We’re happy to announce that our application for the 2024 LaunchPad Fellowship for NextGen Journalists is now live! The submission deadline is July 12, 2024.
The groundbreaking nine-month fellowship is designed to empower early-career journalists from diverse backgrounds who are passionate about reimagining journalism and community storytelling through the lens of racial equity and social justice.
Fellows will tackle an ambitious in-depth reporting/storytelling project on a critical social justice issue facing the U.S. They will be challenged to delve deeply into their selected issue; to critically examine its real and human impact on our nation’s historically marginalized communities; to expose the systemic and root causes of the problem; and to explore remedies and solutions.
LaunchPad Fellows Receive:
- A $5,000 grant to offset living expenses while conducting their research and reporting.
- An intensive, three-day in-person learning/training experience.
- Skills-building webinars throughout the fellowship year.
- Nine months of professional/project mentorship and coaching.
The ideal applicants should have three to six years of experience as a professional journalist in any media platform in order to qualify as an early-career journalist. Additionally, we’re looking for a diverse and talented group of journalists who have a commitment to social justice-focused journalism and to telling the stories of their communities with depth and compassion.
Why Now? Our Vision.
We believe this “next generation” of journalists, particularly those from communities whose voices and stories have been historically misrepresented, underreported or ignored by the mainstream media, have a critical role to play in transforming journalism and the media ecosystem. Their diverse perspectives—and their willingness to challenge the status quo and to experiment with bold new approaches to news and community storytelling—are essential to reinventing media as a vital and trusted source of education, civic engagement, social justice and democracy.