Six beats to consider when your newsroom applies to Report for America 

Report for America helps local newsrooms plug holes in their coverage. We’re accepting applications now, through Sept. 30, from newsrooms that want us to help them find great reporters, for under-covered communities or topics, and pay half their salary.

Many of the beats of our 300 journalists, working in more than 200 newsrooms, are what you might expect: education, healthcare, city hall, the environment, county commission, local business, communities of color, rural communities, and more. These are crucial—and you should focus your application on what you think you need most.

But we’re open to other important needs as well, like these: 

Sports reporting. If you cover a college town newly affected by rules concerning pay for college athletes—or if you simply want to beef up your reporting about high school sports—we can help you expand your coverage.  

Photography. We have a growing photography corps, excellent photojournalists whose work has expanded local coverage in significant and dramatic ways. We welcome more!

Agriculture and water. Through a partnership with the University of Missouri and the Society of Environmental Journalists, we’ll be supporting newsrooms that seek to cover agriculture and water issues in the Mississippi River Basin, which includes 31 states.

Religion. This is a fascinating beat as faith communities assess how to continue in pandemic times.  

Arts and culture. News reporting about arts and cultural institutions is often lacking in local newsrooms. Report for America doesn’t field arts or music critics, but we can help you staff up your news coverage. 

Obituaries. The pandemic has created far more need for obituary reporting than at any time in recent memory. 

Experienced journalists. This isn’t a beat, of course. But if you’d like to hire a reporter with deep experience (eight or more years) who can also edit, we support a group of experienced journalists and aim to field more. You can indicate this preference on your application. 

Questions? Write to me at [email protected]

 


About Report for America

Report for America is a national service program that places talented emerging journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered topics and communities. Launched in 2017, Report for America is creating a new, sustainable system that provides Americans with the information they need to improve their communities, hold powerful institutions accountable, and rebuild trust in the media. Report for America is an initiative of The GroundTruth Project, an award-winning nonprofit journalism organization with an established track record of training and supporting teams of emerging journalists around the world, including the recent launch of Report for the World in partnership with local newsrooms in India and Nigeria.