If you’re a journalist looking to take a deep dive into an important story, or just looking to bone up on your reporting skills, consider applying for some or all of the following investigative fellowships:
Investigative Reporters and Editors freelance fellowship
Deadline: March 27
Location: Various
Pay: $1,000 or more
Description: “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.”
Fellowships for registration at IRE’s conference
Deadline: Various
Location: Various
Pay: Covers the cost of attending IRE’s annual conference
Description: There’s a series of fellowships on IRE’s site that provide journalists of various backgrounds with registration and travel money for the organization’s conference. If you meet any of these criteria, there’s a fellowship for you:
- You’re a college student in Arkansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma or Louisiana
- You have less than 10 years’ professional experience
- You identify as black, American Indian/Alaskan, Native American, Asian-American, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, Hispanic/Latino
- You are a women of limited means studying journalism or a relatively new professional journalist
- You are a journalist working at a paper with Sunday circulation less than 50,000
- You attend a historically black college or university
Berkeley Investigative Reporting Program fellowship
Deadline: Application details will be released in early 2015
Location: Various
Pay: Salary, benefits, editorial guidance, and a $10,000 travel stipend
Description: “This yearlong program is without peer at any academic institution. It is designed to enable journalists, those with a proven ability to tell complex stories in the public interest, to pursue a story for one year by providing them with a salary, benefits, editorial guidance, and a $10,000 travel stipend. The fellowships are open to all working investigative journalists, but preference is given to graduates of UC Berkeley’s master’s program in journalism.”
Center for Public Integrity/American University Investigative Reporting Fellowship
Deadline: Feb. 1
Location: Washington, D.C.
Pay: $24,000 stipend plus master’s degree
Description: “For journalists with at least four years of experience.”
Ben Bagdikian Fellowship Program
Deadline: April 1
Location: San Francisco and Washington, D.C.
Pay: $1,500 per month
Description: “The Ben Bagdikian Fellowship Program offers a crash course in investigative journalism. It also supports emerging journalists and media professionals, allowing them to make invaluable contributions to a high-flying news organization. Mother Jones fellows dive deep into every aspect of a national multimedia outfit—from the making of news, to making it pretty, to ensuring its impact, to mastering the inner workings of nonprofit publishing.”
The Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting
Deadline: Nov. 10
Location: Augusta, Maine
Pay: $25,000
Description: “The Center’s stories are widely distributed, appearing in most of the state’s newspapers and their web sites and on the center’s own site, pinetreewatchdog.org. The Center is seeking applications for its 2015 Reporting Fellowship. The Fellow will work with the Center’s staff to produce investigative and enterprise stories about Maine government and elections. One of the Center’s missions is to train beginning journalists in the methods and disciplines of evidence-based, independent investigative reporting. The Center is based in the Maine State House in Augusta, one hour from vibrant Portland and one hour from the coast.”
Google Journalism Fellowship
Deadline: Around the end of January
Location: Various journalism nonprofits throughout the United States
Pay: $8,000 for 10-weeks, plus $1,000 travel stipend
Description: “The program is aimed at undergraduate, graduate and journalism students interested in using technology to tell stories in new and dynamic ways. The Fellows will get the opportunity to spend the summer contributing to a variety of organizations — from those that are steeped in investigative journalism to those working for press freedom around the world and to those that are helping the industry figure out its future in the digital age.”
Disclaimer: I was a 2014 Google fellow.
Fund for Investigative Journalism
Deadline: Jan. 15
Location: Various
Pay: Grants average $5,000
Description: The Fund for Investigative Journalism’s Board of Directors meets three to four times each year to consider grant applications for investigative projects and books. In between cycles, the deadline box will read “to be announced” after a deadline has passed. The next deadline will be posted as soon as possible. Either check back, or, if you would like to receive regular notices including upcoming deadlines, let us know by emailing the office: fundfij@gmail.com.
Daniel Pearl Investigative Journalism Initiative
Deadline: The deadline for this year’s internship has already passed. Look for an application deadline in 2015 sometime around the beginning of June.
Location: Various
Pay: $5,000 to cover the costs of an investigative project
Description:“With the help of our prestigious panel of journalists, Moment select and mentors the writer, providing her or him with journalistic as well as financial support. The fellowship offers $5,000 to cover the costs of the project—$2,500 up front, and $2,500 upon completion of the story. The edited stories will be published in Moment, perhaps in conjunction with another media outlet. Applicants must be between the ages of 22 and 38; international applicants are welcome to apply.”
Know any fellowships I’ve forgotten? Send them to bmullin@poynter.org, and I’ll add them to the list.
