FAQs for Newsrooms

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Any news organization that is committed to providing objective, civically important local journalism. That could include public and commercial radio and TV stations, newspapers, digital-only news sites, and more. The organization can be non-profit or for profit.

These are the main criteria:

  • Is there an important community need? (Are there under-covered topics, neighborhoods or regions?)
  • What is the beat you’ll create to deploy RFA corps members to help fill your news gap?
  • Has the newsroom been publishing for at least one year?
  •  Do you have solid workflows and provide good editing and  mentoring?
  • Do you agree to fundraise to help you pay your portion of the corps member’s salary? (We help teach you how.)
 

This year, the open application window for newsrooms was July 8 through September 13, 2024. RFA reviewers  assess applications through October and schedule newsroom interviews via Zoom in October and November. We’ll announce winning newsrooms December 17. We’ll then open the applications for corps members. Throughout the spring, host newsrooms will select corps members among a slate of candidates we provide, and they’ll start that July.

 

It’s whatever the newsroom normally offers journalists of comparable experience, though it must be a living wage in that area, according to the MIT living wage calculator. RFA pays 50% of the salary the first year, with a cap of $25,000 for early-career reporters (less than 8 years’ experience) and $30,000 for reporters with 8 or more years’ experience. We pay 33% of the salary the second year, and 20% the third year, with the same caps as above.

No. We pay only a portion of the corps member’s base salary. You pay for benefits. (If your newsroom doesn’t offer health insurance, we require that you pay your corps member a $3,000 stipend after taxes so they can buy their own health insurance.)

The first year, RFA pays half the salary (up to $25,000 for early-career reporters and up to $30,000 for reporters with 8 or more years of experience). The news organization is responsible for covering the rest, but we require that you fundraise and encourage you to raise half your share from local donors. (We’re happy to help with that). For instance, for a $45,000 salary, RFA would put in $22,500, the news organization would put in $11,250 and local donors would put in $11,250.

The second year, RFA pays 33% of the corps member’s salary and the third year, RFA pays 20%, with the same caps as above.

This term refers to the money you raise in the community to support this reporting or photography position. One of the goals of this program is to encourage local philanthropy to support journalism in a bigger way. We also believe that successful news organizations will have to build stronger community support in general whether it’s through membership, subscriptions, events or philanthropy. So we strongly encourage news organizations to involve the community to support the RFA corps member.

No.  You do need to have a solid plan for how you’re going to raise the money, and a firm commitment to doing it.

Yes, we’re happy to help.  In the past, we have pitched local foundations on behalf of news organizations, helped with crowd-funding campaigns to encourage community support and in general done whatever is needed to help the news organization.

Yes. If that happy scenario is a possibility in your community, we’re happy to talk to you about it.

RFA will screen the large pool of talented applicants and choose three to five well qualified candidates to present to the local news organization. You make the final selection. The corps member works for you; they’re not an employee of RFA.

Yes, absolutely, though we don’t allow more than three in your newsroom per service year. You have to make the case that you’ll use the RFA corps members well and that you can provide the financial match. Current host newsrooms that want more corps members have to be in good standing with our program (they’ve completed required surveys, etc.).  

Corps members range from right out of college/grad school, to eight or more years of journalistic experience. The average age of current corps members is 27. We try hard to match the news organization and the beat with a corps member whose experience and skills will allow them to succeed from Day One.

In 2021, we launched an “experienced corps.” Some newsrooms with big ambitions but relatively few staffers have told us they’d like to be able to hire journalists with 8 or more years’ experience, who can dive in on meaty accountability stories from the get-go. We’ll pay half their salary up to $30,000 their first year (with the same funding formula as above for subsequent years). If you’re interested in this option, let us know on your newsroom application. (We can’t guarantee, however, that we’ll be able to find you an entire slate of suitably experienced applicants.)

We are clear with the donors who support Report for America as a national organization that their support will not affect coverage. And beyond that firewall, there’s a practical safeguard: the reporters are employees of the newsrooms, not Report for America. Editorial decisions are made by local editors, at least two steps removed from donors. As for donors to the local newsroom, we ask our partners to approach that in the same spirit that newsrooms do with advertisers/underwriters: making it clear that the support doesn’t buy coverage. Our newsroom partners embrace the same ethos that we do.  

No. We have placed talented photographers and TV and radio reporters in local newsrooms. But all of them have to write well and clearly.
 

No. You know your community far better than we do. We leave it to the host organizations to decide what is most needed in the community. It might be a beat reporter on a particular topic. Or it could be a general assignment reporter in a particular county or neighborhood that’s been neglected.

They are employees of the local news organization. They get your benefits, operate under your standards, under your libel insurance policy, and are edited and managed by you.

We ask each corps member to make a commitment of two years to the host newsroom and the program.  We also offer a third year for interested newsrooms and corps members; we’ll pay 20 percent of the salary up to $25,000 or $30,000, depending on their experience level. 

No, they’re not. We’re aware that advocacy journalism organizations can do great work. But our goal is to promote straight up, nitty-gritty local reporting.

No, but we do want the RFA corps members to have impact. So preference will be given to organizations that show they have reach and impact. An exception might be if the organization is small but has high penetration in its community.
 

As an employee of the newsroom, the reporter would be covered exclusively by the libel insurance of the local news organization.

Great training and mentoring is a hugely important part of our mission. Corps members receive intensive training to prepare them for the year ahead by world-class editors, technologists, academics and other supporters of the future of journalism, plus continued support and mentoring throughout their term of service. 

Yes. If the corps member is performing poorly, you can terminate them for cause (though we ask for a heads up about both emerging problems and your decision). The news organization will have to pay back the unspent part of the subsidy we have provided.

If a first-year corps member leaves, we’ll do our best to match you with a replacement, depending on how things went with the original corps member. We’ll pay 33% of the salary of the replacement. If a second- or third-year corps member leaves, you won’t get a replacement, but you can apply to us for a new beat the following summer/fall.

Report for America is funded by foundations and individuals. There are no partisan or ideological strings attached. All organizations or individuals that fund Report for America understand that we support non-partisan, non-ideological local reporting. Local funders also need to abide by the same guidelines. Of course, funders have various reasons for wanting to support journalism but they all are committing to our guidelines, which state that the donations will not affect coverage.