Call for Applications: 2024 Earth Journalist Reporting Fellowship

October 25, 2023October 25, 2023 press_admin 0 Comments

To mark its 20th anniversary in 2024, EJN is pleased to announce the launch of a new year-long fellowship program for journalists which will enhance reporting over four priority areas — climate change, biodiversity, the ocean and One Health.

Overview

EJN is seeking four exceptional environmental reporters for a new fellowship initiative which will provide journalistic training and mentorship, a quarterly salary stipend and funding for story production, travel and professional development opportunities. Each of these four Fellows will primarily focus on a different area of environmental journalism — climate change, biodiversity, the ocean and One Health — and will develop their skills and networks to become leaders in these reporting spaces. EJN Reporting Fellows will also have the opportunity to broaden their understanding and produce stories in the other three thematic areas.

One fellowship will be awarded for each thematic area of reporting, and interested journalists must indicate which fellowship they wish to apply for. EJN Fellows that are awarded this first-of-its-kind opportunity will:

Attend an orientation workshop hosted by EJN to strengthen their reporting skills and meet the other participating Fellows;
Receive mentorship from senior journalists with expertise in each thematic area to provide 1-1 guidance, reporters’ resources and editorial support for their reporting;
Build thematic expertise by learning from and interviewing experts in all four focus areas;
Hone reporting skills through training on data journalism, Mojo, solutions journalism, fact checking, data visualization and more;
Receive a quarterly stipend of 6,000 EUR to cover expenses for story production and the Fellows’ time;
Receive 6,000 EUR per Fellow to cover travel to conferences, travel for story production, professional development opportunities and more;
Engage in peer-to-peer learning and exchange.

Eligibility

Applications are open to journalists working in any medium (online, print, television, multimedia, new media). We encourage applications from freelance reporters and staff from all types of media organizations — international, national and local.

Eligible applicants for the EJN Reporting Fellowship must:

Be a professional journalist from or representing an established media house and reporting from a low- or middle-income country.
Have a minimum of 5 years of journalistic experience.
Have demonstrable interest and experience reporting on one of the four thematic areas, and provide recent, relevant and journalistic work samples on those topics, which can be uploaded as documents or web links.
Be able to participate fully in an English-language fellowship. For the purposes of this opportunity, we will only be accepting applications in English.
Commit to participating in all fellowship activities, with the full support of their media house.
Commit to being part of an online community with current and future Fellows.
Have strong and stable internet access for the purposes of virtual activities (minimum 1.2Mbps).
Provide a signed letter of support from an editor, producer, or supervisor who can confirm that you will be allocated time to participate in all fellowship activities (equivalent of 2 days per week for the duration of the fellowship), and that reports will be published or broadcast in an established media outlet. Freelancers are welcome to apply but must provide a letter of support from a media outlet for which they intend to report. The template for this letter of support is provided for freelancers here and staffers here.
Provide 2 signed professional references (letters of recommendation) from supervisors or professional associates who are familiar with your journalistic abilities, qualifications, training and interests.

Note: You’ll be asked to upload these supporting documents once you start the application process, so please have them ready.

EJN reserves the right to disqualify applicants from consideration if they have been found to have engaged in unethical or improper professional conduct.

Judging criteria  

We are looking for applicants who meet the following criteria:

Demonstrated experience covering climate change, biodiversity, the ocean and/or One Health topics;
Long-term commitment to the field of journalism and in continuing to report on these topics;
A relationship with an established media house and a signed letter of support from an editor/producer/supervisor agreeing to publish or broadcast any work produced during the fellowship.
EJN also considers the need to assemble a diverse cohort of journalists from different types of media houses, media and geographies.

Logistics and expectations

Fellows will be expected to dedicate the minimum equivalent of 2 days per week to fellowship activities, which may include but is not limited to story production, attendance at fellowship workshops and other training activities, calls with mentors and travel to conferences.

Each Fellow will have a reporting focus on one of the four priority areas, but Fellows will also have the opportunity to receive training on the other three topics and encouraged to write stories on these topics as well. To facilitate this, Fellows will work with a new mentor each quarter who has expertise in climate change, biodiversity, the ocean and One Health.

Fellows will be expected to attend monthly virtual seminars to develop their journalistic skills on topics such as data journalism, mobile journalism, solutions journalism, fact checking, data visualization and more. We will do our best to accommodate convenient timings for these seminars across all time zones, but Fellows may need to be prepared to join seminars at inconvenient hours.

Fellows are expected to produce stories regularly during the course of the fellowship for their media house, with a minimum of 6 high-quality stories in total over the course of 12 months. Participating journalists will be encouraged to produce in-depth, ambitious reporting as part of the fellowship, and high-quality stories could constitute deeply reported features, data journalism, investigative work, multimedia stories, etc. Journalists may produce stories in any medium, including print, online, radio, broadcast and more.

Each Fellow will be required to participate in monitoring and evaluation activities including completion of surveys, and will be asked to submit a blog post at the end of their fellowship speaking about their experience.

Throughout the fellowship participating Fellows are free to report as they see fit. However, the program will provide training related to certain thematic topics and innovative journalistic skills, and we will encourage the production of stories that draw on these learnings. We do ask that Fellows adhere to editorial standards (which will be shared at the start of the fellowship) and these guidelines:

Language of publication: Stories produced as a result of this fellowship can be in any language. However, we do ask that Fellows provide a full translation of their stories into English so that they can be shared with a wider audience.

Acknowledgement of support: Published stories and/or broadcasts must disclose EJN support by including this tagline, “This story was produced as part of Internews’ Earth Journalism Network’s 2024 Reporting Fellowship”.

Republication rights: Those who are awarded fellowships are free to publish or broadcast stories produced as a result of the fellowship in their affiliated media first, as long as Internews’ EJN and its local and regional partner sites are also given rights to edit, republish, broadcast and distribute them freely. 

Application process

Click the ‘Apply now’ button at the top of this page.  
If you have an existing account, you’ll need to log in. Since we recently updated our website, you might have to reset your password by clicking the “Forgot password?” link in the login page. If you don’t have an account, you must register by clicking “Log in” on the top right of the page and click on the “Sign up” link at the bottom of the page that opens. Click here for detailed instructions on how to create an account, and here for detailed instructions on how to reset your password.  
If you start the application and want to come back and complete it later, you can click ‘Save Draft.’ To return to the draft, you’ll need to go back to the opportunity and click ‘Apply now’ again to finalize the application.

 
Applicants are strongly encouraged to participate in EJN’s new research study evaluating the state of climate and environmental journalism globally. The survey is available in 11 languages for journalists and editors covering climate and environment and will close on December 8. You can take the survey here and read more about the goals of the project here.

Applications submitted after the deadline will not be considered.  Please consider submitting at least one day in advance of the deadline to avoid any issues.  

If you encounter difficulties with submitting your application or have questions about the grants, please email info.ejn@internews.org. Do not contact any other Internews email regarding this opportunity, as we will not receive it.     

Deadline: 16 November 2023, 11:59 PM, Pacific/Niue (UTC -11)

info.ejn [at] internews.org

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