The John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships will again welcome U.S. fellows to the Stanford University campus for the 2022-2023 academic year that begins this fall.
From September to June, JSK Fellows will step away from full-time professional obligations to work on their ideas for addressing journalism’s most urgent problems, while experiencing an array of opportunities available to members of Stanford’s campus community.
Applications for the fellowship were due in early March and are currently being reviewed. The U.S. fellows will be selected in May. They will join five international fellows already selected for the 2022-2023 academic year. Those international journalists had previously committed to the program and could not participate due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Early in the pandemic, JSK decided that rather than moving its existing on-campus fellowship online for U.S. journalists, the program would create a distinct remote fellowship to support people working to address news and information gaps in their local underserved and underrepresented communities.
The second cohort of these JSK Community Impact Fellows will complete the program in early June. Over the two cohorts, JSK has supported 21 local journalism leaders through stipends, coaching and peer-to-peer learning via Zoom as they continued to work in their communities.
As the program returns to offering in-person fellowships, JSK Director Dawn Garcia said it will continue to focus on practical solutions to address the U.S. journalism industry’s long-standing neglect of underrepresented and underserved communities.
“We are looking for emerging and experienced journalism leaders who believe that the status quo in our industry is not nearly good enough — and they want to do something about it. We are seeking to build and nurture the talents of a diverse range of people who will work to ensure that fewer communities are left behind by journalism.”
Dawn Garcia, JSK director
For the on-campus U.S. fellowships, JSK is seeking applicants who are able to step away from their professional obligations to focus full time on a problem in journalism, ideally in the context of a specific community or news organization.
The international and U.S. fellows will be together for a 10-month, deep cohort experience at Stanford, learning skills and mindsets needed to lead change in these times of uncertainty.
Through individual coaching, tailored workshops and peer-to-peer learning, the program helps journalists grow as leaders and develop the resilience that is necessary to be effective change agents. JSK’s leadership is especially interested in those who are working to serve underrepresented communities.
JSK also plans to seek ways to continue to help local journalists who cannot leave their community-based work to spend 10 months at Stanford.
“We learned so much from these two years piloting a new model of remote JSK Community Impact Fellowships to fill news and information gaps in communities of color across the U.S.,” Garcia said. “We are excited to have JSK Fellows back on campus this fall, and we will also continue exploring ways in the future to help local journalists who serve the information needs in the communities where they live.”
JSK provides fellows with several benefits, including a stipend of $85,000, a $5,000 housing supplement and an additional supplement for fellows with children. JSK also pays tuition so that fellows can sit in on Stanford classes, and covers Stanford health insurance for fellows, spouses and children. Fellows are invited to participate in special workshops and events, and explore the abundant resources at Stanford University and throughout Silicon Valley.
Please visit our Become a fellow page for more information. Follow @JSKstanford on Twitter for updates about our application and selection process.