Journalists can apply by Dec. 7 to attend program on "Saving Local News: A Practical Guide"

Kiplinger Fellows 
(Photo from Kiplinger website)

Journalists can apply for a 2026 Kiplinger Fellowship by Dec. 7 to join journalists from across the United States and around the world for a week of learning with top industry leaders and professionals.

The focus of the Kiplinger Fellowship will be on "Saving Local News: A Practical Guide" and will be held at the Scripps College of Communication on the Ohio University campus in Athens, Ohio, May 11-14, 2026.

The Kiplinger Fellowship is a program that trains journalists to tackle critical issues that impact the industry. Fellowships provide lodging, most meals, free training and include a travel stipend.

The Institute for Rural Journalism at the University of Kentucky and the Local News Initiative at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism will be helping with the program as well. 

Application instructions are found here. Click here to apply.

National program wants to help newsrooms add more than 50 positions; news organizations can apply for help now

Report for America, a national service program, wants to help newsrooms across the United States -- and particularly in rural areas -- add more than 50 positions next summer. Applications are open for newsrooms interested in hosting journalists for up to three years, with part of the salary paid by the Report for America program.

According to Sam Kille, vice president of communications for Report for America, the program is designed to help newsrooms report on under-covered issues and communities.

Kille writes, "Through the program, host newsrooms receive:
-- Diverse, talented slate of candidates to choose from
-- Subsidized salary support for up to three years
-- Local fundraising coaching and resources, including the opportunity for no-cost fiscal sponsorship to accept donations
-- Extra training and mentoring for journalists

“We recognize the difficulties modern newsrooms encounter, from recruiting skilled journalists to offering the necessary mentorship and support,” said Earl Johnson, vice president of recruitment and alumni engagement at Report for America. “Partnering with Report for America enables local newsrooms to address critical news gaps, diversify their staff, and foster sustainable local backing within their communities.”

The application deadline is Sept. 13. More information about how the program works can be found here.

Report for America wants to expand its reach into rural areas where news gaps are prominent, and newsrooms owned or led by journalists of color. 

Kille specifies that newsrooms must demonstrate the following to Report for America:

Need — "Explain why the beat you’re proposing is vital to your audience and the community. We’re particularly interested in important beats that no other newsroom in your area is covering, or covering well. Also, why do you need our help to support this position?"
Support — "We look for newsrooms where corps members will receive good editing and mentoring, so they can do their best work."
A commitment to inclusion — "Newsrooms demonstrating a commitment to inclusion and supporting a diverse staff are important in our selection process."
A commitment to fundraising — "Where applicable, we ask our host newsrooms to try to raise money from local funders to pay for part of their corps member’s salary. Our development team can help you do this. We believe local philanthropy is key to strong local newsrooms and want to work with partners that believe this, too."

Report for America will help to provide up to half of the journalist’s salary and offer newsrooms tools to raise funds to support their share. Nearly $30 million has been raised by local newsrooms with Report for America’s assistance.

Report for America has matched more than 650 corps members with hundreds of local newspapers, public radio stations, digital platforms and television outlets since its launch in 2017.

Report for America will hold online information sessions with newsrooms and partner organizations throughout the application period. For more information, visit www.reportforamerica.org or send an email to: recruitment@reportforamerica.org.

Uvalde editor, honored for his work, wishes he had done more before tragedy struck

Craig Garnett will receive the Tom and Pat Gish
Award Feb. 29. (Oklahoma Press Association photo)

By Al Cross
Director Emeritus, Institute for Rural Journalism 

The town of Uvalde, Texas, pop. 15,000, and its same-named county of 25,000 were very unlucky in May 2022. That’s when an 18-year-old with an assault rifle at an elementary school killed 19 students and two teachers – a toll that probably would have been less had police not botched the response.

But Uvalde was also lucky – that it had a newspaper with an editor-publisher, Craig Garnett, who had long been willing to tell hard truths about things that matter, and who kept doing that in the aftermath of the tragedy.

The day after the shooting, the twice-weekly Leader-News published a black front page, with “MAY 24, 2022” in reverse type. The next front page had portraits of the 19 children and the start of a story with biographies of each one. Inside was a column from Garnett, addressing the police delay in confronting the shooter.

He said a regional police official "could not answer why it took an hour to end the attack," quoted him as saying police were “measuring," and wrote; "The question is how much measuring is permissible, while children are being murdered. Or perhaps they were already gone. It pains to write these words of criticism about law enforcement, but parents and the community have the right to know. They must be told why police, whom parents at the scene begged to go in and save their children, failed to act. They have to know, to ever begin to heal."

In an editorial a month later, Garnett named names and was blunt: “No mass school shooting in the United States has ended with such glaring failures in both the law enforcement response and school district security. . . . Neither [school] Police Chief Pete Arredondo, acting city chief Mariano Pargas, Uvalde County Sheriff Ruben Nolasco nor any state or federal officer among the 376 responders to the scene was willing to take the helm of what was clearly a rudderless ship cast into a hurricane.” That didn’t sit well with local law enforcers and their supporters, but Garnett’s initial reporting and commentary had already spoiled his good relationship with the school district and police agencies.

Meanwhile, Garnett spent much time “sitting with families who lost children, siblings, friends; interviewing survivors, teachers and students, about their experience,” Leader-News Managing Editor Meghann Garcia said in nominating him for the 2023 Tom and Pat Gish Award from the Institute for Rural Journalism at the University of Kentucky, which I ran at the time. Garnett wasn’t able to attend our awards banquet in October, but in a recorded video for it, he reflected on his experience – and offered some advice for community editors and publishers:

“What happened in Uvalde was crushing. It continues to be an enormous weight on many of our shoulders, especially the families of victims. And we have endeavored to cover every aspect of that shooting. We still are working for information, accountability from various institutions, particularly our city and our school district and our law enforcement officials. We plan to follow that to its conclusion, whatever time it may take.

“But being successful at that and community journalism, as most publishers know, depends on your people. And I happen to have a group of journalists who are beyond amazing. None of us graduated from elite universities, some of us don’t have college degrees, but after the tragedy on May 24, each one of them brought something extremely important to our coverage. And our grand total [is] five of us, so there wasn’t a lot. It didn’t take long to have our discussions with each other and to plan our day. And it’s true in most of the newsrooms across this country and community journalism. But it brings you together in a way that nothing else can, I don’t suppose, unless it would be a foxhole. We learned from that. And one of the things we’ve taken away from May 24 is that we didn’t do enough before.

“We have a wall full of plaques from the South Texas Press Association, the Texas Press Association, but we didn’t do enough. We didn’t ask enough questions. We didn’t hold people running for elected office to account like we should have. We didn’t question people who wanted to run our institutions closely enough. What motivated them? What experience do they have? What would they do in a crisis? And we certainly didn’t hold our law enforcement to a high enough standard, the people who swore to protect us.

“So, we will work harder in the future to do that, to make sure that we know as much as we can about people who intend to lead our community, especially in the aftermath of a tragedy. We want to know how they’ll react. It’s not entirely possible. There are all kinds of things that pop up that you can’t plan for, but you can get a sense of where people’s souls lie and what their commitment is to your community. And that’s what I would advise to my fellow publishers in small towns. Pay attention. Pay attention to everything, to those people who run institutions, to the kid who’s slipping between the cracks, who might one day become the same school shooter we had. Be invested beyond what you are now, if that’s possible. I know most of you work your hearts out. But if there’s one thing we would like to do better, it would’ve been that.”

Garnett will share more of his experiences and receive the Tom and Pat Gish Award Feb. 29 at the University of Texas during a symposium, “Courage, Tenacity, Integrity and Innovation in Rural Journalism,” sponsored by the Institute for Rural Journalism, the Texas Center for Community Journalism at Tarleton State University, and the Center for Ethical Leadership in Media in the University of Texas School of Journalism and Media. He will be joined by fellow Texans Laurie Ezzell Brown of The Canadian Record, Randy Keck of The Community News in Aledo, Tara Huff of The Eagle Press in Fritch, John Starkey of Rambler Texas Media and Daniel Walker of the Vernon Daily Record, the Burkburnett Informer Star and the Clay County Leader. For more information about the event, go to https://tccjtsu.com/community-journalists-will-talk-courage-tenacity-innovation-and-integrity-at-ut-austin-feb-29/. The event is free, but registration is required; here’s the link: http://tinyurl.com/4fpvwcwu.

Al Cross edited and managed rural newspapers before covering politics for the Louisville Courier Journal and serving as president of the Society of Professional Journalists. He is director emeritus of the Institute for Rural Journalism and a professor at the University of Kentucky.

The old pipeline from journalism schools to rural weeklies is drying up, so it’s time to turn local residents into journalists

Graphic via Arkansas Press Association; click to enlarge

By Joey Young

The path into journalism has historically been fairly set in stone: university, J-school degree and then working your way up into the industry. In the past, many started at small community weeklies to get experience and then found their way up, eventually working for the best papers in the country.

For years, that system worked for all involved. The community weeklies got freshly trained college graduates to cut their teeth at their rural newsrooms, and the larger papers were able to weed out candidates and use the rural weeklies to train up basic skills you didn't get in college.

That system is dead. No longer do college students consider rural weekly newspapers as a part of their journalism path.

Much like everything else in our industry, the old ways are going away, and new ones are forging ahead. Not everyone is thrilled about it, but all of us are going to have to get used to it, regardless.

Simply put, a combination of low pay, high debt and minimal entertainment options are making it difficult for new college graduates to consider weekly newsrooms, even if they wanted to.

Many fresh faces aren't interested in working in a community of 2,500 people with no good bar while being six figures in debt to their university and making $25,000 a year with no benefits, if they are even lucky enough to make that.

We aren't a good value proposition anymore—not when you can go into any number of other fields and live in a larger city with more things to do and better pay and benefits.

This has left our industry with a huge problem and a need for a mindset shift with employment.

Joey and Lindsey Young

Lindsey and I think there is a better way, and we aren't just preaching this, we practice it as well.

In 2022, we developed a program for the Kansas Press Association called Earn Your Press Pass. This program was created to give basic concepts of journalism and training to people who already live in a community so they can help fill gaps in the newsroom.

No longer are you left praying a recent graduate will see your ad and view your community worthy. You can recruit people who already see your community as worthy and want to help make it better in your newsroom.

Earn Your Press Pass gives what amounts to high-school level journalism training in an on-demand video format that, in its first year, has been deployed by over 20 state press associations.

Shifting our focus to recruiting people who already live in town allows us to change the value proposition, like we did with Tammy, someone we recruited from a life of retail work and was super excited to change professions with training.

Tammy read the paper, was engaged in the community, and had both her kids already in the school system, so she knew the players in town and interacted with them. What she lacked in journalism training she had in knowledge about the community and connections within it.

We just filled in the gaps. Now, she is a fabulous reporter who is happy to no longer be in retail. She went from a path that did not—and could not—include a journalism degree to being a great community journalist.

This recruitment strategy could be used with baristas, bartenders, wait staff, and any number of people who live in your community but are looking for a career that is viewed as more professional.

Our newsroom suffers from very little turnover as a result of this strategy. Recruiting full-time, part-time, and freelance people from the community and offering on-demand training means you have people who already live in town and want to stay.

Journalism is important, and to maintain this incredibly important institution in rural and disadvantaged communities, we have to change the variables. Earn Your Press Pass and a willingness to see someone different as a solution to an opening in your newsroom is just one way we can maintain this incredibly important fixture in democracy.

Joey and Lindsey Young are the majority owners of Kansas Publishing Ventures, which publishes three weekly newspapers in south central Kansas. They also developed the Earn Your Press Pass training platform being used all over the country as a training and recruitment solution for the industry.

Talk with Report for America in a webinar today about getting a reporter next year; application deadline Sept. 18

Calling all rural newsrooms—there’s still time to sign up for this afternoon's Report for America information webinar at 4:15 p.m. ET/3:15 p.m. CT MT/1:15 p.m. The webinar will be hosted by the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, publisher of The Rural Blog. To gain access, send an email to Institute Director Emeritus Al Cross at al.cross@uky.edu.

"Report for America's efforts to place talented journalists in rural newsrooms have been limited partly by a shortage of applications from those newsrooms," Cross said. "This is a chance for rural editors and publishers to talk directly with Earl Johnson, RFA's vice president for recruitment, about the program." The deadline to apply for a reporter who would start next July is Sept. 18.

RFA said in a recent announcement, "While all local news organizations are eligible to apply, Report for America looks to expand its reach into rural areas. On the application, prospective newsrooms should identify specific gaps in coverage in the community, drawing attention to under-covered communities or issues."

In April, RFA announced the pairing of 60 journalists and newsrooms, 16 of them with rural employers or beats. A story on that is here. RFA says successful newsroom applicants get:

● Service-minded reporters, photographers and videographers
● Diverse, hand-picked candidates from a pool of emerging and experienced journalists
● Salary subsidies: 50% the first year, 33% the second year
● Local fundraising coaching and resources, including the opportunity for fiscal sponsorship to accept donations
● Extra training and mentoring for journalists

RFA says it understands the challenges today’s newsrooms face, not only finding talented journalists but also providing the mentorship and support they might seek. It says, "By partnering with Report for America, local newsrooms are better positioned to cover important issues, diversify their newsrooms, and grow sustainable, local support within their communities." More information about how the program works can be found here.

Aug. 11 is deadline to sign up for Association of Health Care Journalists' Rural Health Journalism Workshop in K.C.

The mostly annual Rural Health Journalism Workshop of the Association of Health Care Journalists will be held Aug. 24 at the Hotel Kansas City in Kansas City, Mo. The full program, titled "The 5 Most Urgent Conversations About Rural Health," will focus on these points:

• Investigating environmental health — access points and pointers
• How rural harm reduction fits into the fight against overdose
• Rural mental health care: Reaching cultural competency
• Finding a maternal health solution for rural America
• How people get health care information in news deserts

The deadline for registration is Aug. 11, but the room block has expired, so if you're interested, act quickly. The fee is $25 for ACHJ members and $35 for non-members, but non-members may purchase a seat and a six-month AHCJ membership for a combined fee of $60. Scholarships are available to Kansas and Missouri-based journalists for help with mileage, registration and one hotel night. Apply here.

In 'Children of Poverty' series, Malheur Enterprise shows how a rural weekly can plumb a big issue, with student help

A mother checks stock at a food pantry in Adrian, Oregon, population 177. A food bank
closed in May because it lost its space. (Malheur Enterprise photo by Andie Kalinowski)

With the help of journalism students, a weekly newspaper in rural eastern Oregon has told the story of local children who live in poverty. The Malheur Enterprise got help from the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California because "We wanted the community to understand what it means when Malheur County is ranked as having among the worst child poverty rates in Oregon. That ranking has been in place for years," Editor-Publisher Les Zaitz writes.

Two USC professors had worked up a course on rural reporting, and reached out to the Enterprise, which is widely known as a paper that punches above its weight -- thanks to Zaitz, who has been an investigative reporter and editor in Oregon for 50 years. He gave the professors and the five students they selected a detailed memo outling key questions that needed answering. They reported first from Los Angeles, reaching out to state agencies and experts at Oregon universities, then made a two-week reporting trip to Malheur County, Zaitz writes.

"I had identified key sources for them among government agencies, nonprofit agencies and schools across Malheur County. I reached out ahead of time to key leaders to alert them to expect contact and ask their help. Without fail, those leaders cooperated, proving invaluable," with help such as ride-alongs with police. . . . The team conducted more than 70 interviews. Most were recorded. Some were filmed, resulting in powerful videos," which are on the paper's website.

The students are Christina Chkarboul, Andie Kalinowski, Shane Dimapanet, Suejin Lim and Venice Tang. The professors are Rebecca Haggerty, associate director of undergraduate journalism, and Judy Muller, professor emerita of journalism, former ABC correspondent and author of Emus Loose in Egnar, a book about courageous rural journalists. Here are the stories:

• Malheur’s kids in peril as parents, programs struggle with economic, social challenges
• Children tucked into RVs, living with friends as Malheur County housing remains inadequate
• Children in Malheur County going hungry as families struggle with income, issues
• In Malheur County, school workers step in to care for children short of food, clothing
• Kids face stress, mental health issues – but help is scarce

National Trust for Local News officer says nonprofits best hope for rural news; reports on survey of rural publishers

State-level nonprofits or "conservancies" are "the most sustainable path forward for rural newsrooms," the chief portfolio officer of the National Trust for Local News said Friday at the National Summit on Journalism in Rural America.

Ross McDuffie

Ross McDuffie spoke four days before the Trust announced creation of its second such conservancy by buying most of the newspapersowned by the owner of most newspapers in Maine, the second most rural state by population. Two years ago it bought 24 rural and suburban papers in Colorado, and it says it is working to make similar purchases in other states.

McDuffie said that a nonprofit umbrella organization "creates the scale without trivializing the localness that makes these organizations special and essential to the communities that they serve. . . .You unlock efficiencies of scale while keeping quality local news as its North Star, as opposed to what happens most often at these publicly traded corporate media houses where the North Star is profit or shareholder value."

McDuffie's remarks came with his report on a survey of 39 rural newspaper publishers that found 10 of them did not expect to be in operation five years from now, while only one expressed concern that their newspaper would close in the next 12 months.

The survey was conducted online June 6-23 among a random sample drawn from the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues' database of rural newspapers. Institute Director Al Cross noted that the 39 were "people who are willing to respond to a survey," and McDuffie said they "are likely going to be more optimistic and and wanting to share that in a survey."

The survey found that 15% of the publishers' newspapers had no digital presence at all, and "over half had fewer than 500 digital paying subscribers," McDuffie said. "These results point to a lot of work that's needed, but I'm an optimistic guy, and I see a lot of room for optimism here. . . . There's lots of room for growth in revenue diversification right there."

While rural newspapers still survive mainly on display advertising, and increasingly public-notice ads, "We cannot sit idly and push off and kick the can down the road on building our digital future because we have those revenue streams," McDuffie said. "Now we have to take advantage of them and the profit that they do generate, even if it is minimal, and recognize that as runway to help future-proof organizations."

McDuffie said the survey showed that "These publishers are very dedicated to their communities and have spent years and decades cultivating the trust of those communities and the readers in those communities. Their challenge now is finding opportunities to collaborate at scale beyond the sharing of just content, or maybe revenue sharing and agreements on ad sales. Operational efficiencies are very, very hard to come by for this group."

At the same time, he added, "These smaller news organizations are fertile ground for product innovation, because we can experiment with purpose at minimal cost. We can do that at small scale. And we can fail. And that that be okay, right? We an fail forward, I think, is the way to look at it. and we can try different things quickly. And at minimal cost."

McDuffie, a former executive with Lee Enterprises and the McClatchy Co., said there is more potential in existing publications than "ground-up restarts," which most rural communities are unlikely to support. "These communities need reinvestment in the newsgathering teams that have spent decades, and in many cases centuries, building trust and community and and credibility in those communities," he said.

He said their success will depend not only on "the communities they serve," but "also the greater philanthropic community," from which the Trust gets its money to buy newspapers. "We've got to find alternative sources for funding and transformation," he said. "There also has to be access to subject-matter expertise . . . without adding additional burden to the expense line."

And where will rural newspapers, which already find it difficult to find qualified staff, attract talent even if they have philanthropic money to do it? "The combination of lower cost of living can make rural newsrooms great training grounds for new reporters, as long as those reporters see an opportunity to hone their skills and experiment with new tech and with innovation and local news," McDuffie said.

"I don't think that these reporters are are choosing to not work in rural news organizations because they just have some, you know, some adverse relationship with rural America. I think that what they want to see is, they're gonna join an organization where they can learn where they can experiment with new things where they can push the limits, maybe a little bit where they can put together an email newsletter strategy and be a part of that growth. We have a story to tell for young journalistic talent in rural newsrooms, but we have to be really aggressive in telling it and going after top talent."

Apply by Aug. 6 for 4-day statehouse reporting seminar in Madison, with travel and almost all other expenses covered

"The most consequential political issues of our time are being decided in statehouses across the country. For journalists on the front lines, the stakes have never been higher, as partisan positions have only hardened with a new presidential election cycle looming in 2024," says the National Press Foundation, which will hold a four-day training conference in Madison, Wisconsin, Sept. 18-21.

The foundation will cover airfare, ground transportation, hotel costs and most meals. Competitive applications for this free training are due Aug. 6. APPLY HERE.

NPF says it "has assembled a team of expert speakers and instructors to help guide journalists through the thicket that is the legislative process, where hard-ball politics makes the job of accountability and the search for the truth even tougher."

NPF adds, "The training will be held from 4 p.m. Monday, Sept. 18 to 2 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 21. Attendance is mandatory for all sessions, and editors must commit to freeing their reporters from daily news obligations during the conference. . . . We greatly value diversity in all our programs and particularly seek applications from local and nonprofit news organizations, journalists covering communities that have been disproportionately hurt by the pandemic; Black, Indigenous and other journalists of color; and those who do public-interest reporting in and about news deserts."

Universities in Ohio step up to provide local news reported by students; just four of over 100 such efforts in the U.S.

Reporters for the Midway Messenger, which was a 14-year University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Media project, now run by The Woodford Sun with student help, interviewed city officials after a meeting. (Photo by Al Cross, instructor)

By Richard Watts and Justin Trombly in The Daily Yonder

If you want to see the latest way people are helping keep rural journalism healthy, look at Ohio.

When Gannett Co. closed the community paper in the town of Oxford, faculty at Miami University saw an opportunity to enlist their students in a hands-on learning experience providing local news. 
They started the Oxford Observer, a weekly newspaper staffed by Miami students and professors.

“It’s a community relationship, but it definitely benefits the students,” said Sacha DeVroomen Bellman, the journalism instructor who leads a class that acts as the paper’s newsroom. “This is a way they can get professional work.”

About 145 miles away, students at Ohio University are providing stories to the Athens County Independent, a digital start-up founded after its editor was unjustly fired from the area’s only daily paper. And faculty member Hans Meyer plans to keep ramping up stories from students.

To the north, at Kent State University, two faculty members lead the Ohio Newslab with a focus on providing stories to rural areas. The lab partners with four community news outlets that run stories from advanced reporting classes. The faculty have raised funds to pay students and an editor who works with the classes to shape up stories and mentor students.

“We are covering some of the more sparsely populated sections of Ohio that don’t get much media attention,” said Susan Kirkman Zake, who coordinates the program with fellow faculty member Jacqueline Marino. “I really think that’s a good news niche for us to explore, both for students and the media landscape in Ohio, because media companies are really concentrated in cities.”

And in the center of the state sits Denison University, which is revamping its journalism curriculum to empower student coverage of rural Licking County. Those stories, published through The Reporting Project, are available for local media to pick up. When Intel announced the construction of a $20 billion chip plant in the city of New Albany, Denison’s project was the only media outlet to cover the project’s influence on its neighbors.

“We went and sat with Danny and Barbara Vanhoose, who have lived on Green Chapel Road for 50 years, right across the road from where Intel’s front door is going to be,” said Alan Miller, a Denison journalism professor who spent three decades at the Columbus Dispatch and covered the story with faculty member Jack Shuler and student Thu Nguyen. “We just went and visited with them while they watched and got their reaction and had an outside-the-fence view, literally, of a very big news event that everybody else was covering from inside the fence.”

Those examples showcase a trend extending far beyond Ohio. Across the nation, student reporters and their colleges are stepping in as local news outlets disappear. At the Center for Community News, our team documents partnerships between local media and colleges, and in the last year we’ve found more than 120 — many focused on bolstering news in rural areas that have been neglected as big conglomerates eat up local dailies and whittle staffs to skeleton crews.

The University of Vermont, where the center is housed, also runs a student reporting program that works with local media. In the last year, it has provided close to 300 stories for free to community papers and other local outlets.

These programs are not internships in the traditional sense. Students of course can get great experiences interning directly with newsrooms, but many of those internships have disappeared, and beleaguered editors can’t be expected to dive deep with their rookies on each and every story.

But colleges can. In university-led reporting programs, experienced former journalists vet and assign and edit student work and work with local news outlets to assign stories that otherwise would go uncovered. It’s a win-win. Papers get content and students get experience.

Richard Watts is the director of the University of Vermont’s Center for Community News, which documents and brings together university-led reporting projects. Justin Trombly is the editor of the Community News Service, the university’s academic-media partnership.

24-hour Student Photojournalism Challenge July 7-8 in Ky.; also open to college graduates from the past two years

Harrison County (Wikipedia map)

Next month Boyd's Station, a nonprofit arts and journalism residency program in Harrison County, Kentucky, will host the 2023 Dusk to Dusk 24-Hour Student Photojournalism Challenge, in which photographers will document and interpret a competition theme that will be announced on the Boyd's Station website and social media sites at 3 p.m. Friday, July 7.

The challenge will begin three hours later, at 6 p.m. July 7, and end at dusk July 8. Judging will begin immediately at the Boyd's Station Gallery in the couty seat of Cynthiana, with winners announced that evening. The awards for photo essays will be $400 for first, $200 for second and $50 for third. The best single image will win $100. The awards are sponsored by Think Tank Photo.

On Sunday, July 9, at noon, a lighting workshop  will be presented by Nick Henry of Roberts Camera at the Boyd's Station Gallery. At 2 p.m., New York Times staff photographer and two-time Pulitzer honoree Stephen Crowley will give a talk.

Students competing in the Dusk to Dusk 24-Hour Student Photojournalism Challenge must be students in high school or college, or college graduates in the past two years. For more information contact Jack Gruber at jack@boydsstation.org.

What are some best practices for interviewing hostile sources? A free online training Thursday will show you how

To help reporters learn how to ask tough interview questions and get answers without a derailing confrontation, the New England First Amendment Coalition is offering a free online training: "30 Minute Skills: How to Interview Hostile Sources" on Thursday, May 11, 2023, 12:00 PM ET. Registration is required.

By attending the training, participants will learn three proven approaches:
• How to lay the foundation for a productive interview with a hostile source.
• The strategies needed to keep a confrontational interview safe and on topic.
• Ways to follow up with a hostile source to prevent unnecessary confrontation during future interviews.

Jenifer McKim

The training's instructor is Jenifer McKim, a deputy investigative editor with the GBH News Center for Investigative Reporting, who specializes in social justice issues, including human trafficking, criminal justice, child welfare and consumer debt. She is a fellow of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University and holds a Master of Science in Journalism from Boston University.

The training is part of the Coalition's ongoing "30 Minute Skills" offerings, which are free, archived and can be viewed online. Registration for each lesson is required. The goal of the program is to provide reporters and other citizens knowledge they can use immediately in newsgathering, data collection, storytelling and other areas of journalism and First Amendment law. Each training is open to the public.

Apply by Monday for Rural Computer-Assisted Reporting fellowship to Investigative Reporters & Editors Bootcamp

Monday, May 8 is the deadline for rural jouralists to apply for free tuition at the Data Journalism Bootcamp of Investigative Reporters & Editors Aug. 7-11 in Columbia, Missouri.

Established by IRE member Daniel Gilbert in 2011, this fellowship is for reporters at small news organizations pursuing data-driven investigative stories that provide a public service for people in rural communities. The fellowship is offered in conjunction with the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky (which publishes The Rural Blog). The goal of the fellowship is to foster investigative reporting in rural areas by assisting small news organizations that lack the resources to send reporters to an IRE data journalism bootcamp.

The fellowship is open to U.S.-based professional journalists working for:

• a newspaper with circulation fewer than 40,000 with a significant rural audience
• a television or radio station outside the top 100 Nielsen markets with a significant rural audience
• a nonprofit news organization with demonstrated rural coverage and readership
• freelance journalists who have: a clearly defined project with rural impact; a small, rural news organization committed to publishing the story; and who get most of their income by producing independent journalism.

The fellowship includes registration (up to $1,100 value), a travel stipend ($500) and a one-year IRE membership or renewal ($70 value).

Applicants must have a LinkedIn page or a link to their resume; links to two clips showcasing their best investigative and public-service work; a letter describing an investigation you’re working on and the data skills you need to pull it off; a letter from a supervisor or other appropriate person supporting attendance at the training. The letter should include why you are deserving of the fellowship.

To apply, go here. If you would like to contribute to this fellowship, you can donate through IRE’s online donation form and indicate the name of the fund in the form.

Report for America corps members work with high schools

Raegan Miller works at KRBD in Ketchikan, Alaska.

Report for America says its corps members are working with thousands of high-school students across the nation to interest them in journalism and give thme some basic training.

Raegan Miller, who covers the Native and Asian American communities for KRBD in southeast Alaska, has been working with an English class at Revilla High School in Ketchikan. She told RFA, “When we started they had no experience with journalism, with writing professionally, some of them were still struggling to put together an essay or meet deadlines. We started at the building blocks of a story, and we worked up to quotes, how you build a story, how you find sources and we worked up to the point where every Wednesday that I go in we have a roundtable and each is working independently on their stories.” 

"These types of mentorships repeat every week in classrooms all over the country," wrote Kevin Grant, RFA co-founder and chief partnerships officer. "In the last year alone, our corps members have worked with more than 3,000 youth adding to a total of over 5,800 since the start of the program. Not all of them will become journalists, but students walk away with a better understanding of what’s news and how it differs from misinformation. And for some, it might be the start of a journey open with possibilities."

Corps member Linsey Dower, who works with students at McKinley High School in Honolulu, told RFA, “The way that some students have so much passion for the subjects they write about is surprising to me. They truly want to understand the topics they report on and are thoughtful about how they convey new ideas to their readers. Their genuine interest in their work shows me how much potential each of them has as journalists, whether they choose that career-path or not.”

Grant writes, "That potential is present in all the young people of America. It only needs someone to unlock it. The volunteer work of our corps members is helping form a more critical and better prepared generation that we’re sure will be instrumental for the future of journalism. If you want to learn more about our service projects or if you would like to have a corps member working with the youth of your community, check out our site and help us support this valuable initiative."

News-media roundup: A.I. journalism arrives; a Sunshine Week victory; hope for the future in a volunteer writer . . .

Community journalism produced by artificial intelligence has arrived, and it's scary, warns Reed Anfinson of Minnesota's Swift Coutny Monitor-News. He cites a Poynter Institute article by Alex Mahadevan and writes, "Deceiving the reader is going to become A.I.-assisted child’s play. Where does that leave citizens of a representative democracy who depend on trusted information to assess those elected to serve their needs?"

The Trust Project announces that its seal of approval has been added to several more news sites "as need for trustworthy news reaches crisis." They include its first tribal-nation site, Osage News; its first entirely health-focused site, MindSite News, which focuses on mental health; and Eye on Ohio, Investigate Midwest and the Texas Tribune.

Kirsten Lane

When high-school junior Kirsten Lane volunteered to write for the weekly Hickman County Times in Centerville, Tenn., Editor and Publisher Brad Martin welcomed her, "because folks who like to write are few." He reports that Lane "is polite, a good speller, writes clean sentences, can ask a question, makes focused photographs, meets deadline requirements and offers to go above and beyond. . . . Even if she doesn't go into a writing field, she will know about newspaper writing ... a cousin to efficiency, attentiveness and the ability to analyze. You may not think those abilities are important, and that this nation's future will simply develop on the sentence-by-sentence creations entered into hand-held devices every few seconds. I must say, good luck with that."

Sunshine Week, the annual promotion of open government, saw "a huge victory" in Arkansas, reports Arkansas Publisher Weekly, from the Arkansas Press Association. A bill to ease less-than-quorum meetings of boards "was rejected in a voice vote at the end of an all-day hearing," before and after the House's floor session. "After testimony from eight FOIA advocates representing APA, the Arkansas FOIA Coalition, the legislature-appointed FOIA Task Force and other groups and individuals, several lawmakers asked [the sponsor] to pull the bill down and negotiate an agreement with the APA and other FOIA groups. She adamantly refused, and the House panel rejected the measure as several FOIA advocates cheered." The Arkansas Advocate has details.

Editor Tammy Shaw

When Paxton Media Group eliminated a reporter's position at The Sentinel-News in Shelbyville, Ky., James Mulcahy quit as editor and reporter Tammy Shaw was named to replace him. In her first column as editor, she writes, "Last week I talked to an official at a local meeting, and they asked if the company was winding down the paper, one employee at a time. Not in the least. . . . This paper is more than one or two people, no matter how great the loss. It has lasted a very long time and will continue as long as there is support in the community."

Muckrack's "State of Journalism 2023" reports after surveying more than 2,200 journalists: Two-thirds say their work has been affected by economic uncertainty; about half considered leaving Twitter, but only 28% say they plan to spend less time on the social network this year; they also say they plan to spend more time on YouTube, LinkedIn and TikTok.

'Unpacking Food and Ag Reporting' livestream at 2 ET Tues.

Agriculture reporters Chris Clayton, Claire Carlson and Tom Philpott will talk about "Unpacking Food and Ag Reporting" in a livestream at 2 p.m. ET Tuesday, March 21.

The event is a chance to discuss food and ag stories and issues we should be paying attention to, how they approach the beat, the way food production and consumption influences many aspects of rural life, and more.

Clayton is the ag policy editor for Progressive Farmer. Philpott is a former food and ag correspondent for Mother Jones. Carlson is a staff correspondent for The Daily Yonder, which is presenting the event with its partner the Rural Assembly. For more information or to register, go here.

Advancing Democracy Fellowship applications due Feb. 14

Are you a journalist who wants to shift from conflict-focused coverage to stories that reflect the needs of people in your community and offer solutions to problems? You're invited to apply for the Advancing Democracy Fellowship through Feb. 14.

This joint initiative from Hearken, the Solutions Journalism Network and Trusting News is designed to "equip newsroom-based journalists to transform their coverage of democracy through solutions-focused reporting that builds trust and avoids polarization," SJN says.

This is the second year of the fellowship. SJN and Hearken say, "We are inviting 20 U.S.-based newsroom teams of at least one reporter and one editor to join this adventure. This fellowship is for U.S.-based newsrooms only and preference will be given to newsrooms in the Great Lakes region (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin), as well as those in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Texas. We anticipate newsrooms from outside of these states will also be chosen. Newsrooms serving and led by historically excluded communities are strongly encouraged to apply."

SJN says, "The program includes a modest stipend, along with training and resources that support innovative news coverage focused on promising responses to our democracy’s challenges in ways that build civic engagement, equity and healthy discourse."

You can apply here. To ask questions, contact Jaisal Noor at jaisal@solutionsjournalism.org.

SJN says it is "leading a global shift in journalism, focused on what the news misses most often: how people are trying to solve problems and what we can learn from their successes or failures. Since its founding in 2013, more than 600 news organizations and over 27,000 journalists worldwide have engaged with SJN’s in-person workshops, online resources, collaboratives, fellowships and cohorts.

"Hearken helps organizations embed stakeholder listening into their growth and operations to build more resilient companies and communities. Hearken has shown that listening leads to stronger relationships, deeper engagement and better decisions, and enables individuals to make an outsize positive impact in the world. In 2020, Hearken worked in collaboration with more than two dozen civic organizations (including SJN) to stand up and deliver Election SOS, which supported journalists in responding to critical election information needs.

"Trusting News learns how people decide what news to trust and turns that knowledge into actionable strategies for journalists. Its staff trains and empowers journalists to take responsibility for demonstrating credibility and actively earning trust through transparency and engagement. In a continual cycle of research, learning and sharing with the industry, Trusting News explores how to incorporate trust-building into journalism’s standards and practices."

Reporting tips: Crime data, story ideas and understanding the difference in percentage and percentage-point changes

For The Journalist's Resource, Denise-Marie Ordway shares tips on clearly and accurately reporting on percentage changes in stories about government budgets, crime, health, polling, and so on. Ordway created the tip sheet with help from Jennifer LaFleur, a senior editor at The Center for Public Integrity and a pioneer of data journalism. The tip sheet goes beyond explaining when to use "percentage point" instead of "percent" and offers advice for explaining numerical changes to the general public. Sometimes, that means avoiding numbers!

Crime data may confuse: The FBI now bases its crime data based on its new National Incident-Based Reporting System, so some crime numbers may appear to have jumped when they haven't. Other issues include gaps in the data, old information, a narrow definition that doesn’t include crimes committed by law enforcement and a lack of oversight of crime data collection, says Kelly McBride of The Poynter Institute: “As a nation, we keep horrible, incomplete data that makes it impossible to get an accurate sense of the scope or impact of crime,” she writes. This can often lead to sensational coverage that focuses on splashy numbers without an appropriate context. 

The best leads for new story ideas come from allowing your mind to wander and revisiting your old articles, Jacob Granger writes for the Press Gazette in the U.K., citing instruction from Ellie Levenson, a freelance journalist, author and part-time lecturer at Goldsmiths College at the University of London.

"Levenson provides a formula: a feature idea = subject + angle + audience (and sometimes, but not always, a news hook). Picture a slot machine with three reels: subject, angle and audience. You can develop a brand new story just by spinning one of those. Change the subject: who else is doing this? Change the angle: what else does the subject do? How could they do it differently? Change the audience: what would another type of reader (younger, older, urban, expert, layperson etc.) want to know? You can hit a dead end, but this is also how you can produce multiple stories based on one lead. . . . But here is a catch: reporters often focus on what amuses or appeals to them. Do not write for yourself or your editor. Think about how stories impact your audience and keep your ego in check."

Apply by Sept. 15 for Education Writers Assn. fellowship of up to $5,000 to support an education-related story

If you cover education, this might be for you: The Education Writers Association is still accepting applications for reporting fellowships through Sept. 15.

The micro-fellowships pay up to $5,000 to support an education-related story, and are open to journalists from all types of media outlets (including freelancers). The money can be used for a wide array of expenses such as travel, attending workshops to build knowledge and expertise, or even contracting with a data journalist, photographer or writing coach.

There is no fee to apply, and reporters don't have to be on a full-time education beat to apply. Fellows retain full editorial control over the content of the reporting. EWA expects to award about six micro-fellowships. Click here for more information or to apply.

Report for America wants rural newsrooms to apply for reporters by Oct. 3; information sessions Sept. 1, 15 and 22

Report for America is now accepting applications for newsrooms interested in hosting emerging and experienced journalists for up to three years, starting next summer—and rural newsrooms are especially encouraged to apply. The deadline is Oct. 3.

RFA is a nonprofit national service program, not unlike the Peace Corps, that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities in return for mentorship and training. The organization pays half the journalists' salaries, and local newsrooms split the rest of the cost with local donors (RFA can assist in fundraising).

The organization has been expanding its rural reach over the past few years to help thwart rural news deserts. In December RFA sought more than 40 new rural journalists for the program, bringing the corps to 325 members in nearly 270 newsrooms in the U.S. and its territories.

Report for America plans to hold online information sessions with newsrooms and partner organizations throughout the application period, including one today at 2 p.m. ET  at 2 p.m. ET Sept. 1, 15 and 22. To begin the application process or to learn more information, news organizations can visit www.reportforamerica.org or send an email to: recruitment@reportforamerica.org.