy creators, journalists and public intellectuals who are interested in engaging one another on the key issues introduced by the increasing availability of data in society.
RJI Fellowships
Columbia, MO or remote
The Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute invites proposals from people and institutions to collaborate with us on innovative ideas and projects to improve the practice or understanding of journalism.
Knight-Wallace Fellowships for Journalists
Ann Arbor, Mich.
The Knight-Wallace Fellowships for Journalists offer accomplished, mid-career journalists an academic year of study and collaborative learning at the University of Michigan. Fellows receive a $70,000 stipend to deepen knowledge, develop new ideas and address changes facing the journalism industry. A diverse range of journalists are invited to apply: reporters, editors, data experts, visual journalists, engagement specialists, designers and developers, entrepreneurs and organizational change agents.
Joan Shorenstein Fellowship
The mission of the Joan Shorenstein Fellowship Program is to advance research in the field of media, politics and public policy; facilitate a dialogue among journalists, scholars, policy makers and students; provide an opportunity for reflection; and create a vibrant and long-lasting community of scholars and practitioners. The primary focus for a Fellow is to research, write and publish a paper on a media/politics topic.
AAAS Minority Science Writers Internship
Science is a global activity, but the demographics of the journalists who cover it don’t reflect that diversity. The Minority Science Writers Internship is for students who are interested in pursuing a career in journalism and who want to learn more about science writing. This 10-week paid internship places undergraduate (or recently graduated) students at Science Magazine for the summer to work with Science’s award winning staff reporting and writing their own science journalism.
Kim Wall Memorial Fund
“The undercurrents of rebellion.” That’s how Swedish journalist Kim Wall described her unique approach to reporting on subcultures, broadly defined, around the globe. The International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF), in partnership with Kim’s family and friends, seek to make sure the kinds of stories Kim loved continue to be told, through the creation of the Kim Wall Memorial Fund. Whether reporting about Cuba’s underground market for digital content and culture, how the politics of opportunity played out inside Kampala’s emerging Chinatown, or the extent to which female Tamil Tiger combatants in Sri Lanka were failed by the promises of a feminist utopia, Kim introduced us to incredibly interesting people others overlooked. The Memorial Fund will help other women with Kim’s adventurous spirit chase down these important, underreported stories.
Mama Hope Media Residency
The mission of the Mama Hope Media Residency is to incubate a deep partnership between aspiring multimedia storytellers and innovative grassroots leaders to co-create powerful projects that transform lives, transform conversations and put hope into action. Residents live in a community in Africa, Central America or India for one to three months to capture their stories.
Abrams Nieman Fellowship for Local Investigative Journalism
The Abrams Nieman Fellowship for Local Investigative Journalism was created to bolster deeply reported local and regional news stories in underserved communities throughout the United States. Funded by the Abrams Foundation, the fellowship in the 2018-19 academic year will fund up to three Nieman Fellowships for U.S. journalists who cover news in areas of the United States where resources are scarce. The fellowship additionally will fund up to nine months of fieldwork at the fellow’s home news organization after two semesters at Harvard – or in the case of freelance journalists, a newsroom partner. During the fieldwork period, the Abrams Nieman Fellows may expand or develop an investigative project that will provide better, more in-depth coverage of issues important to the communities they serve.
Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in Economics and Business Journalism
The Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in Economics and Business Journalism offers qualified journalists the opportunity to enhance their understanding and knowledge of business, economics and finance in a year long, full-time program administered by the Columbia Journalism School.
Knight Science Journalism Fellowship
The Knight Science Journalism Fellowship Program at MIT supports a global community of dedicated and thoughtful journalists specializing in science, health, technology and environmental reporting. KSJ@MIT is designed to recognize journalists who demonstrate a high level of professional excellence and accomplishment as well as a long-term commitment to their craft. Journalists from all countries compete on an equal basis and are encouraged to apply.
Edward R. Murrow Press Fellowship
Print, broadcast and online journalists in the United States can apply for a US$65,000 fellowship in New York. The Edward R. Murrow Press Fellowships seek foreign correspondents or editors for a nine-month period of writing and analysis at the Council of Foreign Relations. The program enables the fellow to increase competency in reporting and interpreting events abroad and promotes the quality of responsible and discerning journalism.
MBL Logan Science Journalism Program
This unique fellowship program, taught by scientists, provides journalists with direct, hands-on research training in environmental or biomedical science. Offered in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, at the Marine Biological Laboratory, an affiliate of University of Chicago.
Ted Scripps Fellowship in Environmental Journalism
Thanks to a campus-wide commitment to research and teaching on the many facets of environmental problems, the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism awards five Ted Scripps Fellowships each year. Over the course of an academic year, fellows deepen their knowledge of the environment through courses, weekly seminars, and field trips. They also engage in independent study expected to lead to a significant piece of journalistic work. The program covers tuition and fees, including a recreation center pass, and provides a $56,000 stipend.
Bianca Fortis is the associate editor of MediaShift, a founding member of the Transborder Media storytelling collective and a social media consultant. Follow her on Twitter @biancafortis.
