We help you bring accountability journalism to news holes you’ve long wanted to plug but haven’t had the resources.
We pre-screen emerging journalists who meet your needs, and pay half their salary, up to $20,000. You and local donors split the rest, though we can help you raise the local share. You make the final reporter selection. And they work for you—not us.
Associated Press (Connecticut, New York)
Block Club Chicago
Boise State Public Radio (Idaho)
Centro de Periodismo Investigativo (Puerto Rico)
Chalkbeat (New Jersey)
Charleston Gazette-Mail (West Virginia)
The Charlotte Observer (North Carolina)
Chattanooga Times Free Press (Tennessee)
Cincinnati Enquirer (Ohio)
Detroit Free Press (Michigan)
El Nuevo Herald (Florida)
Forum of Fargo-Moorhead (North Dakota)
Honolulu Civil Beat (Hawaii)
KUER (Utah)
Lexington Herald-Leader (Kentucky)
Malheur Enterprise (Oregon)
Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting
Sacramento Bee (California)
Spectrum News TV Buffalo
Spokesman-Review (Washington)
St. Louis Public Radio (Illinois)
The Albuquerque Journal (New Mexico)
The Advocate (Louisiana)
The City (New York)
Texas News Hub
WCAI (Massachusetts)
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism
Yellowstone Public Radio (Wyoming)
Participating newsroom partners include non-profit and for-profit organizations, daily and weekly newspapers, digital only newsrooms, TV and radio stations. They’re in 28 states and Puerto Rico.
(Next year, we’ll be in far more.)
Any news organization that is committed to providing objective, civically important local journalism. That could include public radio stations, newspapers, digital narrative sites, commercial TV stations, community media centers, or journalism schools providing direct journalism. The organization can be non-profit or commercial.
These are the main criteria:
1) Is there an important need? (Are there under-covered topics, communities or geographic areas?)
2) What is the beat you’ll create to deploy RFA corps members to help fill your news gap?
3) Can you provide the local match? (see below)
Other factors include having the following:
The application window for news organization closes Sept. 30, 2019. Decisions will be announced in December.
Accepted newsrooms will interview corps member candidates in March. Their selected corps member will begin in their newsroom in June. Newsrooms will work with RFA to establish a plan for measuring impact and strategy for raising local money prior to the reporter beginning.
This term refers to the money you raise in the community to support this reporting 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 its through membership, subscriptions, events or philanthropy. So we strongly encourage news organizations to involve the community to support the RFA corps member.
Corps members’ stories hold public officials accountable and reveal the complexity and richness of communities.
VICTORIA, Texas — The City Council chambers usually feels quiet, and often
On the Ground in EL PASO, Texas — At dusk on a Friday
On the Ground in SUMNER, Mississippi — The courthouse where Emmett Till’s
On the Ground — On a muggy July evening, I sat on the